Nicias

The men who were well-to-do, and the elderly men, and most of the farmers, he found inclined to peace from the first; and after he had talked privately with many of the rest, taught them his views, and blunted the edge of their desire for war, then he at once held out hopes to the Spartans and urgently invited them to seek for peace. They had confidence in him, not only because of his usual fairness towards them, but especially because he had shown kind attentions to those of their men who had been captured at Pylos and kept in prison at Athens, had treated them humanely, and so eased their misfortune.

The two parties had before this made a sort of stay of mutual hostilities for a year, during this time they had held conferences with one another, and tasted again the sweets of security and leisure and intercourse with friends at home and abroad, so that they yearned for that old life which was undefiled by war, and listened gladly when choirs sang such strains as

1. Let my spear lie unused for the spider to
2. cover with webs

Accordingly, they heaped abuse on those who said that the war was fated to last thrice nine years,[*](Cf. Thuc. 5.26.) and then, in this spirit, debated the whole issue, and made peace.[*](Signed in the spring of 421 B.C.) Most men held it to be a manifest release from ills, and Nicias was in every mouth. They said he was a man beloved of God, and that Heaven had bestowed on him, for his reverent piety, the privilege of giving his name to the greatest and fairest of blessings.

They really thought that the peace was the work of Nicias, as the war had been that of Pericles. The one, on slight occasion, was thought to have plunged the Hellenes into great calamities; the other had persuaded them to forget the greatest injuries and become friends. Therefore, to this day, men call that peace The Peace of Nicias.

The articles of peace[*](Cf. Thuc. 5.18.) required that the strongholds and cities and prisoners of war which each party had taken from the other should be restored and since that party was to make restoration first on whom the lot fell, the lot was secretly bought up by Nicias, so that the Lacedaemonians were the first to make restoration.

This is the testimony of Theophrastus. But when the Corinthians and Boeotians, who were vexed at the course things were taking, seemed likely, by their accusations and complaints, to revive the war, Nicias persuaded the Athenians and Lacedaemonians to make the general peace secure by the mighty bond of a mutual alliance, whereby they should become more formidable to all seceders and better assured of each other.

Such being the course of events, Alcibiades, who was naturally indisposed to be quiet, and who was incensed at the Lacedaemonians because they scornfully ignored him in their fond attachment to Nicias, promptly opposed and obstructed the general peace. At the outset he made no headway; but a little while after, seeing that the Athenians were not so well pleased as before with the Lacedaemonians, but thought they had wronged them in making a separate alliance with the Boeotians, and in not restoring Panactum with its walls intact, nor Amphipolis at all, he laid great stress on these grounds of complaint, and tried to incense the people over each one of them.

Finally he managed to have an embassy sent from Argos to Athens,[*](In the spring of 419 B.C.)

and tried to effect a separate alliance between these two cities. Ambassadors came at once from Sparta with full powers to treat all issues, and at their preliminary audience with the council were declared by that body to come with nothing but just proposals. But Alcibiades was afraid they would bring the assembly over to their views with the same arguments which had won the council. He therefore circumvented them by deceitfully swearing that he would cooperate with them fully in the assembly if they would only not claim nor even admit that they had come with full powers to treat all issues; for thus, he declared, they would most surely attain their desires.