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 Timaeus, 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
hands of Hermokrates the son of Hermon; or, again, when he observes
that Herakles might be expected to take the side of the Syracusans
because of Proserpine, the daughter of Demeter, who gave him the dog
Kerberus, and to be angry with the Athenians because they protected
the people of Egesta, who were descended from the Trojans, whereas he
had been wronged by Laomedon, king of Troy, and had destroyed that
city.
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