Nicias
Plutarch
Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. III. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1914.
For this reason he had a large retinue of people who wanted his money, and who got it too; for he gave to those who could work him harm no less than to those who deserved his favours, and in general his cowardice was a source of revenue to the base, as his liberality was to the good.
Witness to this can be had from the comic-poets.
Telecleides composed the following verses on a certain public informer:—
[*](From a play of unknown name. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 219.)
- So then Charicles gave a mina that he might not tell of him
- How he was his mother’s first-born,—and her purse-born child at that.
- Minas four he got from Nicias, son of rich Niceratus;
- But the reason why he gave them, though I know it very well,
- I’ll not tell; the man’s my friend, and I think him wise and true.
And the personage who is held up to ridicule by Eupolis, in his Maricas,[*](A caricature of the demagogue Hyperbolus. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 308.) fetches in a sort of lazy pauper, and says:—
Maricas
- How long a time now since you were with Nicias?
Pauper
- I have not seen him,—saving just now on the Square.
Maricas
- The man admits he actually did see Nicias!
- Yet what possessed him thus to see him if he was not treacherous?
Chorus?
- Ye heard, ye heard, my comrades, O!
- Our Nicias was taken in the very act!
Pauper
- What! you? O crazy-witted folk!
- You catch a man so good in sin of any sort?
And the Cleon of Aristophanes[*](Knights, 358. It is not Cleon, but his adversary, the rampant sausage-seller, who utters the verse.) blusteringly says:—
And Phrynichus plainly hints at his lack of courage and his panic-stricken air in these verses:—
- I’ll bellow down the orators, and Nicias I’ll rattle.
[*](From a play of unknown name. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 385.)
- He was a right good citizen, and I know it well;
- He wouldn’t cringe and creep as Nicias always does.