Nicias

Finally, when the Athenians gave ground, the enemy attacked them on all sides and put them to flight. Some of them died at the hands of their pursuers, others by one another’s hands, and others still by plunging down the cliffs. The scattered and wandering fugitives, when day came, were overtaken and cut to pieces by the enemy’s horsemen. The dead amounted in all to two thousand; and of the survivors, few saved their armour with their lives.

Nicias, accordingly, was overcome by this disaster, though it did not take him wholly by surprise, and he accused Demosthenes of rashness. Demosthenes defended himself on this score, and then urged that they sail away as soon as they could. No other force would come to their aid, he declared, and with the one they had they could not finally master the enemy,

since, even if they were victorious in battle they would be forced to change their base and abandon their present position; this was always, as they heard, a grievous and unwholesome spot for encampment, and now particularly, as they saw, it was actually deadly on account of the season of the year. For it was the beginning of autumn; many were sick already, and all were in low spirits.

But Nicias could not bear to hear of sailing off in flight, not because he had no fear of the Syracusans, but because he was more afraid of the Athenians with their prosecutions and denunciations.

Nothing dreadful, he would say, was to be expected where they were, and even if the worst should come, he chose rather to die at the hands of his enemies than at the hands of his fellow citizens. In this he was not like-minded with Leon of Byzantium, who, at a later time,[*](Perhaps in 340 B.C., when Philip of Macedon was besieging Byzantium. Leon was a rhetorician and historian.) said to his fellow citizens: I would rather be put to death by you than with you. However, regarding the exact spot to which they should remove their camp, Nicias said they would deliberate at their leisure.

Thereupon Demosthenes, who had not been successful in his previous plan, ceased trying to carry his point, and so led the rest of the generals to believe that Nicias must have confident expectations from his correspondents in the city in making such a sturdy fight against the proposed retreat; they therefore sided with him. However, a fresh army came to the aid of the Syracusans, and sickness kept spreading among the Athenians, so that at last Nicias also decided in favour of a change of base, and ordered the soldiers to hold themselves in readiness to sail away.

But just as everything was prepared for this and none of the enemy were on the watch, since they did not expect the move at all, there came an eclipse of the moon by night. This was a great terror to Nicias and all those who were ignorant or superstitious enough to quake at such a sight. The obscuration of the sun towards the end of the month was already understood, even by the common folk as caused somehow or other by the moon;