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Updated: July 23, 2025
Some of his paintings were encaustic, that is to say, the colors were burned in; thus they must have been made on plaster or pottery of some sort. Nikias outlived Alexander the Great, and saw the beginning of the school of painters to which the great Apelles belonged that which is called the Hellenic school, in which Greek art reached its highest point.
Shortly after this, the Athenians sent for Alkibiades to return home for his trial on a charge of treason, and Nikias, who was nominally Lamachus's colleague, but really absolute, proceeded to waste time in idle negotiations and languid manœuvres, until his troops had quite lost the high spirits and hopes with which they had arrived at Sicily; while the enemy, who were at first terrified, began to recover their spirits, and despise the Athenians.
Then at last the countrymen of Nikias believed, after his death, what he had so often foretold to them during his life. I. Marcus Crassus was the son of a father who had been censor, and enjoyed a triumph; but he was brought up with his two brothers in a small house.
Sheen was just making something more or less like sense out of an involved passage of Nikias' speech, in which that eminent general himself seemed to have only a hazy idea of what he was talking about, when the door opened. He looked up, expecting to see Drummond, but it was Stanning.
The Athenians, however, did not show their dissatisfaction with Nikias by any harsh measures, but they elected Alkibiades general, and they entered into a treaty of alliance with the Argives, and also with the states of Elis and Mantinea, which had revolted from the Lacedæmonians, while they sent out privateers to Pylos to plunder the Lacedæmonian coasts in the neighbourhood of that fortress.
This affair left Nikias in sole command, and he had great hopes of taking the place; for many cities in Sicily had formed alliances with him, ships laden with corn kept arriving to supply his camp, and all began to be eager to be on his side, and to share in the fruits of his success.
III. Yet a statesman, in a country which appreciates his merits, ought not when at the height of his power to make way for worthless men, and place in office those who have no claim to it, as Nikias did when he laid down his own office of commander-in-chief and gave it to Kleon, a man who possessed no qualification whatever for the post except his brazen effrontery.
We can see that Thucydides was sceptical; but can we fully see what his scepticism was directed against, or where, for instance, Nikias would have disagreed with him, and where he and Nikias both agreed against us? We have, of course, the systems of the great philosophers especially of Plato and Aristotle. Better than either, perhaps, we can make out the religion of M. Aurelius.
Nikias now abandoned the great camp and walls of investment, which reached as far as the temple of Herakles, and drew the army up on the beach as spectators of the battle. Thus the Syracusan priests and generals were able for the first time since the siege began to sacrifice to Herakles, as they were wont to do, while the people were manning their fleet.
V. Nikias feared so much to give the mob orators grounds for accusation against him, that he dared not so much as dine with his follow citizens, and pass his time in their society. Nor did he have any leisure at all for such amusements, but when general, he used to spend the whole day in the War office, and when the Senate met he would be the first to come to the house and the last to leave it.
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