Comparison of Nicias and Crassus

But if Crassus was violent and tyrannical in these matters, Nicias went to the other extreme. His timidity and cowardice in the public service, and his subservience to the basest men, deserve the severest censure. Crassus, indeed, showed a certain loftiness and largeness of spirit in this regard, for he contended not with men like Cleon and Hyperbolus, far from it, but against the brilliant Caesar, and against Pompey with his three triumphs; and he did not shrink from their path, but made himself a match for each in power, and in the dignity of his censorial office actually surpassed Pompey.

For in the supreme struggles of a political career one must not adopt a course which awakens no envy, but one which dazzles men, throwing envy into the shade by the greatness of one’s power. But if, like Nicias, you set your heart above all else on security and quiet, and fear Alcibiades on the bema, and the Lacedaemonians at Pylos, and Perdiccas in Thrace, then there is ample room in the city where you can sit at leisure, removed from all activity, and

weaving for yourself,

a crown of tranquillity.

His love of peace, indeed, had something godlike about it, and his putting a stop to the war was a political achievement most truly Hellenic in its scope. And because Nicias did this, Crassus is not worthy of comparison with him, nor would he have been even though in his ardour he had made the Caspian Sea or the Indian Ocean a boundary of the Roman empire.

When, however, a man wields superior power in a city which is open to the appeals of virtue, he should not give a footing to the base, nor command to those who are no commanders at all, nor confidence to those who deserve no confidence. But this is just what Nicias did when, of his own motion, he set Cleon in command of the army, a man who was nothing more to the city than a shameless brawler from the bema.

I do not, indeed, commend Crassus, in the war with Spartacus, for pressing forward into action with greater speed than safety, although it was natural for a man of his ambition to fear that Pompey would come and rob him of his glory, just as Mummius had robbed Metellus of Corinth; but the conduct of Nicias was altogether strange and terrible. For it was not while it afforded him good hopes of success, or even of ease, that he renounced his ambition to hold the command in favour of his enemy, but when he saw that his generalship involved him in great peril, then he was content to betray the common good at the price of his own safety.