Nicias

Timaeus says that the Sicilians also made no account of Gylippus, later on, indeed, because they learned to know his base greed and penuriousness; but as soon as they set eyes upon him they jeered at his cloak and his long hair. Then, however, Timaeus himself says that as soon as Gylippus showed himself, for all the world like an owl among birds, many flocked to him, with ready offers of military service. This latter statement has more truth in it than his first, for in the staff and cloak of Gylippus men beheld the symbols of the majesty of Sparta, and rallied round them.

Moreover, that the whole achievement of deliverance was his, is the testimony not only of Thucydides, but also of Philistus, who was a Syracusan, and an eye-witness of the events thereof.

Well, then, in the first battle the Athenians were victors and slew some few of the Syracusans, and also Gongylus the Corinthian; but on the day following, Gylippus showed what a great thing experience is. Although he had the same infantry and the same cavalry and the same localities to deal with he did not do it in the same way as before, but changed his tactics, and thereby conquered the Athenians.

And as they fled to their camp, he halted his Syracusans in their pursuit, and with the very stones and timbers which his enemies had brought up for their own use, he carried on the cross wall until it intersected the besiegers’ wall of enclosure, so that their superior strength in the field really availed them naught.

After this the Syracusans plucked up heart and went to manning their ships, while their own horsemen and those of their allies would ride about and cut off many of their besiegers.

Gylippus also went out in person to the cities of Sicily and roused up and united them all into vigorous and obedient concert with him. Nicias therefore fell back again upon those views of the undertaking which he had held at the outset, and, fully aware of the reversal which it had suffered, became dejected, and wrote a dispatch[*](Cf. Thuc. 7.11-15.) to the Athenians urging them to send out another armament, or else to recall the one already in Sicily, begging them also in any case to relieve him of his command because of his disease.

Even before this the Athenians had made preparations to send another force to Sicily, but the leading men among them felt some jealousy of the preliminary good fortune of Nicias, and so had induced many delays. Now, however, they were all eagerness to send aid. It was therefore determined that Demosthenes should sail with a large armament in the spring, and while it was yet winter Eurymedon preceded him with a smaller fleet, bringing money, and announcing the selection of colleagues for Nicias from among the members of the expedition there,—to wit, Euthydemus and Menander.

But in the meantime Nicias was suddenly attacked by land and sea. With his fleet, though vanquished at first, he yet succeeded in repulsing the enemy and sank many of their ships; but he was not prompt enough in sending aid to his garrison at Plemmyrium,[*](A promontory which runs out opposite the city of Syracuse, and narrows the entrance into the great harbor.) and so Gylippus, who had fallen upon it suddenly, captured it. Large naval stores and moneys were in deposit there, all of which Gylippus secured, besides killing many men and taking many prisoners.

What was most important of all, he robbed Nicias of his easy importation of supplies. These had been safely and speedily brought in past to Plemmyrium as long as the Athenians held that post; but now that they had been driven from it, the process was a difficult one, and involved fighting with the enemy who lay at anchor there. And besides all this, the Syracusans felt that their fleet had been defeated, not through any superior strength in their enemy, but by reason of their own disorderly pursuit of that enemy. Accordingly, they were making more vigorous preparations to try the issue again.

But Nicias did not want a sea fight. He said it would be great folly, when so large an armament was sailing to their aid and hurrying up fresh troops under Demosthenes, to fight the issue out with inferior forces, and those wretchedly supplied. Menander and Euthydemus, however, who had just been appointed to their offices, were moved by an ambitious rivalry with both the other generals; they longed to anticipate Demosthenes in some brilliant exploit, and to eclipse Nicias.

They therefore made much of their city’s reputation. This, they declared again and again, would be altogether ruined and dissipated if they should show fear when the Syracusans sailed out to attack them; and so they forced a decision to give battle by sea. But they were simply out-maneuvered by Ariston, the Corinthian captain, in the matter of the noon-day meal, as Thucydides relates,[*](Thuc. 7.36-41. The Syracusan crews took their meal close by their ships, and then suddenly re-embarked and attacked the Athenians, who supposed there would be no more fighting that day, and were taken unawares.) and then worsted in action, with the loss of many men. And so a great despair encompassed Nicias; he had met with disaster while in sole command, and was now again brought to grief by his colleagues.