Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/367

349 CHARACTER OF NIKIAS. 349 The opinion of Thucydides deserves special notice, in the face of this judgment of his countrymen. While he says not a won! about Demosthenes, beyond the fact of his execution, he adds in reference to Nikias a few words of marked sympathy and com- mendation. " Such, or nearly such, (he says,) were the reasons why Nikias was put to death ; though lie assuredly, among all Greeks of my time, least deserved to come to so extreme a pitch of ill-fortune, considering his exact performance of established duties to the divinity." l If we were judging Nikias merely as a private man, and set- ting his personal conduct in one scale against his personal suffer- Plutarch too so interprets the proceeding, and condemns it as disgraceful, see his comparison of Nikias and Crassus, near the end. Demosthenes could not have thought the same for himself: the fact of his attempted sui- cide appears to me certain, on the authority of Philistus, though Thucyd ides does not notice it. 1 Thucyd. vii, 86. Kat 6 (J.EV Toiavry i/ OTL ly/vrara TOVTUV alria ETE&VT/ KEL, TjKtara 6/j u^iog &v TUV ye in' ifiov 'E^^vuv f TOVTO dvani^faf uiKEa- &ai,di<i TT/V VEVo/J.t.0 fievrfv e$ rd -delov ETTI ry 6e v a tv. So stood the text of Thucydides, until various recent editors changed th last words, on the authority of some MSS., to diet TTJV iruaav if apt ri]v vev o fj.iafj.evrjv ETT irf/deva iv. Though Dr. Arnold and some of the best critics prefer and adopt the latter reading, I confess it seems to me that the former is more suitable to the Greek vein of thought, as well as more conformable to truth about Nikias. A man's good or bad fortune, depending on the favorable or unfavorable disposition of the gods towards him, was understood to be determined mora directly by his piety and religious observances, rather than by his virtue see passages in Isokrates de Permutation. Orat. xv, sect. 301 ; Lysias, cont Nikomach. c. 5, p. 854, though undoubtedly the two ideas went to a certain extent together. Men might differ about the virtue of Nikias ; but his piety was an incontestable fact ; and his " good fortune" also, in times prior to the Sicilian expedition, was recognized by men like Alkibiades, 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, ndaav EC upTr/v, the panegyric upon Nikias becomes both less special and more disproportionate, beyond what even Thucydides (as far as we can infer from other expressions, see v, 161 would be inclined to bestow upon him more, in fact, than he says in com mendation even