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Encyclopedia Britannica



NICIAS (d. 414 B.C.)

This article appears in Volume V19, Page 658 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: NEW-NUM
NICIAS (d. 414 B.C.) , a soldier and statesman in ancient Athens, inherited from his father Niceratus a considerable fortune in-vested mainly in the silver mines of
Laurium
 . Evidence of his wealth is found in the fact that he had no less than r000 slaves whom he hired out. He gravitated naturally to the aristocratic party, and was several times colleague with Pericles in the
aristocrats against the advanced party of Cleon (q.v.). He made use of his wealth both to buy off enemies (especially in-formers) and to acquire popularity by the magnificent way in which he discharged various public services, especially those connected with the state religion, of which he was a strong supporter. In the field he displayed extreme caution, and prior to the
great
  Sicilian expedition achieved a number of
minor
  military successes. In 421 he took a prominent part in the arrangement of the " Peace of Nicias," which terminated the first decade of the Peloponnesian War (q.v.). He now entered with varying success upon a period of rivalry with Alcibiades, the details of which are largely matters of conjecture. So bitter was the strife that the ostracism of one seemed inevitable, but by a temporary coalition they secured instead the banishment of the demagogue Hyperbolus (417). In 415 he was appointed with Alcibiades and Lamachus to command the Sicilian expedition, and, after the flight of Alcibiades (q.v.) and the death of Lamachus, was practically the sole
commander
 , the much more capable
Demosthenes
 , who was sent to his aid, being apparently of comparatively little
weight
 . How far it is just to attribute to his excessive caution and his blind faith in omens the disastrous failure it is difficult to say. At all events it is clear that the management of so
great
  an enterprise was a task far beyond his
powers
 . He was a man of conventional respect-ability and mechanical piety, without the originality which was required to meet the crisis which faced him. His popularity with the aristocratic party in Athens is, however, strikingly shown by the lament of
Thucydides
  over his death: " He 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 " (vii. 86, Grote's version).
Besides
Thucydides
  see Plutarch's Nicias and Diod. xii. 83; also the general authorities on the history of
Greece
 , and the article


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