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Updated: June 19, 2025
Meanwhile the vanguard under Nicias, in total ignorance of the fate which had befallen their comrades, marched steadily forwards, and crossing the river Erineus, encamped for the night on a neighbouring hill. Here they were found next morning by Gylippus and the Syracusans, who informed them that Demosthenes and his men had surrendered, and called upon them to do the same.
A slave opened the door, and seeing a man with bare feet standing on the mosaic threshold, said to him roughly "Go and beg elsewhere, stupid monk, or I will drive you away with a stick." "Brother," replied the Abbott of Antinoe, "all that I ask is that you conduct me to your master, Nicias." The slave replied, more angrily than before "My master does not see dogs like you."
The message, of course, came from Hermocrates, who had contrived this trick to delay the departure of the Athenians, until time had been gained to occupy the passes on their route. That Nicias should have fallen into the snare is not surprising, but it is less easy to explain how Demosthenes and the other generals came to be deceived by so transparent a fraud.
Among these he alludes in various passages to Nicias, afterwards a physician at Miletus, to Philinus, noted in later life as the head of a medical sect, and to Aratus. Theocritus has sung of Aratus's love- affairs, and St. Paul has quoted him as a witness to man's instinctive consent in the doctrine of the universal fatherhood of God.
I remember debating, as a boy, whether the more desirable fame fell to the hero in a conflict or to the scribe who told the story. Whose place would one rather have? That of Timoleon and Nicias or of Plutarch and Thucydides their celebrants? But the celebrants, no doubt, seemed to their contemporaries very insignificant figures compared to the champions whose fame they perpetuated.
Amid this scene of universal woe and dejection, a fresh and unwonted spirit of energy and heroism seemed to be infused into Nicias. Though suffering under an incurable complaint, he was everywhere seen marshalling his troops and encouraging them by his exhortations. The march was directed towards the territory of the Sicels in the interior of the island.
Nicias had no wish for a sea-fight, but said it was mere folly for them, when Demosthenes was coming in all haste with so great a fleet and fresh forces to their succor, to engage the enemy with a less number of ships and ill provided.
Cleon, at the first, tried to draw back, disconcerted at the proposal, which he had never expected; but the Athenians insisting, and Nicias loudly upbraiding him, he thus provoked, and fired with ambition, took upon him the charge, and said further, that within twenty days after he embarked, he would either kill the enemy upon the place, or bring them alive to Athens.
But it so fell out with Nicias, that he had not at this time a skillful diviner with him; his former habitual adviser who used to moderate much of his superstition, Stilbides, had died a little before.
"Nicias, you seem to me like a child playing at knuckle-bones. Take my advice be free! By liberty only can you become a man." "How can a man be free, Eucrites, when he has a body?" "You shall see presently, my son. Presently you will say, 'Eucrites was free." The old man spoke, leaning against a porphyry pillar, his face lighted by the first rays of dawn.
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