Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the original language
In the comparison, first, Nicias's wealth, set beside Crassus's, has a more blameless origin. One could not otherwise approve of income from mines, most of which is carried out through criminals or barbarians, some of them kept in chains and wasting away in unhealthy, pestilential places; but compared with Sulla's confiscated properties and the tax-farming contracts around the fires, it will appear more decent.
For these practices Crassus openly made use of, as he did of farming and money-lending; but the things he denied when charged with them — speaking in the senate for profit, wronging the allies, going around flattering little women, and helping to conceal wrongdoers — of these Nicias never took even a false accusation, though for giving and lavishing money out of cowardice to the sycophants he was mocked, doing a thing perhaps unbecoming to a Pericles or an Aristides, but necessary for one not naturally disposed to boldness.
About this Lycurgus the orator later spoke frankly to the people, when he was accused of having bought off one of the sycophants: "I am glad," he said, "if, having been in public life among you for so long a time, I have been caught giving before being caught taking."
In expenditures Nicias was more the statesman, spending ambitiously on dedications, gymnasiarchies, and the training of choruses; but what Crassus spent in feasting so many tens of thousands of people at once, and then feeding them again, was no fraction of what Nicias possessed together with what he spent — so that one must wonder whether it has escaped anyone that vice is a kind of unevenness and inconsistency of character, seeing those who gather shamefully and then pour out uselessly.
So much for wealth. In their political conduct, nothing knavish or unjust or violent attaches to Nicias, nor any boldness, but he was rather deceived by Alcibiades and approached the people with caution; whereas of Crassus they accuse much faithlessness and illiberality in his shifts between enmity and friendship, though he himself did not deny using force to pursue the consulship, paying men to seize hold of Cato and Domitius bodily.
In the people's voting concerning the provinces many were wounded and four fell, and Crassus himself — a thing that has escaped us in the narrative — struck Lucius Annalius, a senator who spoke against him, with his fist in the face and cast him out bloodied.
But if in these matters Crassus was violent and tyrannical, so again, on the other hand, that man's timidity in politics and lack of daring, yielding to the basest men, is worthy of the gravest censure; whereas Crassus was lofty and great-minded in these matters, his contest being — by Zeus — not against Cleons or Hyperboluses, but against Caesar's brilliance and Pompey's three triumphs; and he did not yield, but raised up his own power against each of them, and in the dignity of the censorship even surpassed Pompey.
For in the greatest affairs one must grasp not what is free of envy but what is brilliant in politics, dimming envy by the greatness of one's power. But if you love safety and quiet above all else, and fear Alcibiades on the rostrum, the Lacedaemonians at Pylos, Perdiccas in Thrace, the city has ample room for one who steps out of the way to sit at leisure, weaving for himself a crown of tranquility, as some sophists say.
For the love of peace was truly divine, and to put an end to war is a most Hellenic act of statesmanship; and for this deed it is not worthy to compare Crassus to Nicias, not even if he had brought the Caspian Sea or the Indian Ocean within the bounds of Roman rule.
Yet when one is dealing with a city that perceives virtue and is superior in power, one must not give place to base men, nor office to those unfit to rule, nor trust to those distrusted — which is what Nicias did, when he himself established Cleon, who was nothing more in the city than shamelessness and shouting from the rostrum, in the office of general,
for I do not praise Crassus for having pressed on in the affair of Spartacus more hastily than safely — and yet it was ambition that made him fear that Pompey might come and take away his glory, just as Mummius took Corinth away from Metellus's glory — yet what Nicias did was, on the whole, bizarre and appalling. For it was not out of hopes nor ease that he yielded ambition and office to his enemy, but suspecting great danger in the generalship he was content to place his own safety in security, abandoning the common good;
and yet even Themistocles, so that a base and foolish man should not, by commanding in the Persian affair, destroy the city, removed him from office with money; and Cato, when he saw the tribunate holding the greatest dangers for the city's affairs, sought it out himself;
but Nicias, keeping himself as general for Minoa and Cythera and the wretched Melians, and if there should need be fighting against the Lacedaemonians, stripping off his cloak and turning over ships, soldiers, weaponry, and a post demanding the greatest of skill to Cleon's rashness and inexperience, does not thereby give up his own reputation, but the safety and preservation of his country.
Whence afterward he was compelled, unwillingly and against his own wish, to make war on the Syracusans, seeming to deprive the city of Sicily not by a reckoning of advantage but by ease and softness on his own part. Yet this is a sign of great fairness, that though he was always vexed at making war and fled the generalship, they did not cease electing him as the most experienced and best;
whereas Crassus, though he desired a command through the whole of that time, did not manage to obtain one, except by necessity in the war against the slaves, since Pompey and Metellus and both Luculli were absent — though at that time he was most honored and most powerful — but, it seems, even to those zealous on his behalf he was thought, in the comic poet's words, "an excellent man" "in everything except in the shield."
And this benefited the Romans nothing, being forced by his lust for command and ambition. For the Athenians sent Nicias out to war unwilling; but Crassus led the Romans out unwilling: and through the one the city, through the other he himself, met with misfortune.
Nonetheless, in these matters one may rather praise Nicias than censure Crassus. For the one, employing experience and the reasoning of a sensible commander, was not deceived along with the hopes of the citizens, but refused and gave up hope of taking Sicily; but the other, setting out on the Parthian war as though it were the easiest task, erred.
He reached for great things: while Caesar was subduing the western regions, the Celts and Germans and Britain, he himself would drive on to the east and the Indian sea and add to Rome what Pompey had approached and Lucullus had contended with — men who remained well-disposed and good toward all, though they had chosen aims similar
to Crassus's and taken up the same undertakings; since even when command was being given to Pompey the senate opposed it, and when Caesar cut down three hundred thousand of the Germans, it was Cato who urged that he be surrendered to the men he had beaten, so the guilt of breaking the treaty would fall on him alone; but the people, telling Cato to go hang, offered sacrifices of victory for fifteen days and were overjoyed.
How then would the people have reacted, and over how many days would their thank-offerings have gone on, had Crassus sent word from Babylon of his victory, and then, advancing further, had made Media, Persia, Hyrcania, Susa, Bactra Roman provinces? For if indeed one must do wrong, as Euripides says, for those unable to keep quiet nor to make use of the good things at hand, it is not Scandeia, not Mende that must be cut down, nor must the Aeginetans, fleeing and having abandoned their own land,
be hunted down like birds hidden away in another country; but wrongdoing must be valued at a high price, not given up easily nor for chance occasions as though it were something trivial or small, abandoning what is just — those who praise the impulse of Alexander's campaign but blame that of Crassus judge the beginnings badly from the endings.
In the campaigns themselves, Nicias has not a few noble deeds: for he defeated the enemy in many battles, and came within a little of taking Syracuse, and did not fail in everything through his own fault, but one might also blame illness and the envy of the citizens at home; whereas Crassus, through a multitude of errors, left fortune no chance to display anything good for him, so that one must marvel at his folly, which was overcome not by the power of the Parthians but by the good fortune of the Romans.
Since the one despised nothing that came from divination, while the other looked down on everything alike, and both perished, safety in these matters is difficult and hard to judge; but more reasonable than lawless self-will is an error committed out of caution, in keeping with old and customary belief. Yet as for how his life ended, Crassus deserves less blame — he did not give himself up of his own accord, nor was he taken captive or tricked, but gave way to his friends' pleading and was betrayed by the enemy's violation of the truce; whereas Nicias, falling into the enemy's hands through a shameful and inglorious hope of safety, made his own death more disgraceful for himself.