11.6
Indeed he suffered worthy fate for men of old Albeit a fate too good for him and for his brands. For such as him the ostrakon was ne’er devised. And in the end no one was ever ostracised after Hyperbolus, but he was the last, as Hipparchus of Cholargus, a kinsman of the famous tyrant Peisistratus, was the first to be so banished.488-487 B.C.
11.7
Verily fortune is an uncertain thing, and incalculable. Had Nicias run the risk with Alcibiades of being ostracised, he had either carried the day, expelled his rival, and then dwelt safely in the city; or, defeated, he had himself gone forth from the city before his last misfortunes, and had preserved the reputation of being a most excellent general.
11.7
I am well aware that Theophrastus says that Hyperbolus was ostracised when Phaeax, and not Nicias, was striving against Alcibiades, but most writers state the case as I have done.
12.1
It was Nicias, then, who, when an embassy came from Egesta and LeontiniIn the spring of 415 B.C. seeking to persuade the Athenians to undertake an expedition against Sicily, opposed the measure, only to be defeated by the ambitious purposes of Alcibiades. Before the assembly had met at all, Alcibiades had already corrupted the multitude and got them into his power by means of his sanguine promises, so that the youth in their training-schools and the old men in their work-shops and lounging-places would sit in cluster drawing maps of Sicily, charts of the sea about it, and plans of the harbors and districts of the island which look towards Libya.
12.2
For they did not regard Sicily itself as the prize of the war, but rather as a mere base of operations, purposing therefrom to wage a contest with the Carthaginians and get possession of both Libya and of all the sea this side the Pillars of Heracles.
