MISJUDGMENT OF N1KIAS. 31] to have vanished, while anxiety for return had become general. The opinions of Demosthenes and Eurymedon were doubtless well known, and orders for retreat were expected, but never came. Nikias obstinately refused to give them, during the whole of this fatal interval ; which plunged the army into the abyss of ruin, instead of mere failure in their aggressive enter- prise. So unaccountable did such obstinacy appear, that many per sons gave Nikias credit for knowing more than he chose to reveal. Even Thucydides thinks that he was misled by that party in Syracuse with whom he had always kept up a secret correspondence, seemingly apart from his colleagues, and who still urged him, by special messages, not to go away ; assuring him that Syracuse could not possibly go on longer. Without fully trusting these intimations, he could not bring himself to act against them ; and he therefore hung back from day to day, and refused to pronounce the decisive word. 1 Nothing throughout the whole career of Nikias is so inexpli- cable as his guilty fatuity for we can call it by no lighter name, seeing that it involved all the brave men around him ir one common ruin with himself at the present critical juncture. How can we suppose him to have really believed that the Syra- cusans, now in the flood-tide of success, and when Gylippus was gone forth to procure additional forces, would break down and be unable to carry on the war? Childish as such credulity seems, we are nevertheless compelled to admit it as real, to such an 1 Thucyd. vii. 48. "A eiri<j~a/j,vof, ru /j.lv Ip/w KTI eir' a [i poTepa %uv Kal diatJK OTTW v aveixe, T ti <5' e/Kpavei TOT'. Hoycj oi) K edijj uTruS E iv T))V <7 T par tuv. The insignificance of the party in Syracuse which corresponded with Nikias may be reasonably inferred from Thucyd. vii, 55. Jt consisted in part of those Leontines who had been incorporated into the Syracusan citizenship (Diodor. xiii, 18). Polyasnus (i, 43, 1) has a tale respecting a revolt of the slaves or villeins (oiKerai) at Syracuse during the Athenian siege, under a leader named So sikratcs, a revolt suppressed by the stratagem of Hermokrates. That van ous attempts of this sort took place at Syracuse during these two trying years, is by no means improbable. In fact, it is difficult to understand how the numerous predial slaves were kept in order during the great pressure
and danger, prior to the coming of Gylippus.
