The Price of Failure: Conceptions of Nicias‟ Culpability in Athens‟ Sicilian Disaster
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THE PRICE OF FAILURE: CONCEPTIONS OF NICIAS‟ CULPABILITY IN ATHENS‟ SICILIAN DISASTER Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By John Matthew Stockhausen, M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2008 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Nathan S. Rosenstein, Adviser Professor Greg Anderson ________________________ Professor Kristina Sessa Adviser History Graduate Program ii iii ABSTRACT Modern scholarship has long identified Nicias‟ failures as general as the principal cause of Athens‟ catastrophic defeat in Sicily. Surviving data does not suggest, however, that Nicias, who died in Sicily, suffered any posthumous condemnation for the defeat, nor does any extant source explicitly blame Nicias for the defeat. That Nicias‟ contemporaries seem not to have blamed him, contrary to the assumptions of traditional scholarship, demands an explanation. A careful examination of the trials of generals at Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries suggests that generals were tried not for defeat or failure, as is usually asserted, but rather for treason, that is for apparent efforts to undercut or disobey the assembly. Furthermore, no good examples exist of a general clearly punished or blamed for defeat beyond those trials. A further evaluation of classical Greek sources demonstrates a set of criteria according to which fifth and fourth century Greeks in fact evaluated their generals. These criteria appear to enforce a particular set of behaviors as well as keep the generals under rigid control. Given the high social status of most of these generals, the interaction between assembly and general thus defined provides insight into the interaction between assemblies and aristocrats in classical Greek democracies. ii iv For my Family iii v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I must acknowledge the assistance of my committee, Dr. Kristina Sessa and particularly Dr. Greg Anderson, who has provided me significant insight into the larger issues and broader applicability of the subjects I have examined in this project. Most of all, this study could never have reached its conclusion without the consistant and critical help, the intellectual inspiration, and the analytical training of my advisor, Dr. Nathan Rosenstein. My parents first taught me how to approach complex questions such as those in this work and my mother, Dr. Carol Stockhausen, added her insights to the developing arguments. My wife Kristen and my girls, Miranda, Sophia, and Grace, have endured the difficulties of this project with me and provided me with the support to finish it. iv vi VITA B.A. – Marquette University (1992). M.A., Classical Philology – University of North Carolina (1995) M.A., Ancient History – Ohio State University (1998) Adjunct Professor of History, Carroll College (WI), 2005 Adjunct Professor of Classics, Wright State University, 2007-2008 PUBLICATIONS None FIELDS OF STUDY History Bronze Age Archaeology Classical Philology v vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract……………………………………………………………………… ii Dedication…………………………………………………………………… iii Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………... iv Vita………………………………………………………………………….. v Table of Contents…………………………………………………………… vi Introduction…………………………………………………………………. 1 Chapter 1……………………………………………………………………. 9 Chapter 2……………………………………………………………………. 74 Chapter 3……………………………………………………………………. 120 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………... 161 Bibliography………………………………………………………………… 178 vi viii INTRODUCTION THE PRICE OF FAILURE: CONCEPTIONS OF NICIAS‟ CULPABILITY IN ATHENS‟ SICILIAN DISASTER Had Nicias Niceratou died in 415 BCE, he would have left to history a legacy as one of the greatest statesmen, politicians, and generals produced by classical Athens. He had already gained a reputation as the most effective general in Athens during the Peloponnesian War, and he had assumed a position of tremendous importance within the polis, emerging as one of the foremost of Pericles‟ political heirs. His greatest accomplishment had been the peace with Sparta that bears his name. Nicias seems to have viewed that peace as his crowning achievement, and Plutarch observes that his name was in the mouths of his grateful people1. Had Nicias‟ career ended at that point, he might have taken his place in history as one of the great men of antiquity, his accomplishments celebrated by historians along with those of Themistocles and Pericles. Nicias‟ career, of course, did not end at that point. He was elected against his will to help lead Athens‟ expedition to Sicily in 415. In Sicily he met with a series of reverses and ultimately lost his life amidst the greatest single disaster suffered by Athens in the Peloponnesian war to that point. The price paid by Nicias for this failure, in addition to 1 Plut. Nic. 9.6-7. 1 ix his life, was the destruction of his historical reputation. Pausanias, in his descriptive account of Athens, discusses an honorary stele listing those Athenians who had died in various theaters of military action, including Sicily. Pausanias says that he agrees with Philistus, who says that Nicias‟ name did not appear on the stele because he had surrendered voluntarily in Sicily, and was therefore considered an unworthy soldier2. Plutarch, the great biographer who helped immortalize so many figures from antiquity, condemns Nicias‟ failures as a general, deplores the surrender that ended his life, and attacks the weaknesses in Nicias‟ character that seem to him to have contributed to Nicias‟ downfall3. Modern scholars have for the most part followed Plutarch‟s lead. Any assessment of Nicias‟ career must necessarily conclude with a discussion of his performance as general in Sicily, and these assessments seldom reflect well on Nicias. Scholars generally agree that Nicias performed very poorly as general in Sicily and that the disaster was in fact Nicias‟ fault. A.W. Gomme, Jacqueline de Romilly, Donald Kagan, and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, just to name a few of the most influential scholars, all either assert or assume that the Athenian citizens of the late fifth century blamed Nicias for the Athenians‟ terrible defeat in Sicily in 413.4 Although Pausanias and Plutarch contribute to this conclusion the text of Thucydides‟ History of the Peloponnesian War usually supplies the most significant evidence. Thucydides‟ insightful narrative includes an extended presentation of the Sicilian expedition that ultimately cost Nicias his life. Most recent scholars who have 2 Paus. 1.29.12. 3 Plut. Nic. generally, especially 14.4 and 16.3, and Comp. with Crass. 5.2. 4 A.W. Gomme, A. Andrewes, and K. Dover, A Historical Commentary on Thucydides (Oxford 1945-1970), 419; Jacqueline de Romilly, Thucydides and Athenian Imperialsm (Oxford 1963), 181; Donald Kagan, The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition (Ithaca 1981), 369; Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Accountability in Athenian Government (Madison 1982), 178. 2 x dealt with Thucydides and his account of the Sicilian expedition (with a few notable exceptions) have identified Nicias as the cause of the Athenian defeat. This identification follows from what has seemed to most commentators a natural reading of the narrative of Thucydides, particularly book seven.5 Nicias‟ inadequacy as a general appears to emerge from both specific errors, including his poor choice of camp sites, his failure to prevent a Spartan fleet from reinforcing his Sicilian enemies, and his critical decision to wait for an eclipse rather than escape once victory lay out of reach, as well as the hesitancy and lack of initiative that characterized his overall conduct and undermined his leadership. Thucydides‟ presentation of Nicias, however, and his explicit explanations for the failure in Sicily, contradicts the picture created by such analysis. Thucydides explicitly ascribes the disaster in Sicily not to Nicias‟ mistakes but rather to political divisions at Athens that deprived the expedition of necessary support6. And after relating Nicias‟ execution the historian states that Nicias deserved such a fate less than any other Greek of the age because he had accustomed himself entirely to the pursuit of virtue7. The intense apparent disagreement between the basis of the modern arguments, the proposition that Nicias was obviously at fault for Athens‟ defeat in Sicily, and the ancient sources, which seldom if ever blame Nicias, preserve a generally positive impression of the Athenian aristocrat, and repeatedly, explicitly blame other agents for what happened in Sicily demands a reassessment of the modern argument The conclusion that Nicias‟ defeat earned condemnation in Athens follows in part from the belief that military failure deserved and received harsh treatment in Athens and that any unsuccessful military commander could look forward to a trial and probably both 5 For references and discussion of this scholarship see below pp. 77-104.. 6 Thuc. 2.65.11. 7 Thuc. 7.86.5. 3 xi popular and legal condemnation. It is axiomatic to most students of classical Athenian society that the Athenians treated their generals very harshly, and evaluated them according to very exacting standards. Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, John Finley, and Charles Hignett, among many others, conclude that Athenian generals consistently suffered zealous and even unjust prosecution at the hands of the citizenry8. Most scholars who have studied the trials of Athenian generals have concluded that military failure most typically motivated such trials. W. Kendrick Pritchett formulates this position most concisely,