History of the Peloponnesian War

But fearing that his messengers might not report the actual facts, either through inability to speak or from lapse of memory,[*](Or, reading γνώμης “from want of intelligence.”) or because they wanted to please the crowd, wrote a letter, thinking that in this way the Athenians would best learn his own view, obscured in no way by any fault on the part of the messenger, and could thus deliberate about the true situation.

So the messengers whom he sent departed, bearing the letter and the verbal reports which they were to deliver; but as regards the camp, the object of his care was now rather to keep on the defensive than to run voluntary risks.

At the end of the same summer Euetion, an Athenian general, made in concert with Perdiccas an expedition against Amphipolis with a large force of Thracians, and though he failed to take the city, brought some triremes round into the Strymon and blockaded it from the river, using Himeraeum as his base. So the summer ended.

The following winter the messengers of Nicias, on reaching Athens, gave the messages which they had been ordered to give by word of mouth, answering any questions that were asked, and delivered the letter. And the clerk of the city came before the Athenians and read them the letter, which ran as follows: