280 HISTORY OF GREECE. was directed to employ himself actively in getting this large! force ready. 1 This letter of Nikias so authentic, so full of matter, and so characteristic of the manners of the time suggests several seri- ous reflections, in reference both to himself and to the Athenian people. As to himself, there is nothing so remarkable as the sentence of condemnation which it pronounces on his own past proceedings in Sicily. When we find him lamenting the wear and tear of the armament, and treating the fact as notorious that even the best naval foi'ce could only maintain itself in good condition for a short time, what graver condemnation could bo passed upon those eight months which he wasted in trifling measures, after his arrival in Sicily, before commencing the siege of Syracuse ? When he announces that the arrival of Gylippus with his auxiliary force before Syracuse, made the difference to the Athenian army between triumph and something bordering on ruin, the inquiry naturally suggests itself, whether he had done his best to anticipate, and what precautions he had himself taken to prevent, the coming of the Spartan general. To which the answer must be, that, so far from anticipating the arrival of new enemies as a possible danger, he had almost invited them from abroad by his delay, and that he had taken no precautions at all against them, though forewarned and having sufficient means at his disposal. The desertion and demoralization of his naval force, doubtless but too real, was, as he himself points out, mainly the consequence of this turn of fortune, and was also the first com- mencement of that unmanageable temper of the Athenian soldiery, numbered among his difficulties. For it would be iu- 1 Thucyd. vii, 16. There is here a doubt as to the reading, between one hundred and twenty talents, or twenty talents. I agree with Dr. Arnold and other commentators in thinking that the money taken out by.Eurymedon was far more probably the larger sum of the two, than the smaller. The former reading seems to deserve the pref- erence. Besides, Diodorus states that Eurymedon took out with him one hundred and forty talents : his authority, indeed, does not count for much, but it counts for something, in coincidence with a certain force of intrinsic probability (Diodor. xiii, 8). On an occasion such as this, to send a very small sum, such as twenty
talent^, vould produce a discauraging effect tpon the armament.
