Nicias

They had repulsed it because Cleon, chiefly on account of Nicias, was opposed to it. For he hated Nicias, and when he saw him zealously cooperating with the Lacedaemonians, persuaded the people to reject the truce. So when the siege grew longer and longer, and they leaned that their forces were in terrible straits, they were angry with Cleon.

He, however, laid all the blame on Nicias, and denounced him, saying that it was through cowardice and weakness that he was letting the men on the island slip through his hands, whereas, had he himself been general instead of Nicias, they would not have held out so long. Thereupon it occurred to the Athenians to say: It’s not too late! Why don’t you sail yourself and fetch the men? Nicias too rose in the assembly and resigned his command of the expedition to Pylos in favour of Cleon, bidding him take as large a force as he wished, and not to vent his boldness in mere words which brought no peril with them, but to perform some deed for the city which would be worth its notice.

At first Cleon tried to draw back, confused by the unexpectedness of this offer; but the Athenians kept up the same cries of encouragement, and Nicias kept taunting him, until, his ambition incited and on fire, he undertook the command, and, besides, declared in so many words that within twenty days after sailing he would either slay the men on the island or bring them alive to Athens. The Athenians were moved to hearty laughter at this rather than to belief in it, for they were already in the way of treating his mad vanity as a joke, and a pleasant one too.

It is said, for instance, that once when the assembly was in session, the people sat out on the Pnyx a long while waiting for him to address them, and that late in the day he came in all garlanded for dinner and asked them to adjourn the assembly to the morrow. I’m busy to-day, he said, I’m going to entertain some guests, and have already sacrificed to the gods. The Athenians burst out laughing, then rose up and dissolved the assembly.

However, this time he had good fortune, served as general most successfully along with Demosthenes, and within the time which he had specified brought home as prisoners of war, their arms surrendered, all the Spartans on Sphacteria who had not fallen in battle. This success of Cleon’s brought great discredit on Nicias. He was thought not merely to have cast away his shield, but to have done something far more disgraceful and base in voluntarily throwing up his command out of cowardice, and in abandoning to his enemy the opportunity for so great a success,—actually voting himself out of office.

For this, Aristophanes again scoffs at him in his Birds, in words like these:—

1. And lo! by Zeus! we can no longer doze about,—
2. We have no time,—nor shilly-shally-niciasize;

1. I want to go a-farming.

1. Pray who hinders you?

1. You people do. Come! Let me give a thousand drachms
2. If you’ll release me from my offices.

1. ’Tis done!
2. Yours make two thousand, counting those that Nicias gave.

And besides, he wrought no little harm to the city in allowing Cleon to have such an access of reputation and influence that he launched out into offensive pride and ungovernable boldness and inflicted many mischiefs on the city, the bitter fruits of which he himself reaped most abundantly. Worst of all, Cleon stripped the bema of its decorum, setting the fashion of yelling when he harangued the people, of throwing back his robe, slapping his thigh, and running about while speaking. He thus imbued the managers of the city’s policies with that levity and contempt for propriety which soon after confounded the whole state.