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Updated: June 23, 2025
It was arranged that Demosthenes should employ himself actively in getting ready a large force, to go to reinforce Nikias in the early spring, while Eurymedon, although it was winter, started immediately with a supply of money, and with a decree naming Euthydemus and Menander, officers already serving in his army, to be joint commanders along with him.
Gylippus was visibly affected by the words, and by the sight of Nikias; for he knew how well the Spartan prisoners had been treated by him, when the peace was made with Athens; moreover, he thought that it would be a great honour to him if he could carry home the enemy's commander-in-chief as a prisoner. He received Nikias with kindness, and gave orders to take the rest of the Athenians alive.
Nikias and the other generals refused to agree to this proposal, as they thought it would be a pity to abandon a fleet of so many transports, and nearly two hundred ships of war. They placed the flower of the land force on board the ships, with the best of the slingers and darters, and manned one hundred and ten triremes, for they had not sufficient oars for a larger number.
Be this as it may, their dead bodies were exposed before the gates of Syracuse as a spectacle for the citizens. I have heard also that at the present day a shield is shown in one of the temples at Syracuse, which is said to be that of Nikias, and which is beautifully adorned with woven coverings of purple and gold.
This, indeed, was the character of Agesilaus, disinterested and just in all matters except in furthering the interests of his friends, in which case he seems to have hesitated at nothing. A letter of his to Idrilus, the Karian, runs as follows: "If Nikias be innocent, acquit him; if he be guilty, acquit him for my sake; but in any case acquit him."
Indeed, there was nothing harsh or overbearing in the pride of Nikias, which arose chiefly from his fear of being thought to be currying favour with the people.
Gylippus wanted to save Nikias, for the pleasure of showing off so noble a prisoner at Sparta; but some of the Syracusans, who had been on the point of betraying their city to him, were afraid that their treason would be known, and urged that he should be put to death with his fellow-general; and the brave, honest, upright old man was therefore slain with his companion Demosthenes.
And there is nothing in other authorities to induce us to think that he has done Crassus injustice. With some good qualities and his moderate abilities, he might have been a respectable man in a private station. I. In the first place, the wealth of Nikias was much more honestly and creditably obtained than that of Crassus.
And Klearchus might say to his Grecian soldiers what Xenophon was afterwards preparing to say to them at Kalpê on the Euxine Sea, and what Nikias also affirmed to the unhappy Athenian army whom he afterwards conducted away from Syracuse that wherever they sat down, they were sufficiently numerous and well-organized to become at once a city.
Moreover men were only wont to wait three days after an eclipse of the moon, or of the sun, as we learn from Autokleides in his book on divination; but Nikias persuaded them to wait for another complete circuit of the moon, because its face would not shine upon them propitiously before that time after its defilement with the gross earthy particles which had intercepted its rays.
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