Note 527 — Chapter LX · FROM THE RESUMPTION OF DIRECT HOSTILITIES BETWEEN ATHENS AND SPARTA, DOWN TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ATHENIAN ARMAMENT IN SICILY. (continued 2)

Thucyd. vii, 86. Καὶ ὁ μὲν τοιαύτῃ ἢ ὅτι ἐγγύτατα τούτων αἰτίᾳ ἐτεθνήκει, ἥκιστα δὴ ἄξιος ὢν τῶν γε ἐπ’ ἐμοῦ Ἑλλήνων ἐς τοῦτο δυστυχίας ἀφικέσθαι, διὰ τὴν νενομισμένην ἐς τὸ θεῖον ἐπιτήδευσιν.

So stood the text of Thucydidês, until various recent editors changed the last words, on the authority of some MSS., to διὰ τὴν πᾶσαν ἐς ἀρετὴν νενομισμένην ἐπιτήδευσιν.

Though Dr. Arnold and some of the best critics prefer and adopt the latter reading, I confess it seems to me that the former is more suitable to the Greek vein of thought, as well as more conformable to truth about Nikias.

A man’s good or bad fortune, depending on the favorable or unfavorable disposition of the gods towards him, was understood to be determined more directly by his piety and religious observances, rather than by his virtue, see passages in Isokratês de Permutation. Orat. xv, sect. 301; Lysias, cont. Nikomach. c. 5, p. 854, though undoubtedly the two ideas went to a certain extent together. Men might differ about the virtue of Nikias; but his piety was an incontestable fact; and his “good fortune” also, in times prior to the Sicilian expedition, was recognized by men like Alkibiadês, who most probably had no very lofty opinion of his virtue (Thucyd. vi, 17). The contrast between the remarkable piety of Nikias, and that extremity of ill-fortune which marked the close of his life, was very likely to shock Grecian ideas generally, and was a natural circumstance for the historian to note. Whereas if we read, in the passage, πᾶσαν ἐς ἀρετὴν, the panegyric upon Nikias becomes both less special and more disproportionate, beyond what even Thucydidês (as far as we can infer from other expressions, see v, 16) would be inclined to bestow upon him—more, in fact, than he says in commendation even of Periklês.