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When he had said thus, he gave them his oath for the performance of what he promised, and by this way drew them from Nicias to rely entirely upon himself, and left them full of admiration of the discernment and sagacity they had seen in him.
He then marched through the unfortified interval of Nicias' lines into the besieged town, and joining his troops with the Syracusan forces, after some engagements with varying success, gained the mastery over Nicias, drove the Athenians from Epipolae, and hemmed them into a disadvantageous position in the low grounds near the great harbor.
The poet Callimachus had just arrived with a new chorus of singers, tablets by Antiphilus and Nicias had come to beautify the last days of the residence in the desert when doves, the birds of Aphrodite, flew with the speed of lightning into Pithom, but instead of bringing a new message of love and announcing the approach of fresh pleasure, they bore terrible tidings which put joy to flight and stifled mirthfulness.
During the following summer Mende was recovered by Nicias for the Athenians, Scione was closely invested, and Perdiccas, who had quarrelled with Brasidas, once more became an ally of Athens, and gave proof of his sincerity by preventing the passage of Spartan reinforcements to Thrace.
EUCRITES. You distort my thought, Nicias, and change a beautiful young girl into a hideous Gorgon. I am sorry for you, if you are so ignorant of the nature of the gods, of justice, and of the eternal laws. ZENOTHEMIS. For my part, friends, I believe in the reality of good and evil.
Now Nicias and the Athenians held the opinion that even if the Syracusans should not wish to offer battle, it was necessary for them to prevent the building of the cross wall, as it already almost overlapped the extreme point of their own, and if it went any further it would from that moment make no difference whether they fought ever so many successful actions, or never fought at all.
The expedition, planned under command of Alcibiades and Nicias, was dispatched in spite of the startling mutilation of the Hermæ, a sacrilegious performance attributed to Alcibiades. It had hardly reached Sicily when he was recalled, but made his escape and spent some years mainly in intriguing against Athens.
Nicias and Demosthenes were put to death; great numbers were seized as private spoil by their captors, the rest of the prisoners more than 7,000 were confined for weeks under the most noisome conditions in the quarries, and finally the survivors were sold as slaves. So pitiably ended that once magnificent enterprise in the nineteenth year of the war.
But the Syracusans were in no mood to listen to such proposals, even if Nicias had spoken with full authority from Athens. Bare life they would grant, but no more, and as the Athenians refused to yield on these terms, they closed in upon them, and the cruel, hopeless struggle began again, and continued until evening.
Eurymedon went before, in midwinter, with money, and to announce that Euthydemus and Menander were chosen out of those that served there under Nicias to be joint commanders with him. Demosthenes was to go after in the spring with a great armament.
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