BLINDNESS OF NIKIAS. 2l3o such was the damage which his ships had sustained, that ho was forced to remain here while they were hauled ashore and refitted.' So untoward a delay threatened to intercept altogether his farther progress. For the Thurians had sent intimation of his visit as well as of the number of his vessels, to Nikias at Syra- cuse ; treating with contempt the idea of four triremes coming to attack the powerful Athenian fleet. In the present sanguine phase of his character, Nikias sympathized with the flattering tenor of the message, and overlooked the gravity of the fact announced. He despised Gylippus as. a mere privateer, nor would he even take the precaution of sending four ships from his numerous fleet to watch and intercept the new-comer. Ac- cordingly Gylippus, after having refitted his ships at Tarentum, advanced southward along the coast without opposition to the Epizephyrian Lokri. Here he first learned, to his great satisfac- tion, that Syracuse was not yet so completely blockaded but that an army might still reach and relieve it from the interior, enter- ing it by the Euryalus and the heights of Epipoloe. Having deliberated whether he should take the chance of running his ships into the harbor of Syracuse, despite the watch of the Athe- nian fleet, or whether he should sail through the strait of Messina to Himera at the north of Sicily, and from thence levy an army to cross the island and relieve Syracuse by land, he resolved on the latter course, and passed forthwith through the strait, which he found altogether unguarded. After touching both at Rhegium and Messene, he arrived safely at Himera. Even at Rhegium, there was no Athenian naval force ; though Nikias had, indeed, sent thither four Athenian triremes, after he had been apprized that Gylippus had reached Lokri, rather from excess of precau- tion, than because he thought it necessary. But this Athenian squadron reached Rhegium too late : Gylippus had already passed the strait ; and fortune, smiting his enemy with blindness, landed him unopposed on the fatal soil of Sicily. The blindness of Nikias would indeed appear unaccountable, were it not that we shall have worse yet to recount. To appre- ciate his misjudgment fully, and to be sensible that we are not
1 Thucyd vi, ,04.
