[526] Pausan. i, 29, 9; Philist. Fragm. 46, ed. Didot.
Justin erroneously says that Demosthenês actually did kill himself, rather than submit to surrender, before the surrender of Nikias; who, he says, did not choose to follow the example:—
“Demosthenês, amisso exercitu a captivitate gladio et voluntariâ morte se vindicat: Nicias autem, ne Demosthenis quidem exemplo, ut sibi consuleret, admonitus, cladem suorum auxit dedecore captivitatis.” (Justin, iv, 5.)
Philistus, whom Pausanias announces himself as following, is an excellent witness for the actual facts in Sicily; though not so good a witness for the impression at Athens respecting those facts.
It seems certain, even from Thucydidês, that Nikias, in surrendering himself to Gylippus, thought that he had considerable chance of saving his life, Plutarch too so interprets the proceeding, and condemns it as disgraceful, see his comparison of Nikias and Crassus, near the end. Demosthenês could not have thought the same for himself: the fact of his attempted suicide appears to me certain, on the authority of Philistus, though Thucydidês does not notice it.
[527] Thucyd. vii, 86. Καὶ ὁ μὲν τοιαύτῃ ἢ ὅτι ἐγγύτατα τούτων αἰτίᾳ ἐτεθνήκει, ἥκιστα δὴ ἄξιος ὢν τῶν γε ἐπ’ ἐμοῦ Ἑλλήνων ἐς τοῦτο δυστυχίας ἀφικέσθαι, διὰ τὴν νενομισμένην ἐς τὸ θεῖον ἐπιτήδευσιν.
So stood the text of Thucydidês, until various recent editors changed the last words, on the authority of some MSS., to διὰ τὴν πᾶσαν ἐς ἀρετὴν νενομισμένην ἐπιτήδευσιν.
Though Dr. Arnold and some of the best critics prefer and adopt the latter reading, I confess it seems to me that the former is more suitable to the Greek vein of thought, as well as more conformable to truth about Nikias.
A man’s good or bad fortune, depending on the favorable or unfavorable disposition of the gods towards him, was understood to be determined more directly by his piety and religious observances, rather than by his virtue, see passages in Isokratês de Permutation. Orat. xv, sect. 301; Lysias, cont. Nikomach. c. 5, p. 854, though undoubtedly the two ideas went to a certain extent together. Men might differ about the virtue of Nikias; but his piety was an incontestable fact; and his “good fortune” also, in times prior to the Sicilian expedition, was recognized by men like Alkibiadês, who most probably had no very lofty opinion of his virtue (Thucyd. vi, 17). The contrast between the remarkable piety of Nikias, and that extremity of ill-fortune which marked the close of his life, was very likely to shock Grecian ideas generally, and was a natural circumstance for the historian to note. Whereas if we read, in the passage, πᾶσαν ἐς ἀρετὴν, the panegyric upon Nikias becomes both less special and more disproportionate, beyond what even Thucydidês (as far as we can infer from other expressions, see v, 16) would be inclined to bestow upon him—more, in fact, than he says in commendation even of Periklês.
[528] A good many of the features depicted by Tacitus (Hist. i, 49) in Galba, suit the character of Nikias, much more than those of the rapacious and unprincipled Crassus, with whom Plutarch compares the latter:—