Nicias

After they were persuaded by him, and had put themselves out of the guiding hands of Nicias and into his, he introduced them to the assembly, and asked them first whether they had come with full powers to treat all issues. On their saying No to this, he surprised them by changing front and calling on the members of the council who were present to bear witness to what they had said before that body. He then urged the people not to follow, much less trust, men who were so manifestly liars, and who said now Yes and now No to the same question.

The ambassadors were overwhelmed with confusion, naturally, and Nicias was unable to say a word,—struck dumb with amazement and anguish. Therefore the people were at once eager to call in the Argive embassy and make the alliance it desired, but there came a slight earthquake shock just then, luckily for Nicias, and the assembly was dissolved. On the following day, when the people had assembled again, by dint of great effort and much talking Nicias succeeded, with difficulty, in persuading them to refrain from the proposed arrangement with Argos, and to send him on an embassy to the Lacedaemonians, assuring them that everything would thus turn out well.

But when he came to Sparta, though in other ways he was honored by them as a true man and one who had been zealous in their behalf, still, he accomplished nothing that he purposed, but was beaten by the party there which had Boeotian sympathies, and so came back home, not merely with loss of reputation and under harsh abuse, but actually in bodily fear of the Athenians. They were vexed and indignant because they had been persuaded by him to restore so many eminent prisoners of war; for the men who had been brought to the city from Pylos belonged to the leading families of Sparta, and the most influential men there were their friends and kinsmen.

However, the Athenians took no very harsh measures in their anger against Nicias, but elected Alcibiades general, made an alliance with the Mantineans and Eleans, who had seceded from the Lacedaemonians, as well as with the Argives, sent freebooters to Pylos to ravage Laconia, and thus plunged again into war.