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Updated: June 23, 2025
It has been well remarked that the friendship of Sokrates for him did not a little to increase his fame, seeing that Nikias, Demosthenes, Lamakus, Phormio, Thrasybulus, and Theramenes, were all men of mark in his lifetime, and yet we do not know the name of the mother of any one of them, while we know the name even of the nurse of Alkibiades, who was a Laconian, named Amykla, and that of Zopyrus, his paedagogus, one of which pieces of information we owe to Antisthenes, and the other to Plato.
III. Perikles, indeed, used to govern Athens by sheer force of character and eloquence, and required no tricks of manner or plausible speeches to gain him credit with the populace; but Nikias had no natural gifts of this sort, and owed his position merely to his wealth.
Nothing of this sort was ever laid to the charge of Nikias, who, however, was ridiculed for giving money to common informers because he feared their tongues. Yet this action of his, though it would have been a disgrace to Perikles, or Aristeides, was a necessity for Nikias, who was naturally of a timid disposition.
Nevertheless, Nikias thought it right to forego all the credit of his victory rather than leave two of his countrymen unburied. He also laid waste the seaboard of Laconia, defeated a Lacedæmonian force which opposed him,and took Thyrea, which was garrisoned by Æginetans, whom he brought prisoners to Athens.
In his death Crassus is more to be commended, because he yielded himself against his will in consequence of the entreaties of his friends, and was most treacherously deceived by the enemy, while Nikias delivered himself up to his enemies through a base and cowardly desire to save his life, and thus made his end more infamous.
Nikias, however, opposed the idea of retreat, not because he did not fear the Syracusans, but because he feared the Athenians more, and the treatment which as an unsuccessful general he would probably meet with. He declared that he saw no reason for alarm, and that even if there was, that he would rather perish by the hands of the enemy than those of his countrymen.
Nikias, even if he had been freed from the opposition of Kleon, could not now have quietly consolidated the power of the state, for as soon as he had arranged matters in a fair way to produce peace and quiet, Alkibiades, to satisfy his own furious ambition, threw them again into confusion and war. This was brought about by the following circumstances.
But on the other hand the conduct of Nikias was altogether monstrous and inexcusable. He did not give up his honourable post to his enemy at a time when there was hope of success and little peril.
The latter, they thought, for no adequate reasons, had involved the Greeks in the greatest miseries, while the former had relieved them of their troubles by persuading them to become friends. For this reason this peace is to this day called the peace of Nikias.
So true it is that wickedness and vice argue a want of due balance and proportion in a man's mind, which leads him to acquire wealth dishonestly, and then to squander it uselessly. II. So much for their riches. Now in their political life, Nikias never did anything bold, daring or unjust, for he was outwitted by Alkibiades, and always stood in fear of the popular assembly.
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