Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/278

260 LT>(> HISTORY OF (JKKKCK. might have been expected to proceed more -apidly, because the Athenian position generally was much stroiger, the chance of opposition from the Syracusans was much lessened, and the fleet had been brought into the Great Harbor to cooperate. Yet in fact it seems to have proceeded more slowly ; Nikias builds it at first as a double wall, though it would have been practicable to complete the whole line of blockade with a single wall before the arrival of Gylippus, and afterwards, if necessary, to have doubled it either wholly or partially, instead of employing so much time in completing this one portion that Gylippus arrived before it was finished, scarcely less than two months after the death of Lamachus. Both the besiegers and their commander now seem to consider success as certain, without any chance of effective interruption from within, still less from without; so that they may take their time over the work, without caring whether the ultimate consummation comes a month sooner or later. Though such was the present temper of the Athenian troops, Nikias could doubtless have spurred them on and accelerated the operations, had he himself been convinced of the necessity of doing so. Hitherto, we have seen him always overrating the gloomy contingencies of the future, and disposed to calculate as if the worst was to happen which possibly could happen. But a great part of what passes for caution in his character, was in fact backwardness and inertia of temperament, aggravated by the melancholy addition of a painful internal complaint. If he wasted in indolence the first six months after his arrival in Sicily, and turned to inadequate account the present two months of tri- umphant position before Syracuse, both these mistakes arose from the same cause ; from reluctance to act except under the pressure and stimulus of some obvious necessity. Accordingly, he was always behindhand with events ; but when necessity became terrible, so as to subdue the energies of other men, then did he come forward and display unwonted vigor, as we shall see in the following chapter. But now, relieved from all urgency of apparent danger, and misled by the delusive hopes held out through his correspondence in the town, combined with the atmosphere of success which exhilarated his own armament, Nikias fancied the surrender of Syracuse inevitable, and became, for one brief moment preceding his calamitous end, not merely