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abate the pride and reputation to which they gave rise. This was manifest in their fining Pericles, and ostracising Damon, and discrediting, as most of them did, Antiphon the Rhamnusian, and finally, above all, in the fate of Paches, the captor of Lesbos, who, while he was giving the official account of his generalship, drew his sword in the very court-room and slew himself. Nicias therefore tried to evade commands which were likely to be laborious and long, and whenever he did serve as general made safety his chief aim, and so was successful for the most part, as was natural. He did not, however, ascribe his achievements to any wisdom or ability or valour of his own, but rather credited them to fortune, and took modest refuge in the divine ordering of events, relinquishing thereby part of his reputation through fear of envy. Events bore witness to his wisdom, for in the many great reverses which the city suffered at that period he had absolutely no share. It was under the leader- ship of Calliades and Xenophon that his country- men met defeat at the hands of the Chalcidians in Thrace; the Aetolian disaster occurred when Demos- thenes was in command ; Hippocrates was general when a thousand citizens were sacrificed at Delium ; and for the plague Pericles incurred the most blame, because he shut up the throng from the country in