Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/333

315 ECLIPSE OF THE MOON. 315 val indicated by them, he would not permit even any discussion or proposition on the subject. The decision of the prophets, which Nikias thus made his own, was a sentence of death to the Athenian army, yet it went along with the general feeling, and was obeyed without hesitation. Even Demosthenes, though if he had commanded alone, he might have tried to overrule it, found himself compelled to yield. Yet according to Philochorus, himself a professional diviner, skil- ful in construing the religious meaning of events, it was a decision decidedly wrong ; that is, wrong according to the canonical prin- ciples of divination. To men planning escape, or any other operation requiring silence and secrecy, an eclipse of the moon, as hiding light and producing darkness, was, he affirmed, an encouraging sign, and ought to have made the Athenians even more willing arid forward in quitting the harbor. We are told, too, that Nikias had recently lost by death Stilbides, the ablest prophet in his service, and that he was thus forced to have re- course to prophets of inferior ability. 1 His piety left no means untried of appeasing the gods, by prayer, sacrifice, and expia- tory ceremonies, continued until the necessity of actual conflict arrived. 3 The impediment thus finally and irreparably intercepting the Athenian departure, was the direct, though unintended, conse- quence of the delay previously caused by Nikias. We cannot doubt, however, that, when the eclipse first happened, he regarded it as a sign confirmatory of the opinion which he had himself before delivered, and that he congratulated himself upon having so long resisted the proposition for going away. Let us add, that all those Athenians who were predisposed to look upon eclipses as signs from heaven of calamity about to come, would find them- selves strengthened in that belief by the unparalleled woes even now impending over this unhappy army. 'Plutarch, Nikias, c. 22 ; Diodor. xiii, 12; Thucyd. vii, 50. Stilbidea was eminent in his profession of a prophet : see Aristophan. Pac. 1029, with the citations from Eupolis and Philochorus in the Scholia. Compare the description of the effect produced by the eclipse of the sun at Thebes, immediately prior to the last expedition of Pelopidas into Thessaly (Plutarch, Pelopidas, c. 31). ' Plutarch, Nikias, c. 24.