If we were judging Nikias merely as a private man, and setting his personal conduct in one scale against his personal suffering on the other, the remark of Thucydidês would be natural and intelligible. But the general of a great expedition, upon whose conduct the lives of thousands of brave men as well as the most momentous interests of his country, depend, cannot be tried by any such standard. His private merit becomes a secondary point in the case, as compared with the discharge of his responsible public duties, by which he must stand or fall.

Tried by this more appropriate standard, what are we to say of Nikias? We are compelled to say, that if his personal suffering could possibly be regarded in the light of an atonement, or set in an equation against the mischief brought by himself both on his army and his country-it would not be greater than his deserts. I shall not here repeat the separate points in his conduct which justify this view, and which have been set forth as they occurred, in the preceding pages. Admitting fully both the good intentions of Nikias, and his personal bravery, rising even into heroism during the last few days in Sicily-it is not the less incon

by men like Alkibiadês, who most probably had no very lofty opinion of his virtue (Thucyd. vi. 17). The contrast between the remarkable piety of Nikias, and that extremity of ill-fortune which marked the close of his life-was very likely to shock Grecian ideas generally, and was a natural circumstance for the historian to note. Whereas if we read, in the passage, nâσav ès åperǹv—the panegyric upon Nikias becomes both less special and more disproportionate-beyond what even Thucydidês (as far as we can infer from other expressions, see v. 16) would be inclined to bestow upon him-more in fact than he says in commendation even of Periklês.

VOL. VII.

2 I

How far

that opi

nion is just.

testable, that first, the failure of the enterprisenext, the destruction of the armament-is to be traced distinctly to his lamentable misjudgment. Sometimes petty trifling-sometimes apathy and inaction-sometimes presumptuous neglect-sometimes obstinate blindness even to urgent and obvious necessities-one or other of these his sad mental defects, will be found operative at every step whereby this fated armament sinks down from exuberant efficiency into the last depth of aggregate ruin and individual misery. His improvidence and incapacity stand proclaimed, not merely in the narrative of the historian, but even in his own letter to the Athenians, and in his own speeches both before the expedition and during its closing misfortunes, when contrasted with the reality of his proceedings. The man whose flagrant incompetency brought such wholesale ruin upon two fine armaments entrusted to his command, upon the Athenian maritime empire, and ultimately upon Athens herself-must appear on the tablets of history under the severest condemnation, even though his personal virtues had been loftier than those of Nikias.

And yet our great historian-after devoting two immortal books to this expedition-after setting forth emphatically both the glory of its dawn and the wretchedness of its close, with a dramatic genius parallel to the Edipus Tyrannus of Sophoklês-when he comes to recount the melancholy end of the two commanders, has no words to spare for Demosthenês (far the abler officer of the two, who perished by no fault of his own), but reserves his flowers to strew on the grave of Nikias,

the author of the whole calamity-" What a pity! Such a respectable and religious man!"

the Athe

Nikias

Thucydidês is here the more instructive, because Opinion of he exactly represents the sentiment of the general nians about Athenian public towards Nikias during his lifetime. They could not bear to condemn, to mistrust, to dismiss, or to do without, so respectable and re

their steady

over-confidence and

over

esteem for

him, arising

from his

and reli

ligious a citizen. The private qualities of Nikias were not only held to entitle him to the most in- respectable dulgent construction of all his public short-comings, gious chabut also ensured to him credit for political and mi- racter. litary competence altogether disproportionate to his deserts. When we find Thucydidês, after narrating so much improvidence and mismanagement on the grand scale, still keeping attention fixed on the private morality and decorum of Nikias, as if it constituted the main feature of his character-we can understand how the Athenian people originally came both to over-estimate this unfortunate leader, and continued over-estimating him with tenacious fidelity even after glaring proof of his incapacity. Never in the political history of Athens did the people make so fatal a mistake in placing their confidence.

In reviewing the causes of popular misjudgment, historians are apt to enlarge prominently, if not exclusively, on demagogues and the demagogic influences. Mankind being usually considered in the light of governable material, or as instruments for exalting, arming, and decorating their rulers-whatever renders them more difficult to handle in this capacity, ranks first in the category of vices. Nor can it be denied that this was a real and serious

cause. Clever criminative speakers often passed themselves off for something above their real worth: though useful and indispensable as a protection against worse, they sometimes deluded the people Over-confi- into measures impolitic or unjust. But, even if we grant, to the cause of misjudgment here indicated, a greater practical efficiency than history will fairly sanction-still it is only one among others more mischievous. Never did any man at Athens, by committed. mere force of demagogic qualities, acquire a mea

dence in

Nikias was

the greatest personal mistake which the Athenian

public ever

sure of esteem at once so exaggerated and so durable, combined with so much power of injuring his fellow-citizens, as the anti-demagogic Nikias. The man who, over and above his shabby manœuvre about the expedition against Sphakteria, and his improvident sacrifice of Athenian interests in the alliance with Sparta, ended by bringing ruin on the greatest armament ever sent forth by Athens, as well as upon her maritime empire-was not a leather-seller of impudent and criminative eloquence, but a man of ancient family and hereditary wealth-munificent and affable, having credit not merely for the largesses which he bestowed, but also for all the insolences, which as a rich man he might have committed, but did not commit-free from all pecuniary corruption-a brave man, and above all, an ultra-religious man, believed therefore to stand high in the favour of the gods, and to be fortunate. Such was the esteem which the Athenians felt for this union of good qualities purely personal and negative, with eminent station, that they presumed the higher aptitudes of command', and

A good many of the features depicted by Tacitus (Hist. i. 49) in

presumed them unhappily after proof that they did not exist-after proof that what they had supposed to be caution was only apathy and mental weakness. No demagogic arts or eloquence would ever have created in the people so deep-seated an illusion as the imposing respectability of Nikias. Now it was against the overweening ascendency of such decorous and pious incompetence, when aided by wealth and family advantages, that the demagogic accusatory eloquence ought to have served as a natural bar and corrective. Performing the functions of a constitutional opposition, it afforded the only chance of that tutelary exposure whereby blunders and short-comings might be arrested in time. How insufficient was the check which it provided-even at Athens, where every one denounces it as having prevailed in devouring excess-the history of Nikias is an ever-living testimony.

Galba, suit the character of Nikias-much more than those of the rapacious and unprincipled Crassus, with whom Plutarch compares the latter:

"Vetus in familiâ nobilitas, magnæ opes: ipsi medium ingenium, magis extra vitia, quam cum virtutibus. Sed claritas natalium, et metus temporum, obtentui fuit, ut quod segnitia fuit, sapientia vocaretur. Dum vigebat ætas, militari laude apud Germanias floruit: proconsul, Africam moderate; jam senior, citeriorem Hispaniam, pari justitiâ continuit. Major privato visus, dum privatus fuit, et omnium consensu capax imperii, nisi imperasset."