[520] Thucyd. vii, 87. Diodorus (xiii, 20-32) gives two long orations purporting to have been held in the Syracusan assembly, in discussing how the prisoners were to be dealt with. An old citizen, named Nikolaus, who has lost his two sons in the war, is made to advocate the side of humane treatment; while Gylippus is introduced as the orator recommending harshness and revenge.
From whom Diodorus borrowed this, I do not know; but his whole account of the matter appears to me untrustworthy.
One may judge of his accuracy when one finds him stating that the prisoners received each two chœnikes of barley-meal, instead of two kotylæ; the chœnix being four times as much as the kotylê (Diodor. xiii, 19).
[521] Plutarch, Nikias, c. 29; Diodor. xiii, 33. The reader will see how the Carthaginians treated the Grecian prisoners whom they took in Sicily, in Diodor. xiii, 111.
[522] Plutarch, Nikias, c. 28; Diodor. xiii, 19.
[523] Thucyd. vii, 86; Plutarch, Nikias, c. 28. The statement which Plutarch here cites from Timæus respecting the intervention of Hermokratês, is not in any substantial contradiction with Philistus and Thucydidês. The word κελευσθέντας seems decidedly preferable to καταλευσθέντας, in the text of Plutarch.
[524] Plutarch, Nikias, c. 28. Though Plutarch says that the month Karneius is “that which the Athenians call Metageitnion,” yet it is not safe to affirm that the day of the slaughter of the Asinarus was the 16th of the Attic month Metageitnion. We know that the civil months of different cities seldom or never exactly coincided. See the remarks of Franz on this point, in his comment on the valuable Inscriptions of Tauromenium, Corp. Inscr. Gr. No. 5640, part xxxii, sect 3, p. 640.
The surrender of Nikias must have taken place, I think, not less than twenty-four or twenty-five days after the eclipse, which occurred on the 27th of August, that is, about Sept. 21. Mr. Fynes Clinton (F. H. ad ann. 413 B.C.) seems to me to compress too much the interval between the eclipse and the retreat; considering that that interval included two great battles, with a certain delay before, between, and after.
The μετόπωρον noticed by Thucyd. vii, 79. suits with Sept. 21: compare Plutarch, Nikias, c. 22.
[525] Thucyd. vii, 87.