in command at Pylus, and yet he was content to place himself in safety, and let the state run the risk of ruin, by entrusting an incompetent person with the sole management of affairs.  Yet Themistokles, rather than allow an ignorant commander to mismanage the war against Persia, bribed him to lay down his office.  So also Cato at a most dangerous crisis became a candidate for the office of tribune of the people in order to serve his country.  But Nikias, reserving himself to play the general at the expense of the village of Minoa, the island of Kythera, and the miserable inhabitants of Melos,[100] when it came to fighting the Lacedaemonians eagerly stripped off his general’s cloak, and entrusted to an inexperienced and reckless man like Kleon, the conduct of an enterprise involving the safety of a large Athenian fleet and army, showing himself no less neglectful of his own honour than he was of the interests of his country.  After this he was forced against his will into the war with Syracuse, in which he seems to have imagined that his army would capture the city by remaining before it doing nothing, and not by vigorous attacks.  No doubt it is a great testimony to the esteem in which he was held by his countrymen, that he was always opposed to war and unwilling to act as general, and was nevertheless always forced by them to undertake that office:  whereas Crassus, who always wished for an independent command, never obtained one except in the servile war, and then only because all the other generals, Pompeius, Metellus, and Lucullus, were absent.  Yet at that time Crassus was at the height of his power and reputation:  but his friends seem to have thought him, as the comic poet has it,

     “Most excellent, save in the battle-field.”

And in his case also, the Romans gained no advantage from his ambitious desire of command.  The Athenians sent Nikias to Sicily against his will, and Crassus led the Romans to Parthia against their will.  Nikias suffered by the actions of the Athenians, while Rome suffered by the actions of Crassus.

IV.  However, in their last moments we incline rather to praise Nikias than to blame Crassus.  Nikias, a skilful and experienced commander, did not share the rash hopes of his countrymen, but never thought that Sicily could be conquered, and dissuaded them from making the attempt.  Crassus, on the other hand, urged the Romans to undertake the war with Parthia, representing the conquest of that country as an easy operation, which he nevertheless failed to effect.  His ambition was vast.  Caesar had conquered the Gauls, Germans, Britons, and all the west of Europe, and Crassus wished in his turn to march eastward as far as the Indian Ocean, and to conquer all those regions of Asia which Pompeius and Lucullus, two great men and actuated by a like desire for conquest, had previously aspired to subdue.  Yet they also met with a like opposition.  When Pompeius was given an unlimited command in the East, the appointment was opposed by