Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Since it seems that I am not out of place in comparing Crassus to Nicias, and the Parthian disasters to the Sicilian ones, it is time for me to ask and beg on my own behalf that those who take up this writing not suppose that I have suffered anything like what happened to Timaeus, in relation to the narratives which Thucydides—himself the most moving, the most vivid, the most varied he ever became on these matters—has set forth inimitably.
Timaeus hoped to surpass Thucydides in skill, and to show Philistus to be altogether vulgar and amateurish, and so he pushes his history straight through the middle of those contests and sea-battles and public speeches which those two authors had handled best of all—not, by Zeus, going on foot beside the Lydian chariot, as Pindar says, but appearing altogether a late learner and a callow youth in these matters, and, as Diphilus says, thick, larded with Sicilian fat—and in many places he slides down into the manner of Xenarchus,
as, for instance, when he says that the Athenians took it as an omen that the general who spoke against undertaking the generalship bore the name derived from victory (Nicias/nike), and that the mutilation of the Herms was a sign sent to them by the divine power, showing that they would suffer most in the war at the hands of Hermocrates son of Hermon; and further, that it was likely that Heracles would help the Syracusans for the sake of Kore, from whom he had received Cerberus, but would be angry at the Athenians because they were trying to save the Egestans, who were descendants of the Trojans, since he himself had been wronged by Laomedon and had laid that city waste.
But perhaps it was from this same misplaced elegance that it occurred to him to write such things, and also to correct Philistus's diction, and to abuse the circle of Plato and Aristotle. For my part, rivalry and jealousy over style directed against others seems to me altogether petty and sophistic; but if one competes against things inimitable,
it is wholly senseless. As for the deeds that Thucydides and Philistus have set forth—since it is not possible to pass over them, containing as they do, above all, the man's character and disposition, veiled though it is under many great passions—I have run over these briefly and only so far as necessary, so as not to seem entirely careless and idle; but the details that escape most people, or that have been mentioned by others only in scattered fashion, or that are found on old dedications or decrees, these I have tried to gather together, not amassing useless history, but handing down what serves to understand character and disposition.
It is fitting, then, to say first about Nicias what Aristotle has written: that there were three men who were the best of the citizens and held an inherited goodwill and friendship toward the people—Nicias son of Niceratus, Thucydides son of Melesias, and Theramenes son of Hagnon—though the last less than the other two; for he has been reproached for low birth, as a foreigner from Ceos, and because he was not steady but always wavering in his political choices, he was nicknamed Buskin (Cothurnus).
Of those men Thucydides was the elder, and often, standing at the head of the honorable men, he opposed Pericles's popular leadership in politics; Nicias, being younger, was already held in some regard even while Pericles lived, so that he served as fellow general with him and also held command on his own many times. When Pericles died, Nicias was at once advanced to the first place, chiefly by the rich and notable men, who set him up as a counterweight against Cleon's shamelessness and boldness; yet he also had the people's goodwill and their eager support.
For Cleon had great power "leading the elders and giving them pay," but nonetheless, seeing his greed and impudence and boldness—even those for whose favor he acted saw it—the majority were drawn to Nicias. For his dignity was not harsh nor excessively burdensome, but mixed with a certain caution, since he seemed to be afraid of the people even while leading them.
Being by nature timid and prone to despair, in matters of war he concealed his cowardice by good fortune: for he succeeded evenly as a general; but his nervousness in politics and his readiness to be alarmed by sycophants seemed like a sign of being a man of the people, and it gave him no small power from the people's goodwill, since the people feared those who looked down on them but exalted those who feared them. For to the many the greatest honor from their betters is not to be despised.
Pericles, then, leading the city by true excellence and power of speech, needed no pretense toward the crowd, nor persuasiveness through flattery; but Nicias, falling short in these, yet superior in wealth,
used this to win over the people. And being unable to match Cleon's facile buffoonery, with which he handled the Athenians for their pleasure, by similar means, Nicias won over the people instead with choregic productions and gymnasiarchies and other such acts of public generosity, surpassing in expense and grace all who had gone before him and all his contemporaries.
There stood, even in our own time, among his dedications the Palladium on the Acropolis, which had lost its gilding, and the one that supports the choregic tripods in the temple of Dionysus; for he won victory many times as choregus, and was never once defeated. It is said that at one choregic performance a slave of his came forward adorned in the costume of Dionysus, most beautiful to look at and very tall, not yet bearded; and when this pleased the Athenian crowd, who kept up their applause for quite some time, Nicias stood up and said that he did not think it right for a body that had been consecrated to a god to be enslaved, and he freed the young man.
It is also remembered how splendid and god-befitting were his acts of generosity at Delos. For the choruses that the cities used to send to sing hymns to the god would sail in without order, and as soon as a crowd met the ship they would be bidden to sing with no proper arrangement at all, but in haste disembarking in disarray, at the same time putting on their crowns and changing their clothes,
but he, when he led the sacred mission, himself landed at Rheneia with the chorus and the sacrificial animals and the rest of the equipment, bringing along a bridge that had been constructed at Athens to the right measurements and decorated splendidly with gilding and dyes and garlands and hangings, and under cover of night he threw a bridge across the narrow channel separating Rheneia from Delos; then at daybreak he led the procession to the god and the chorus, adorned magnificently and singing, across the bridge and disembarked them.
After the sacrifice and the contest and the feasting, he set up the bronze palm tree as a dedication to the god, and having bought a plot of land for ten thousand drachmas he consecrated it, so that its revenues might be used by the Delians to make sacrifice and feast, praying for many good things for Nicias from the gods; for he had this inscribed on the stele, which he left in Delos like a guardian of the gift. But that palm tree was broken off by the winds and fell upon the great statue of the Naxians and overturned it.
That there is much in these acts aimed at reputation and ambition, meant for public show and the marketplace, is not unclear; but from the rest of the man's character and manner one might trust that such generosity and popular leadership followed from genuine piety, for he was greatly struck with awe at divine things, and "devoted to divination," as Thucydides says.
In one of Pasiphon's dialogues it is written that he sacrificed to the gods every day, and kept a diviner in his house, pretending always to be inquiring about public matters, but mostly asking about his own personal business, and above all about the profits from his silver mines; for he owned many in the Laurium district, bringing in great revenue but with work that was not without danger, and he kept a great multitude of slaves there, and had the greater part of his estate in silver.
For this reason there were no few people around him asking for and receiving money. For he gave no less to those able to do him harm than to those deserving of good treatment, and altogether his cowardice provided income for the wicked and his kindness for the good. One can get testimony about this even from the comic poets.
Telecleides has written this against one of the sycophants: "Charicles gave a mina, so that he would not say he was born to his mother tumbling out of a purse; and Nicias son of Niceratus gave four minas; for what reason he gave it, though I know well, I will not say, for the man is a friend, and he seems to me to be prudent."
And the man mocked by Eupolis in the Maricas, bringing on stage one of the idle poor men, says: A. "How long a time have you spent with Nicias?" B. "I never even saw him, except recently standing in the marketplace." A. "The man admits he has seen Nicias. And yet how would he have seen him, if he weren't betraying him?" C. "Did you hear, fellow citizens? Nicias caught in the very act!" B. "Why, you fools, would you catch the best of men in some wrongdoing?"
And Aristophanes's Cleon, threatening, says: "I will out-shout the orators and throw Nicias into confusion." And Phrynichus too hints at his timidity and terror in these lines: "For he was a good citizen, as I know well, and he did not walk about cowering, as Nicias did."
Being so cautiously disposed toward the sycophants, he neither dined with any of the citizens nor threw himself into conversations or shared pastimes, nor did he take leisure at all for such occupations, but when holding office he remained continually at the generals' headquarters until night, and he was the last to leave the council chamber and the first to arrive. If he had no public business to attend to, he was hard to approach and hard to meet, keeping to his house and shut in.
His friends would meet those who came to his door and would ask them to excuse him, saying that Nicias was even then occupied with certain public duties and business. And the one who most joined in this play-acting, adding weight and reputation to him, was Hiero, a man raised in Nicias's household, trained by him in letters and music, but claiming to be a son of Dionysius called the Bronze, whose poems are still preserved, and who became leader of the colony to Italy and founded Thurii.
This Hiero, then, conducted Nicias's secret dealings with the diviners, and spread reports to the people that Nicias led a laborious and wretched life for the city's sake: "even while at his bath and at his dinner some public business is always falling upon him; neglecting his own affairs through his concern for the common good, he barely begins to sleep at the first watch of the night."
"For this reason his body too is in bad condition, and he is not pleasant or agreeable to his friends, but has even lost them besides because of the money he spends in politics. The rest of the men, on the other hand, gaining friends and enriching themselves from the speaker's platform, live pleasantly and treat public life as a game." And in truth such was Nicias's life that he could say of himself the words of Agamemnon: "We hold public standing as the guardian of our life, and we are slaves to the crowd."
Seeing that the people made use of those able in speech or outstanding in intelligence for certain purposes as their skill required, but always watched them suspiciously and guarded against their cleverness, cutting down their pride and reputation—as was clear from Pericles's conviction, and Damon's ostracism, and the people's distrust of Antiphon of Rhamnus, and above all in the case of Paches, the man who took Lesbos,
who, while giving an account of his generalship, drew a sword in the very courtroom and killed himself—Nicias tried to avoid the very laborious and long commands, and wherever he himself did serve as general, he held to safety and, succeeding for the most part, as was likely, he did not attribute his successes to any wisdom or power or excellence of his own, but yielded the credit to fortune and took refuge in the divine, giving way before the envy attached to glory.
And the facts themselves bore witness to this: for though many great reverses befell the city at that time, he had absolutely no part in any of them; instead, they were defeated in Thrace by the Chalcidians, when Calliades and Xenophon were generals, and the Aetolian disaster occurred under Demosthenes's command, and at Delium they lost a thousand men under Hippocrates's leadership, while the plague was blamed most of all on Pericles, because it was he who, owing to the war, had crowded the rural population inside the city walls, and the shift in surroundings and unaccustomed way of living caused the disease.
Of all these Nicias remained blameless; and as general he took Cythera, an island well situated against Laconia and having Lacedaemonian inhabitants, and he also took many of the places in revolt on the Thracian coast and brought them over; and shutting up the Megarians within their city, he immediately took the island of Minoa, and shortly afterward, setting out from there, he gained control of Nisaea, and landing in Corinthian territory he won a battle and destroyed many of the Corinthians, along with Lycophron their general.
There it happened that two of his own men were left behind, unnoticed, in the recovery of the dead. When he learned of this, he immediately stopped the fleet's advance and dispatched a herald to the enemy to arrange for retrieving the bodies. And yet by a certain law and custom, those who received back their dead under truce were held to have given up the victory, and it was not lawful for those who obtained this to set up a trophy; for it belongs to those who prevail to win, not to those who ask for their dead as a favor, since they show themselves unable to take them by force.
Nevertheless he chose rather to give up the victory and the glory than to leave two of his fellow citizens unburied. Having ravaged the coast of Laconia and routed the Lacedaemonians who stood against him, he took Thyrea, held by the Aeginetans, and brought back those he had captured alive to Athens.
After Demosthenes fortified Pylos, and the Peloponnesians launched a combined assault by land and sea, and following the engagement roughly four hundred Spartans found themselves trapped on Sphacteria island, the Athenians considered it a great thing, as indeed it was, to have captured them; but since the siege was difficult and hard to carry out in a waterless region, and in summer the transport of supplies took a long and costly circuit, while in winter it was risky and altogether impassable, they were vexed and regretted having rejected an embassy of the Lacedaemonians that had come to them concerning a truce and peace.
They had rejected it chiefly because Cleon opposed it on account of Nicias: for being his enemy, and seeing him eagerly cooperating with the Lacedaemonians, he persuaded the people to vote down the truce. So when the siege dragged on and they learned that dire shortages beset the army, they grew angry at Cleon.
When he turned the blame onto Nicias, accusing him of letting the men slip away through cowardice and softness, and claiming that under his own command the enemy could never have withstood so lengthy a siege, it occurred to the Athenians to say, "Why don't you yourself sail out against the men now?" And Nicias stood up and yielded to him the command at Pylos, and bade him take whatever force he wished, and not to bluster with safe words, but to furnish the city some deed worthy of the effort.
At first Cleon backed away, thrown into confusion because he had not expected this; but when the Athenians pressed him on to the same course and Nicias kept crying out against him, he was carried away and inflamed by his love of honor, and took up the command, adding the further pledge that within twenty days of sailing he would either kill those men or else deliver them living into Athenian hands. This provoked mostly laughter among the Athenians rather than trust, since they were in any case used to putting up with his frivolity and his wild boasts good-naturedly, treating it as a form of amusement.
For it is said that once, when an assembly was in session, the people sat waiting above for a long time, and he came in late, crowned with a garland, and asked them to put off the assembly until the next day: "For today," he said, "I am occupied, since I am about to entertain guests and have just made sacrifice to the gods." Amid laughter, the Athenians got to their feet and broke up the meeting.
Nevertheless, on that occasion too, having met with good fortune and having generaled most excellently together with Demosthenes, within the time he had foretold he brought back as captives all the Spartans who had not fallen in battle, having made them surrender their arms. And this brought great disrepute upon Nicias. For it seemed no mere throwing away of a shield, but something more shameful and worse, that he should willingly cast off his command out of cowardice, and, by voting himself out of his post, hand the enemy such a splendid chance for triumph.
Aristophanes mocks him for this again in the Birds, speaking somewhat as follows: "By Zeus, it is no longer time for us to nod off, nor to play at Nicias-delaying." And in the Farmers he writes this: A. I wish to farm. B. Then who is stopping you? A. You are: for I offer a thousand drachmas, if you release me from office. B. We accept: for that makes two thousand, together with Nicias's.
And indeed he did the city no small harm in allowing Cleon to gain so much reputation and power thereby—power which, falling upon a heavy arrogance and unchecked boldness, brought upon the city other disasters as well, of which he himself reaped no small share; and having done away with the decorum of the speaker's platform, and being the first to shout while addressing the people, to tear off his cloak, to slap his thigh, and to run about while speaking all at once, he instilled in those engaged in politics an ease and a disregard for propriety which not long after threw all public affairs into confusion.
By this time Alcibiades too was already taking root among the Athenians as a demagogue, though not equally unmixed in his badness; rather, as the land of Egypt is said, because of its richness, to produce together both many good drugs mixed in and many baneful ones, so the nature of Alcibiades, flowing abundantly and brilliantly in both directions, gave rise to great beginnings of revolutionary change.
For this reason, even after being rid of Cleon, Nicias found no opportunity at all to give the city rest and settle it down, but just as he had set affairs on a saving course he was thrown out of it again, driven back into the war by the rush and violence of Alcibiades's love of honor. It came about in this way. Those most warring against the peace of Greece were Cleon and Brasidas, for whom the war concealed the one's baseness and adorned the other's excellence; for it furnished the one opportunities for great wrongdoing, the other for great successes.
So when these two fell together in a single battle at Amphipolis, Nicias at once took the matter in hand, finding the Spartans long desiring peace and the Athenians no longer confident in the war, and both of them as it were worn out and willingly letting their hands drop; and he worked to reconcile the cities in mutual goodwill, and to release the remaining Greeks from their hardships and grant them repose, so that by this course he might fix his reputation for good fortune firmly for the future.
Now the wealthy and the older men, and the mass of the farmers, were from the start inclined to peace; and since, meeting privately with many of the others too and instructing them, he made them blunter toward the war, in this way he was already giving the Spartans hope, and inviting and urging them to hold fast to peace. And they trusted him, both because of his fairness in other respects, and because in caring for and treating kindly those captured and held prisoner at Pylos, he made their misfortune lighter.
They had, then, previously made with one another a truce for a year, during which, coming together in the same place and tasting again freedom from fear and leisure and mingling with strangers and kinsfolk, they longed for the undefiled and warless life, listening with pleasure to choruses singing such things as: "Let my spear lie idle, for spiders to weave their web around it"; and remembering with pleasure the saying of him who said that those sleeping in peace are woken not by trumpets but by cocks.
Reviling, then, and casting aside those who said that it was fated for the war to be fought out over thrice nine years, and then coming to terms about the whole matter through discussion, they made the peace; and the opinion arose among most that a clear release from troubles had come about, and they had Nicias on their lips, saying that he was a man beloved of the gods, and that the divine had, for his piety, granted that his name be given to the greatest and finest of blessings—
—for indeed they considered the peace to be truly Nicias's work, just as the war had been Pericles's. For the one seemed to have thrown the Greeks into great misfortunes over small causes, while the other persuaded them to forget the greatest evils by becoming friends. For this reason they call that peace, even to this day, the Peace of Nicias.
When the agreement was made that they should give back to each other the places and the cities which each held, and the prisoners, those chosen by lot to restore first doing so, Nicias secretly purchased the lot with money, so that the Lacedaemonians should be the ones to restore first.
This is Theophrastus's account. But when the Corinthians and Boeotians, displeased with what was being done, seemed through their charges and grievances to be summoning the war back once more, Nicias won over both the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians to attach a mutual alliance to the peace as well, as if it were a further seal or bond, so that they might become more fearsome to those inclined to revolt and more secure toward one another.
While these things were being carried out, Alcibiades—being by nature not at all suited to quiet, and being vexed at the Lacedaemonians because they attached themselves and gave their attention to Nicias, while looking down on and despising him—at first straightway opposed the peace and, standing against it, accomplished nothing; but a little later, seeing that the Athenians were no longer as pleased with the Lacedaemonians, but thought them guilty of wrongdoing because they had made an alliance with the Boeotians and had not handed over Panactum standing, nor Amphipolis, he fastened upon these grievances and provoked the people at every point.
At last he sent for an embassy of Argives, and worked toward an alliance with the Athenians. But when envoys came from Lacedaemon with full powers, and, meeting first with the council, seemed to have come with all just terms, Alcibiades, fearing that they might win over the assembly too with the same arguments, went around them through deceit and oaths, promising to cooperate in everything, provided only that they would neither state nor concede before the assembly that their commission carried unlimited authority—for that way, he told them, their purposes would most certainly succeed.
Having been persuaded, and having gone over from Nicias to him, he presented them to the assembled people and put to them, as his opening question, whether their commission held unrestricted authority over all matters; and when they said no, changing his tack contrary to expectation, he called upon the council to witness their words, and bade the people not to attend to or trust men so plainly caught lying, saying now this and now the opposite about the same matters.
As they were thrown into confusion, as was natural, and Nicias had nothing to say, but was struck with distress and astonishment, the people were straightway set on calling in the Argives and making them allies; but an earthquake, occurring in the midst of it and dissolving the assembly, came to Nicias's aid. The next day, once the citizens had reconvened, only after much argument and effort did he manage to persuade them to postpone action regarding the Argives, and to send him to the Lacedaemonians, on the assurance that all would turn out well.
Having gone to Sparta, in other respects he was honored as a good man and one well disposed toward them, but he accomplished nothing, being overpowered by those favoring the Boeotians, and returned not only in disgrace and ill repute, but also in fear of the Athenians, who were pained and angry that, persuaded by him, they had given back so many and such men: for those brought from Pylos were from the first houses of Sparta, and had as friends and kinsmen the most powerful men there.
Yet they did nothing harsher against him out of anger; instead they chose Alcibiades general, and made allies of the Mantineans and Eleans who had revolted from the Lacedaemonians, together with the Argives, and sent raiders to Pylos to ravage Laconia; from which they were again brought back into war.
When the quarrel between Alcibiades and Nicias was at its height, and an ostracism was being held, which the people had been accustomed to carry out from time to time, banishing by the ostracon for ten years one of the men suspected either for their reputation or for the envy their wealth aroused, great turmoil and danger surrounded both of them, since it seemed certain that one or the other would fall under the ostracism.
For they loathed Alcibiades's manner of life and feared his boldness, as is shown more fully in the writings about him; while Nicias's wealth made him an object of envy, and above all the unfriendliness and unpopular character of his way of living seemed unsociable and oligarchic and strange, and he had already, in resisting their desires many times, forced them against their judgment toward what was advantageous,
and this made him burdensome. In short, it was a contest between the young war-makers and the older peace-makers, some turning the ostracon against the one, some against the other. "But in a time of factional strife even the utterly wicked man gets his share of honor"—as it happened then too, when the people, split in two, gave scope to the boldest and most unscrupulous men, Hyperbolus among them, a native of the deme Perithoedae; this was someone who possessed no real power at all, yet climbed upward purely on brazen audacity, and whose very standing in the city turned into a mark of civic shame.
This man, at that time, kept himself well clear of the ostracon, as one more suited to the pillory, but hoped that once one of the two men had been cast out he himself might become the rival of the one remaining; and he was plainly delighted with their quarrel, and stirred up the people against both of them. So the followers of Nicias and Alcibiades, perceiving his wickedness, and conferring with one another in secret, and bringing their two factions together into one and mixing them, prevailed so that neither of the two men, but Hyperbolus, was ostracized.
For the moment this gave the people pleasure and something to laugh at, but afterward they were indignant, considering that this measure had been abused against a man unworthy of it—for they held that there was a certain dignity even in punishment, or rather that ostracism was a punishment fit for men like Thucydides and Aristides and their like, but for Hyperbolus an honor and a pretension to importance, since he suffered, on account of his own wickedness, the same fate as the best men—as indeed Plato the comic poet has said about him:
"And yet he has done deeds worthy of his predecessors, though unworthy of himself and of the ostraca—for it was not for the sake of such men that the ostracon was devised." And in the end, no one at all was ostracized after Hyperbolus, but he was the last, though Hipparchus of Cholargus, a kinsman of the tyrant, was the first.
Fortune is a thing not to be judged and not to be grasped by reasoning. For if Nicias had ventured the risk of the ostracon against Alcibiades, either, prevailing, he would have dwelt securely in the city after driving him out, or, being defeated, he himself would have departed before the final disasters, preserving his reputation as the best of generals. I am not unaware that Theophrastus says it was Phaeax, not Nicias, who contended against Alcibiades and caused Hyperbolus to be ostracized; but the majority of writers have recorded it this way.
Nicias, then, when envoys from Egesta and Leontini arrived and were urging the Athenians to launch a campaign against Sicily, opposed them but was overpowered by the counsel and ambition of Alcibiades, even before the assembly properly convened, since the multitude had already been won over beforehand by hopes and speeches, so that young men in the wrestling-schools and old men in the workshops and semicircles sat together sketching out the shape of Sicily, the nature of the sea around it, and the harbors and places by which the island faces toward Libya.
For they did not regard Sicily as the prize of the war, but as a base of operations, from which they might contend against the Carthaginians and hold at once both Libya and the sea within the Pillars of Heracles. So, as they were eager for these things, Nicias, opposing them, had neither many nor powerful men to support him in the struggle. For the wealthy, fearing that they might seem to be shirking the public services and the trierarchies,
kept quiet against their own judgment. But Nicias did not tire or give up; rather, even after the Athenians had voted for the war and chosen him as general first, together with Alcibiades and Lamachus, when the assembly met again, he stood up and tried to turn them from it, and protested solemnly, and finally at last accused Alcibiades of thrusting the city into a difficult and overseas danger for the sake of his own private gain and love of honor.
He accomplished no more by this; rather, since he was thought, on account of his experience, to be all the more fitted for the task, and since it was expected that his caution, mixed with the daring of Alcibiades and the harshness of Lamachus, would provide great security, he only made the vote more firm. For Demostratus, standing up—the demagogue most eager of all in urging the Athenians on to the war—said he would put a stop to Nicias's talk of excuses; and having drafted a decree that the generals should have full powers both here and there in their deliberations and actions, he persuaded the people to vote it through.
And yet it is said that many things spoke against the expedition, even on the part of the priests; but Alcibiades, having other seers of his own, brought forward, from certain old oracles, the claim that great glory would come to the Athenians from Sicily. And certain sacred envoys came to him from Ammon bringing an oracle declaring that every Syracusan would fall into Athenian hands; yet those who dreaded the reverse outcome suppressed their own ominous reports.
Nor did the plain and evident signs turn him from it: the mutilation of the Herms, all of them defaced in a single night except one — the one they call Andocides' Herm — a dedication of the Aegeis tribe, which stood before the house then belonging to Andocides; and what was done at the altar of the Twelve Gods, where some man suddenly leapt up onto it, then straddled it and cut off his own genitals with a stone.
At Delphi there stood a golden palm tree with a golden statue of Pallas perched upon it, a dedication of the city made from the spoils of the Persian Wars; this the crows kept pecking at for many days, flying at it, and they gnawed away and knocked down the golden fruit of the palm.
Others said that this was a fabrication of the Delphians, put about at the persuasion of the Syracusans; and that some oracular response had instructed them to fetch, from Clazomenae, the woman serving as priestess of Athena, and so they dispatched men to bring her, one bearing the name Hesychia ("Quiet"). And this, it seems, was what the divine power was counseling the city to do in the present circumstance: to keep quiet.
Whether then out of fear of these things, or fearing the campaign on merely human grounds, the astrologer Meton — for he had been appointed to some command — pretended to set his house on fire, as though he had gone mad. Others say that he did not feign madness at all, but actually set his house on fire by night, and came forth into the marketplace in a humbled state, and begged the citizens that, in view of so great a misfortune, they release his son, who was about to sail as trierarch to Sicily, from the expedition.
To Socrates the wise man his divine sign, by the tokens it was accustomed to use with him, revealed this too: that the voyage was being carried out to the destruction of the city. And he told this to his intimates and friends, and the report spread to many.
Not a few were also troubled by the days on which they were sending out the expedition. For the women were then holding the Adonia, and images of the dead were laid out in many places about the city, and there were burials and beatings of breasts among the women in connection with them, so that those who took such things seriously were distressed and feared for that great armament and force, lest, having attained the most conspicuous splendor and vigor, it should quickly wither away.
That Nicias opposed the expedition when it was being voted on, and, neither carried away by hopes nor terrified at the greatness of the command, did not shift his opinion — this was the mark of a good and sensible man; but since, in trying to turn the people from the war, he had no power to do so, nor, by his entreaties, to remove himself from the generalship, but the people, as though they had picked him up bodily and were carrying him, set him as general over the force,
there was no longer any occasion for much caution and delay, such that, like a child looking back from the ship and taking up and turning over again and again the thought of not having been overpowered by his own reasoning, he would blunt both his fellow commanders and destroy the vigor of their actions; rather he ought at once to have grappled with the enemy and, pressing upon them, to have put fortune to the test in actual engagements.
But he — when Lamachus proposed outright to sail against Syracuse and to bring on battle as close as possible to the city, and Alcibiades proposed to detach the cities from Syracusan allegiance and then, so, to march against the Syracusans themselves — spoke to the contrary, and bade them proceed quietly along the coast of Sicily, circling round merely to put their arms and ships on display, contribute some small portion of the force to the men of Egesta, and only then head homeward toward Athens; and this at once undid the men's resolve and cast down their spirit.
And after a little time, when the Athenians recalled Alcibiades for trial, though nominally set forth as second in command, he was in fact sole commander, and he did not cease sitting still, or sailing about, or deliberating, until the vigor of their hope had grown old within him, and the amazement and fear which the first sight of their forces had struck into the enemy had drained away.
While Alcibiades was still present, they sailed with sixty ships against Syracuse; the rest they kept drawn up outside the harbor in battle order, but sent ten in to reconnoiter. These, calling out through a herald to the Leontines to return to their own land, captured an enemy ship carrying tablets on which the Syracusans had registered themselves by tribes; these tablets were ordinarily stored well outside the city, within the shrine dedicated to Olympian Zeus, and had just then been retrieved so that a muster and listing of men fit for service could be carried out.
When, then, the ship, taken by the Athenians, was brought to the generals, and the great number of the names was seen, the seers were troubled, fearing that this was the very moment the destined oracle would be realized — the prophecy declaring that the Athenians were to capture every last Syracusan. Yet, so the story goes, that prophecy actually came true for the Athenians through a different event entirely, in the days when Callippus the Athenian slew Dion and made himself master of Syracuse.
When Alcibiades sailed away from Sicily not long after, the whole command now passed to Nicias. Lamachus was a manly and just man, and one who used his hand without stint in battles, but he was so poor and frugal that at each generalship he had to render an account to the Athenians of a small sum of money for clothing and sandals for himself.
But the weight of Nicias was great both on other accounts and because of his wealth and his reputation. It is said that once, when the fellow commanders were deliberating something in common in the general's tent, and Sophocles the poet, being bidden by him to speak his opinion first, as the eldest of the fellow generals, said: "I am the oldest, but you are the most senior."
So too on this occasion, keeping Lamachus, though a more capable general, under his own authority, and always employing the force cautiously and with delay, first, by sailing round Sicily at the greatest possible distance from the enemy, he gave them confidence; then, attacking Hybla, a small township, and withdrawing before taking it, he was utterly despised.
And at last he withdrew to Catana, having accomplished nothing except the destruction of Hyccara, a barbarian settlement, from which it is said that Lais the courtesan, then still a girl, was carried off among the captives and brought to the Peloponnese for sale.
When the summer had passed, since he learned that the Syracusans, grown bold, would come against them first, and their cavalry now insolently rode up to the camp and asked whether they had come to settle among the Catanians or to resettle the Leontines, Nicias at last set out to sail against Syracuse.
And wishing to establish his army without fear and at his leisure, he secretly sent a man from Catana to tell the Syracusans that, if they wished to seize the Athenian camp and arms while undefended, they should come with their whole force to Catana on an appointed day; for the Athenians, he said, spent most of their time in the city, and the friends of the Syracusans there had resolved, when they perceived them approaching, to seize the gates at once and set fire to the dockyard; and that many were already conspiring and awaiting their arrival.
This was the finest piece of generalship Nicias performed in Sicily. For having drawn the enemy out with their whole force and made the city itself all but empty of men, he himself put out from Catana, gained control of the harbors, and seized with his camp a position from which, being least liable to be harmed by whatever of the enemy remained, he hoped to wage war unhindered on such terms as gave him confidence.
When the Syracusans, turning back from Catana, drew up in battle array before the city, he led the Athenians against them and quickly defeated them. He did not kill many of the enemy, for their cavalry hindered the pursuit; and by destroying the bridges over the river and cutting them off, he gave Hermocrates occasion to say, encouraging the Syracusans, that Nicias was ridiculous in arranging matters so as not to fight, as though he had not sailed there to fight.
Nevertheless he did strike deep dread and disorder into the hearts of the Syracusans, with the result that they abandoned their board of fifteen generals and chose three fresh men instead, for whom the citizens swore an oath that unrestricted and complete authority would truly be granted them.
Since the temple of Olympian Zeus was nearby, the Athenians set out to seize it, there being many gold and silver dedications within it. But Nicias, deliberately delaying, arrived too late and let a garrison sent by the Syracusans get in first, holding that, if the soldiers plundered the treasure, the common cause would gain nothing from it, while he himself would bear the blame for the sacrilege.
Having made no use of this widely celebrated victory, a few days later he withdrew again to Naxos, and there wintered, spending much on so great an army but accomplishing little against certain Sicels who were coming over to him, so that the Syracusans, taking heart again, sallied out to Catana, ravaged the countryside, and burned the Athenians' camp. For all this everyone blamed Nicias,
holding that by calculating and delaying and being over-cautious he was letting slip the opportunity for action; for no one could find fault with the man's actual achievements — once he had set himself in motion he was effective and vigorous — but in daring he was hesitant and timid.
When, then, he set the army in motion again against Syracuse, he generaled it in such fashion, and advanced with such a combination of speed and safety, that he managed to bring his ships to Thapsus and disembark unnoticed, to seize Epipolae before he could be forestalled, to defeat the picked troops who came up to help, taking three hundred of them, and to rout the enemy's cavalry too, which had been thought invincible.
But what most of all astounded the Sicilian Greeks and made the rest of the Greek world incredulous was that in a short time he built a wall of circumvallation around Syracuse, a city no smaller than Athens, but harder to work around because of the unevenness of the ground, its proximity to the sea, and the marshes lying near it — to carry so great a wall in a circle about it.
But he came within a little of failing to complete this whole undertaking — a man not even in sound health for so great a burden of cares, but suffering from a disease of the kidneys, whose unfinished remainder it is only right to reckon as loss. I marvel at the diligence of the general and the valor of the soldiers in the successes they achieved.
For Euripides, writing an epitaph after their defeat and destruction, composed: "These men won eight victories over the Syracusans, while the fortunes the gods gave were equal to both sides" [Euripides, Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graeci, ii(4), p. 265]. Not eight victories, however,
but one could find that the Athenians defeated the Syracusans in even more engagements than that, before some real opposition, from the gods or from fortune, arose against the Athenians when their power had risen to its very greatest height.
In most of his undertakings, then, Nicias was present, forcing his body to it; but once, when the sharp attack of his illness had seized him, he lay within the walls with a few attendants, while Lamachus, having charge of the army, fought against the Syracusans, who were bringing a wall out from the city to meet that of the Athenians, which was meant to prevent the counter-wall from being completed between them.
But as the Athenians, being victorious, pursued in disorder, Lamachus, cut off, withstood the Syracusan cavalry as it charged. Foremost among them was Callicrates, a warlike and spirited man. Lamachus, stepping forward at his challenge, fought him in single combat, and, receiving a wound first, then dealing one and falling, died together with Callicrates.
The Syracusans, having overpowered him, carried off his body along with his arms, and rushed at a run toward the walls of the Athenians, among whom was Nicias, who had none to help him. Nevertheless, compelled by necessity, he rose up, and seeing the danger, ordered those about him to bring fire and set alight whatever timber happened to be lying before the walls for use in siege-engines, and the engines themselves. This checked the Syracusans and saved Nicias, and the walls, and the property of the Athenians; for seeing a great flame rising up between them, the Syracusans turned back.
When this had been done, Nicias alone was left of the generals, and he was in a position of great hope. For cities were changing sides, and ships full of grain came from many quarters into the camp, all men attaching themselves to a cause whose affairs were going well. And already some talk of terms was passing from the Syracusans to him, since they had despaired of the city.
It was at this point that Gylippus too, sailing from Lacedaemon to their aid, on hearing while still under way of the wall of circumvallation and the difficulties the Syracusans were in, sailed on for the rest of the voyage as one who believed Sicily already lost, but who meant to keep the cities of Italy safe, if that at least could still be managed. For a great report had spread abroad that the Athenians were mastering everything and had a general invincible through good fortune and good judgment.
Nicias himself, however, immediately and against his own nature grown bold from the strength and fortune he now enjoyed, and above all trusting those in Syracuse who were secretly conferring with him and sending word that the city would very soon be handed over on terms, took no account whatever of Gylippus approaching by sea, and kept no clean watch; so that, being altogether overlooked and despised, the man sailed in unnoticed through the strait, and putting in at a point as far as possible from Syracuse, gathered together a large force, the Syracusans themselves not even knowing or expecting that he was present.
For this reason a meeting had already been convened among them to work out terms with Nicias, and a number of delegates had already set out, since they believed the agreement needed to be reached before the circuit wall around the city was finished; for the remaining work was quite small, and all the materials for building the wall had been assembled to complete it.
At this juncture, with the danger thus present, Gongylus arrives from Corinth with a single trireme; and when all, as was natural, ran together to him, he announced that Gylippus would arrive shortly and that other ships were coming to their aid as well. But they did not yet trust Gongylus firmly,
when a messenger came from Gylippus bidding them come to meet him. Taking courage, they armed themselves; and Gylippus at once came on straight from the road, drawn up for battle against the Athenians. But when Nicias too had drawn up his men to meet him, Gylippus grounded arms before the Athenians and, sending a herald, said he offered the Athenians safe conduct to depart from Sicily.
Nicias, then, did not think it worth replying at all; but some of the soldiers, laughing, asked whether it was through the mere presence of one worn cloak and a Laconian staff that the power of the Syracusans had suddenly grown so strong that they scorned the Athenians — men who had handed over to the Lacedaemonians three hundred prisoners far stouter than Gylippus and wearing far longer hair, bound in fetters.
Timaeus says that even the Sicilian Greeks held Gylippus in no regard, condemning him later for his shabby greed and pettiness, and at first sight mocking his cloak and his hair. Yet then he himself says that at the appearance of Gylippus many flocked to him readily to serve as soldiers, as birds fly to an owl. And this is truer than the earlier account; for it was his walking-stick and his cloak in which they recognized the emblem and the majesty of Sparta, and that recognition drew them to his side.
And that the whole achievement was his doing is said not only by Thucydides but also by Philistus, a Syracusan man who was himself an eyewitness of the events. In the first battle the Athenians, having the upper hand over the Syracusans, killed a few of them along with Gongylus the Corinthian; but on the following day Gylippus showed what experience is worth. For using the same arms, the same horses, and the same ground, but not in the same way — rather by changing the disposition of his forces —
he defeated the Athenians; and when they fled to their camp, he stationed the Syracusans there, and using the stones and timber which the Athenians had brought up for their own purposes, he built alongside it in the gaps and cut off their circumvallation, so that their advantage came to nothing further for all their earlier success. From this the Syracusans took courage, both manning their ships and riding round with their own cavalry and its attendants, capturing many.
And Gylippus, going about to the cities himself, roused them and won everyone over vigorously to obey and cooperate with him, so that Nicias, turning back again to those first calculations of his and perceiving the change in affairs, grew discouraged, and wrote to the Athenians bidding them either send another army or else withdraw this one from Sicily, while for himself he asked outright for release from his command on account of his illness.
The Athenians, even before this, had been eager to send another force to Sicily, but out of envy at the first successes achieved under Nicias' good fortune they had thrown in many delays; now at any rate they hastened to help. Demosthenes was to sail with a great fleet once winter had passed, but Eurymedon sailed out ahead during the winter itself, bringing money and announcing that Euthydemus and Menander, chosen from among those already serving there, had been appointed as fellow generals to Nicias.
Meanwhile Nicias, suddenly attacked both by land and by sea, though at first worsted with his ships, nevertheless drove the enemy back and sank many of them; but he did not arrive in time to help his infantry, and Gylippus, falling upon it unexpectedly, took Plemmyrium, where great stores of naval equipment and much money were deposited; of all this he made himself master, and he killed no small number of men and took others alive; and, greatest of all,
he took from Nicias the ease of his supply. For while the Athenians held it, transport by way of Plemmyrium was safe and swift, but once they were driven out it became difficult, and had to be carried on only with fighting against the enemy who now lay in wait there. Moreover the enemy's fleet did not appear to have been beaten by force but rather by disorder in the pursuit; so they made ready again and attempted a more brilliant engagement.
Nicias did not wish to fight at sea, saying it was great folly, with so great a fleet and fresh force sailing to join them — the force Demosthenes was hastening to bring — to risk battle with a smaller and poorly supplied one instead. But Menander and Euthydemus, only just then established in their command, were seized with rivalry and eagerness toward both the other generals, wishing to forestall Demosthenes in accomplishing something brilliant and to outdo Nicias.
The pretext was the honor of the city, which they declared would be utterly lost and undone if they showed fear of the Syracusans sailing against them; and so they forced the issue of fighting at sea. And, outgeneraled by Ariston the Corinthian helmsman as regards the midday meal, as Thucydides has said, they were decisively beaten and lost many men; and great despondency surrounded Nicias, suffering as he was under sole command and now again undone by his fellow commanders.
Meanwhile Demosthenes appeared off the harbors, most splendid in his equipment and most formidable to the enemy, bringing on seventy-three ships five thousand hoplites, and javelin-throwers, archers, and slingers not fewer than three thousand, all fitted out with fine arms, with the decorated emblems of the triremes, and with a great array of boatswains and pipers, done for theatrical show and to strike terror into the enemy.
The Syracusans, as was natural, were again in great fear, seeing no end or release to their troubles but seeing themselves toiling in vain and being worn away for nothing. But Nicias was not gladdened for long by the arrival of this force; rather, as soon as they first came to discussion, Demosthenes at once urged attacking the enemy immediately, and by risking everything in the swiftest of dangers, to take Syracuse or else sail home; and Nicias, fearing and marveling at his keenness and boldness, begged him to do nothing rashly or foolishly.
For, he said, time worked against the enemy, who no longer had money, nor would their allies remain with them for long; and if they were pressed hard by their want of resources, they would again quickly turn to him for terms, as before. And indeed there were not a few men in Syracuse secretly conferring with Nicias and urging him to stay, arguing that already, at this very point, exhaustion from the war and irritation at Gylippus had set in among the citizens, and that a little further tightening of their hardship would make them give up altogether. Of these things Nicias, partly hinting,
and partly unwilling to speak openly, gave the generals the impression of cowardice, and declaring that these were once more the same familiar traits of his — hesitation, delay, and excessive calculation, through which he had squandered his chance to strike the enemy while the moment was ripe, letting the campaign grow stale until he was held in contempt — they sided with Demosthenes. And Nicias, hard pressed, gave way only reluctantly.
So then Demosthenes, taking the infantry, attacked Epipolae by night; and coming upon some of the enemy before they were aware, he killed them, and routed those who resisted. And, though winning, he did not stop there but pressed on farther, until he encountered the Boeotians. For these were the first to rally themselves and, running together against the Athenians, drove them back with leveled spears and a shout, and cast down many of them on the spot.
Throughout the whole army there was at once panic and confusion, and those still winning became mixed in with those already fleeing, and those advancing and pressing forward were driven back by the frightened men and fell foul of one another, some thinking they were pursuing fugitives, others treating their own friends as enemies.
For the disorderly mingling together amid fear and ignorance, and the untrustworthiness of sight at night, which had neither unbroken darkness nor steady light, but such light as one would expect when the moon was already sinking low and was being crossed by the shadows of many weapons and moving bodies, failing to make forms clear amid fear of the enemy — and the suspicion cast even on one's own men — brought the Athenians into terrible confusion and reversals of fortune.
It happened, too, that they had the moon somewhat behind them; hence they themselves, casting their own shadows before them, concealed the number of their arms and their brightness, while their opponents, facing the moon, were made to appear far more numerous and brighter by the answering gleam of their shields. In the end, from every side,
once they gave way, with the enemy pressing upon them, some died at the enemy's hands as they fled, others at one another's, and others by slipping down the cliffs; and those who were scattered and wandering, once day came on, were overtaken and destroyed by the cavalry. Two thousand of them died, and of those who survived few got away safely with their arms.
Nicias, struck by this though not unexpectedly, blamed the rashness of Demosthenes; but the latter, having defended himself on this point, urged that they sail away as quickly as possible, saying that no further force would come to them, nor could they master the enemy with the one now present,
since even if they should master them, they would still have to move away and flee the place — always, as they learned, oppressive and unhealthy for an army, and now, as they could see for themselves, deadly on account of the season as well. For it was the beginning of autumn, and already many were falling sick, and all were despondent. But Nicias took the proposal of flight and withdrawal by sea badly, not because he did not fear the Syracusans, but because he feared the Athenians and their lawsuits and false accusations even more.
Nothing terrible, he said, was to be expected there, but if it should happen, he would rather choose death at the hands of the enemy than at those of his own citizens — holding a view not the same as that which Leon of Byzantium later expressed to his own fellow citizens: "I would rather," he said, "die by your hands than with you." As for the place and region to which they should move the camp, however, he would consider it at leisure.
While he was saying this, Demosthenes, since even his earlier proposal had not met with success, ceased pressing the point; and this gave the others the impression that Nicias, expecting and trusting those within the city, was thus contending so vigorously against a withdrawal by sea; and so they gave way to him. But when another army came to reinforce the Syracusans and the sickness took hold of the Athenians still more, then at last Nicias too agreed to the move, and he ordered the soldiers to be ready for the departure by sea.
But when all this was ready, and none of the enemy kept watch, since they did not expect it, the moon was eclipsed that night — a thing that struck great fear into Nicias and into others among them who through inexperience or superstition were terrified at such things. For as to the eclipse of the sun that occurs around the thirtieth of the month, most people by now more or less understood that it was caused by the moon; but as to the moon itself,
what it is that it encounters, and how it suddenly loses its light at the full and takes on colors of every kind, this was not easy to grasp, and they considered it a strange thing and a sign sent by god before some great disaster. For the first man to set down in writing the clearest and boldest account of all concerning the moon's illuminations and its shadow, Anaxagoras, was himself neither of ancient times nor was his account well known, but was still secret, passed on among few, and travelled with a certain caution or trust.
For people at that time would not tolerate the natural philosophers and "star-babblers," as they were then called, on the ground that they explained away the divine into irrational causes, unforeseeing forces, and necessitated processes; indeed Protagoras was exiled, and Pericles only with difficulty saved Anaxagoras once he had been imprisoned, and Socrates, though he had nothing at all to do with such matters, nevertheless perished on account of philosophy.
It was only late, when Plato's reputation shone forth because of the man's life, and because he subordinated the necessities of nature to divine and higher principles, that the ill repute of these doctrines was removed, and he opened a way to these studies for all. His companion Dion, at any rate, at the very time when he was about to set sail from Zacynthus against Dionysius, was undisturbed when the moon was eclipsed, and put out to sea, and on landing at Syracuse drove out the tyrant.
But it happened to Nicias at that time that he did not even have an experienced seer at hand; for his usual companion, Stilbides, who used to relieve him of much of his superstitious fear, had died a little before. For the sign, as Philochorus says, was not unfavorable to men in flight, but even quite favorable; for actions undertaken in fear have need of concealment,
Light is their enemy. Moreover the priests kept watch over sun and moon for three days, as Autocleides has set down in his exegetical writings; but Nicias persuaded them to wait for another full cycle of the moon, as though he had not seen it clear again the moment it passed beyond the shadowed region where it had been screened by the earth.
Abandoning almost everything else, he sacrificed and sat divining, until the enemy fell upon them, besieging their walls and camp with their infantry while surrounding the harbor in a ring with their ships — not the triremes alone, but even boys sailing up from every side on fishing boats and skiffs, challenging and taunting the Athenians.
An Attic ship, chasing one of these boys, a boy of well-known parents named Heracleides, who had rowed out ahead in his boat, was about to catch him. His uncle Pollichus, fearing for him, rowed out against it with the ten triremes he commanded; and the others, fearing for Pollichus, put out to sea in the same way. A fierce sea-battle followed, and the Syracusans won, killing Eurymedon along with many others.
It was no longer bearable for the Athenians to remain, and they shouted down their generals, demanding to retreat by land. For the Syracusans, having won, immediately blocked and closed off the passage out of the harbor. Nicias and his men would not agree to this: it was a terrible thing to abandon so many merchant ships and triremes, not much fewer than two hundred
in number. So they put aboard the best of the infantry and the most vigorous of the javelin-throwers, crewing one hundred and ten of the triremes, since there were not enough oarsmen for the remainder. The remaining crowd Nicias stationed along the shore, abandoning the great camp and the walls connecting to the Heracleum, so that, since the Syracusans had not yet offered their customary sacrifice to Heracles, the priests and generals then went up and sacrificed while the triremes were already being manned.
When the seers announced to the Syracusans, from the sacrifices, brightness and victory if they did not begin the battle but defended themselves — for Heracles too prevailed over everyone by defending himself when attacked first — they put out to sea. The sea-battle that followed was by far the greatest and most fiercely fought, and it produced no less suffering and turmoil for the onlookers than for the combatants, because the whole action was visible at once and underwent varied and unexpected shifts within a short span; it damaged the Athenians through their own equipment no less than through the enemy's.
For they fought with their ships massed together and heavy against light ships bearing down from different directions, and being pelted with stones, which strike the same wherever they land, they answered on every side with javelins and arrows, whose straight aim the swell distorted, so that not everything struck point-first. This tactic Ariston the Corinthian helmsman had taught the Syracusans, and fighting eagerly in the battle itself he fell just as the Syracusans were already winning.
A great rout and destruction having occurred, escape by sea was cut off for the Athenians; and seeing that safety by land too was difficult, they neither hindered the enemy, who were already close by towing off ships, nor asked for the recovery of the dead, since they already had before their eyes something more pitiable than the enemy's lack of burial — the abandonment of their own sick and wounded — and considered themselves more burdened even than these, since with more miseries they would in any case arrive at the same end.
When they had set out to depart by night, Gylippus and his men, seeing the Syracusans engaged in sacrifices and drinking because of the victory and the festival, expected that they would neither persuade nor compel them to rise up already and move against the retreating enemy. But Hermocrates, contriving a deception against Nicias on his own initiative, sent some of his companions to him,
claiming to come from those men who had before been accustomed to converse secretly with Nicias, urging him not to march during the night, since the Syracusans had set ambushes for them and already held the passes. Outgeneraled by this, Nicias waited, and so truly suffered at the enemy's hands what he had falsely feared.
For advancing at daybreak, the Syracusans seized the difficult places along the roads, walled off the river crossings, cut away the bridges, and stationed their cavalry on the level and open ground, so that no place was left for the Athenians to advance without a fight. They, having waited out that day and the following night, marched on with weeping and lamentation, rising up as though from their own homeland rather than an enemy's, because of their want of necessities and the abandonment of helpless friends and companions, yet counting their present troubles lighter than what lay ahead.
Amid the many terrible sights in the camp, none was more pitiable than Nicias himself — worn down by illness, reduced against his dignity to the barest necessities of living, his body needing much because of his sickness though it had the smallest share of provisions, enduring in his weakness what many even of the healthy could scarcely bear, plainly to all not holding fast through his own love of life or for himself, but for the sake of others, unwilling to let go of hope.
For when the others turned to tears and lamentation from fear and grief, he, if ever forced to do the same, was clearly reckoning up the shame and inglory of the campaign against the greatness and glory of what he had hoped to achieve. Nor was it only his face they saw,
but remembering also his words and the counsel he had given in opposing the expedition, they thought it all the more undeserved that he should suffer so; and they grew despondent of any hope from the gods, considering that a man beloved of the gods, who had made many great and splendid offerings to the divine, was meeting with a fortune no better than the basest and lowliest in the army.
Nevertheless Nicias tried, by voice and countenance and bearing, to appear superior to his troubles. Throughout the whole march, for eight days, though struck and wounded by the enemy, he kept the force with him unbroken, until Demosthenes was captured along with the army under him, surrounded near the estate of Polyzelus while still fighting and lagging behind.
Demosthenes himself drew his sword and struck himself, but did not die, the enemy quickly surrounding and seizing him. When the Syracusans rode up to Nicias and told him, and having sent horsemen he learned of the capture of that army, he asked to make a truce with Gylippus, so that the Athenians might be allowed to leave Sicily, giving hostages for the money the Syracusans had spent on the war. But they paid no heed,
but with insolence and anger, threatening and reviling, they attacked him, already lacking every necessity. Still he held out through the night and the following day marched on under attack toward the river Asinarus. There the enemy, driving some together, forced them into the current, while others, overcome by thirst, threw themselves in;
and there was the greatest and most savage slaughter, men drinking and being cut down in the river at the same time, until Nicias fell before Gylippus and said: "Let pity for you, Gylippus, be taken by the victors — not for me, who have won name and glory amid such great successes — but for the rest of the Athenians, remembering that war's outcomes fall on everyone alike, and that the Athenians, in their own days of fortune, treated you with moderation and gentleness."
As Nicias said such things, Gylippus was somewhat moved both by the sight of him and by his words; for he was aware that Nicias had dealt kindly with the Lacedaemonians in arranging the earlier settlements, and he thought it a great thing for his own reputation if he could bring back the opposing generals alive. So he took Nicias and encouraged him, and gave orders that the rest be taken alive. But the order spread slowly, and far more were killed than were saved — though many, too, were stolen away secretly by the soldiers.
Those openly captured they gathered together, and hung captured suits of armor from the river's tallest and stateliest trees; then, garlanded themselves and having splendidly adorned their horses, and having shorn the hair of the enemy's, they rode into the city, having brought to its conclusion the most brilliant contest that Greeks ever fought against Greeks, and the most complete victory, with the greatest superiority and strength of zeal and valor.
When the Syracusans and their allies convened a general assembly, Euryclus the demagogue put forward, as his first proposal, that the day of Nicias's capture be observed as sacred, with sacrifice and a rest from labor, naming the festival Asinaria after the river; the date fell the fourth day before the end of Carneius, the month the Athenians call Metageitnion.
and that of the Athenians the slaves be sold, along with the other allies, and that the Athenians themselves and those from Sicily be held under guard, thrown into the stone quarries, except for the generals, who were to be put to death. While the Syracusans were expecting this, Hermocrates, saying that using victory well was better than winning it, caused no small uproar; and those insulted Gylippus when he asked that the Athenian generals be led away alive to the Lacedaemonians — for the Syracusans, now flush with success, were already speaking ill of him,
especially since during the war they had not easily borne his harshness and his Laconic manner of command, and, as Timaeus says, they had also condemned in him a certain pettiness and greed, a hereditary weakness, for which his father Cleandridas too, convicted of bribery, went into exile; and Gylippus himself, having stolen thirty talents out of the thousand Lysander had sent to Sparta and hidden them under the roof of his house, was afterward informed on and cast out most shamefully of all. But this is told in greater detail in the Life of Lysander.
Timaeus holds that Demosthenes and Nicias were not put to death on Syracusan orders, as Philistus and Thucydides recorded, but rather that Hermocrates, while the assembly was still meeting, sent word through one of the guards who allowed them the means, so that each perished by his own hand; even so, their corpses were cast out before the gates, left in view for whoever wished to look.
I have learned that to this day a shield is shown standing beside a temple in Syracuse, said to be Nicias's, worked in a weave of gold and purple skillfully blended together.
The bulk of the Athenian captives died off in the stone quarries, worn down by illness and meager rations of two cotylae of barley and one of water each day; yet quite a number were sold instead, either smuggled out or passed off unnoticed as slaves. Those sold as slaves had a horse branded on their forehead; and some bore even that mark on top of their bondage.
Even for these, decency and good conduct came to their aid: they were either freed quickly, or, being honored, remained with those who had acquired them. Some were also saved on account of Euripides. For it seems that of all Greeks outside their own land, the Sicilians most desired his poetry; and learning eagerly the small samples and tastes that each new arrival brought, they shared them gladly with one another.
At any rate, they say that many of those who then returned home safe greeted Euripides warmly, and told, some, how they had been freed from slavery for having taught what they remembered of his poems, others, how, wandering after the battle, they had received food and water for singing his songs. It is no wonder, then, that they say the people of Caunus, when a ship pursued by pirates put in at their harbors, at first would not receive it and kept it out, but then, upon asking whether those aboard knew any songs of Euripides, and being told they did, allowed it in and brought the ship to safe harbor.
They say the disaster became known to the Athenians not least because of the disbelief in the messenger. For some stranger, it seems, having landed at the Piraeus and sat down in a barber's shop, spoke of what had happened as though the Athenians already knew of it. The barber, hearing this, before others could learn of it, ran at full speed into the city, and rushing to the archons, at once broke the news in the marketplace. Amid the shock and turmoil that followed, as was natural,
the archons convened an assembly, had the man brought before it, but when asked from whom he had heard the news, he could give no clear account, so he was branded a rumormonger stirring up the city, bound to the wheel, and tortured at length, until men arrived who plainly reported the whole disaster just as it had happened. Only then, with difficulty, did belief come to what Nicias had so often foretold them.