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In his account of the death of Nikias and Demosthenes, Timæus does not exactly follow the narrative of Thucydides and Philistus, as he informs us that while the assembly was still sitting, Hermokrates sent to their prison to inform them that they were condemned to death, and to afford them the means of dying by their own hands, while the other historians state that the Syracusans put them to death.
These propositions wore accepted by the Syracusans, who treated Hermokrates with contempt when he urged that to be merciful in victory would be more honourable to them than the victory itself.
Nikias now broke down the bridges over the river Anapus, which gave occasion to Hermokrates to say, when he was making a speech to encourage the Syracusans, that it was a ridiculous thing for Nikias to try to avoid fighting, as though it were not for the express purpose of fighting that he had been sent thither.
But in spite of all that Hermokrates could say, the Syracusans were very much cast down and disheartened. Instead of the fifteen generals who usually commanded their troops they chose three, upon whom they conferred absolute powers, and swore a solemn oath that they would leave them unfettered in the exercise of those powers.
He often seeks to shelter himself behind the opinions of Xenarchus, as when he tells us that the Athenians thought it a bad omen that the general whose name was Victory refused to command the expedition to Sicily; and when he says that by the mutilation of the Hennas the gods signified that the Athenians would suffer their chief disasters at the hands of Hermokrates the son of Hermon; or, again, when he observes that Herakles might be expected to take the side of the Syracusans because of Proserpine, the daughter of Demeter, who gave him the dog Kerberus, and to be angry with the Athenians because they protected the people of Egesta, who were descended from the Trojans, whereas he had been wronged by Laomedon, king of Troy, and had destroyed that city.
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