Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/370

352 352 niSTORl OF OKEECE. anti-demagogic Nikias. The man who, over and above hii shabby manoeuvre about the expedition against Sphaktcria, and his improvident sacrifice of Athenian interests in the alliance with Sparta, ended by inflicting on his country that cruel wound which destroyed so many of her citizens as well as her maritime em- pire, was not a leather-seller of impudent and criminative elo- quence, 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 n)t commit, free from all pecuniary corruption, a brave man, and above all, an ultra-religious man, believed therefore to stand high in the favor 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, 1 and 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 euch 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. Perform- ing 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. 1 A good many of the features depicted by Tacitus (Hist, i, 49) in Galba, suit the character of Nikias, much more than those of the rapacious and inprinciplcl Crassus, with whom Plutarch compares the latter : " Vetus in familia nobilitas, magnse opes : ipsi medium ingenium, magii extra vitia, quam cum virtutibus. Sed claritas natalium, et metus tempo- ram, obtcntui fuit, ut quod scynitia full, sapientia vocarcttir. Dum vigebat iotas, miiitp.ri laude apud Germanias floruit: proconsul, Africam moderate; jam senior, citeriorem Hispaniam, pan justitiu. continuit. Mnjor private vi
 * us dum privatusfuit, et omnium consensu aipax imperil, nisi imperas&et."