LIFE OF NIKIAS.

As it appears to me that the life of Nikias forms a good
parallel to that of Crassus, and that the misfortunes of
the former in Sicily may be well compared with those
of the latter in Parthia, I must beg of my readers to
believe that in writing upon a subject which has been
described by Thucydides with inimitable grace, clearness,
and pathos, I have no ambition to imitate Timæus, who,
when writing his history, hoped to surpass Thucydides
himself in eloquence, and to show that Philistius was but
an ignorant bungler, and so plunges into an account of
the speeches and battles of his heroes, proving himself
not merely one

"Who toils on foot afar
Behind the Lydian car,"

as Pindar has it, but altogether unfit for the office of historian,
and, in the words of Diphilus,

"Dull-witted, with Sicilian fat for brains."

He often seeks to shelter himself behind the opinions of Xenarchus, as
when he tells us that the Athenians thought it a bad omen that the
general whose name was Victory refused to command the expedition to
Sicily; and when he says that by the mutilation of the Hennas the gods
signified that the Athenians would suffer their chief disasters at the