Nicias

Nicias son of Niceratus, of the Attic deme Cydantidae — the richest Athenian of the 420s by Xenophon *Poroi* 4.14 (his Laurion silver-mine slaves alone generated an obol-a-day each) and the dominant conservative political figure between Pericles's death and the Sicilian disaster. Architect of the Peace of Nicias of 421 BC (Thuc. 5.18–24, the fifty-year treaty that paused the Archidamian War). Elected a third co-strategos for Sicily in 415 against his own recorded opposition (Thuc. 6.8–26 — the speech at the assembly where he tried to talk the Athenians out of the expedition by inflating its logistical requirements, which they then voted him). Commander-in-chief after Alcibiades's recall, delayed the evacuation of Syracuse harbour in August 413 when a lunar eclipse on the night of 27 August spooked the seers (Thuc. 7.50.4, who is openly contemptuous — 'he was too given to divination'); the delay cost the expedition its last window of escape. Captured at the Assinarus on the seventh day of the retreat, executed by the Syracusans against Gylippus's wish to take him alive to Sparta (Thuc. 7.86 + Plut. *Nic.* 28).

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