Nicias

Similarities and verbal allusions that link the letters of Nicias in Thucydides (7.11-15) and Pompey in Sallust (Hist. 2.98M) prompt a comparison of the two men and their situations; but the contrasts that emerge from this comparison also invite the reader to observe how different the men were, and then to read through these differences to note the similarities between Pompey and Nicias's rival Alcibiades, who turned against his own city. The subsequent comparison of the recipients of the letters and their responses — Athenian democrats and Roman senators — shows a contrast even more extreme, for the former were united, strong, and public-spirited; the latter fracturing, weak, and self-centred. The contrasts that finally emerge from both comparisons suggest a fundamental parallel intended by both authors: the impending death of language, descent into ferocious action, and doom of civil war for both polities.

En este Trabajo de Fin de Grado (TFG) principalmente se ha estudiado en profundidad el primer discurso de Nicias que abarca los capítulos 8 al 14, recogido en el libro VI de la Historia de la Guerra del Peloponeso de Tucídides. Este trabajo consiste en una traducción del texto griego seleccionado y en un comentario filológico fundamentalmente gramatical basado en comentarios anglosajones. Previamente se ha realizado un estudio introductorio que aporta al lector un conocimiento del contexto literario e histórico del discurso. Para situar el texto es preciso conocer la vida y figura del historiador Tucídides además de su obra historiográfica y su metodología. A continuación se exponen la realia, el contexto histórico de la expedición de Sicilia seguido de sus antecedentes, causas y consecuencias para la guerra del Peloponeso. Para terminar el estudio introductorio se añade información sobre el protagonista del discurso, Nicias, y sobre su contrario político, Alcibíades.

Abstract: The identity of Theseus in Euripides’ Supplices used to be a popular topic for scholarly debate: whether he comes forward as Alcibiades, Nicias or Pericles. Nowadays, however, the scholarly consensus is that even to look at Supplices in such political terms smacks of ‘impropriety’. This paper challenges this view. The key to the problem is to recognize that there is not a ‘one-to-one’ relationship between Theseus and any of these characters, but that the Theseus of Euripides’ ‘encomium of the Athenians’ (as the fragmentary plot-summary of Supplices calls it) includes characteristics of them all. Euripides is employing what we might call ‘portmanteau characterization’, of a kind that can be matched in other plays performed at about the same time.

«Linguistic and rhetorical implications of ostracism in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives».
This paper aims to analyse ostracism according to Plutarch’s Life of Nicias (chapter 11), Themistocles (21-22), Kimon (1), Aristides (1 and 7), Pericles (9-10) and Alcibiades (24). We intend to show that the author emphasizes the discursive dimension of Athenian ostracism, in order to unmask the linguistic confusion and lies that the practice entails. This rhetorical strategy is in agreement with the didactic purposes of Plutarch’s work.

The aim of this article is to investigate how Plutarch used Thucydides’ work as historical source for his Life of Nicia, offering an overview of the techniques through which he selects, adapts and manipulates his sources producing something new, personal and original, suitable for the interpretation he intends to convey about the main character’s life.

By focusing on a rhetorical and literary approach, this paper aims to study the discursive representation of
superstition in Plutarch’s Niciasand Dión. We will analyze in particular the lunar eclipse episode included in
Nicias 23 and Dion 24, in order to prove that the repetition of the episode in different contexts functions as an
invitation to think further about superstition through an original and more attractive perspective than philosophical theorization.

Thucydides criticises Nicias for being too partial to divination (7.50.4). It is suggested here through the examination of the linguistic nuances of θειασμός and the verb προσκείμενος, that Thucydides assessed him negatively primarily because he took the side of the army-seers. Yet, this criticism ought not to be blown out of proportion. Thucydides' portrait differs significantly from Plutarch's who describes Nicias as a diffident man easily gripped by fear and addicted to prophecies. Consequently, Thucydides' criticism is a small parenthesis in his overall presentation of the Athenian general's career whose decisions were based on skill, rational criteria and experience (5.16.1).

THE FIRST part of this report offers a selective update on research involving both a research seminar and an international colloquium that I co-organized with Frances B. Titchener at Rethymnon in 2017, whereas the second offers a sample of my own research on the subject.
The purpose of the 2017 colloquium (27–30 April) and the graduate seminar that Frances Titchener and I team-taught along with other faculty members at Rethymnon during the spring-term of that year was to explore ritual in Plutarch’s works by asking a series of questions, specifically: how Plutarchan representations of rituals contribute to the characterization of individuals and/or communities? What do they tell us about the way individuals relate to their peers or to their community
at large and/or the ways cities or other forms of community relate to one
another? How do rituals interact with politics (personal and communal, local and inter-state)? How do they affect individual and communal identities?
The second part explores Plutarch’s representation of Nicias’ exploitation of the performative and communicative nature of ritual as it emerges from four key episodes: (a) his decision to free one of his servants in the theatre of Dionysus on the spur of the moment; (b) his innovative improvement on the Athenian theoria to Delos as architheoros; (c) his striking provision to worship the Delian god(s) in
perpetuity and (d) his daily private sacrifice and divination at home in Athens. Taking into account the persistent emphasis on Nicias’ fear of gods and men throughout the Life, it is argued that these four episodes show that ritual offered Nicias an outlet for coping with his fear of men without abandoning his political ambitions.

Loin de figer Thucydide dans le rôle du parfait historien, L’Histoire labyrinthe jette un nouveau regard sur un épisode phare de son œuvre, l’Expédition de Sicile. Plutôt que de considérer La Guerre du Péloponnèse comme un fidèle miroir du passé, l’essai suit le fil des contradictions du récit pour pénétrer dans le labyrinthe d’une œuvre qui s’offre à une étonnante pluralité d’interprétations. C’est en parcourant, à travers les siècles, l’espace littéraire de l’Expédition de Sicile que l’on comprend le projet de Thucydide. Œuvre ouverte et aporétique, comme les dialogues socratiques de Platon, La Guerre du Péloponnèse défie, par ses énigmes, l’esprit critique des lecteurs et les entraînent ainsi aux controverses intellectuelles de l’Athènes classique. Pénétrer dans le labyrinthe de Thucydide, ce n’est pas seulement frémir devant les malheurs de l’armada athénienne, c’est aussi se frotter aux délicates questions du devenir historique, de l’éthique politique ou de la faute humaine.

This paper aims to analyse Plutarch's Life of Nicias. The biographer seems to
follow closely Thucydides and he describes Nicias as a minor hero, weak and superstitious. This characterization is rather misleading, however, since the biography belongs to
a corpus full of distinguished figures of Greece and Rome, which are models of virtue. In
order to understand Plutarch’s view, we will investigate, on one side, the external features
attributed to Nicias and, on the other side, the elements of his subjectivity, intending to
show the complexity of the description, based on a superposition of speeches and opinions.

La categoria, puramente concettuale, della homoiotropia diviene nella Storia di Tucidide una coordinata euristica di grande significato per la definizione di un sistema di analogie strutturale tra le poleis  di Atene e Siracusa nel corso del V secolo a.C.
Nell’ampio campo d’indagine tucidideo l’assottigliamento del crinale tra le due realtà politiche che, pur distanti per natura, divengono, al pari di individui e organismi vitali “simili per modi e affini”, offre una chiave di lettura di forte impatto ideologico della spedizione ateniese in Sicilia che vide coinvolti soggetti storici – Nicia, Alcibiade, Ermocrate, Gilippo – di assoluta centralità.
La teorèsi analogica riguarda in Tucidide i puntelli stessi dello Stato – organizzazione militare, istituzioni politiche, indole dei cittadini – e conduce, attraverso raffinate strategie storiografiche, alla comprensione della disfatta ateniese nell’isola, presentata come “necessaria” nel fitto intreccio degli avvenimenti narrati. 

In Thucydides’ History the purely conceptual category of the homoiotropia becomes a heuristic coordinate that is highly significant for the definition of a system of structural analogies between the poleis of Athens and Syracuse in the course of the fifth century BC. In the wide-ranging field of Thucydidean studies the narrowing of the divide between the two political realities,  which despite their different natures become – like individuals and living organizations – “akin and similar in their ways”, provides a powerful ideological key for a better understanding of the Athenians’ expedition to Sicily, dealing as it does with actual historical characters – Alcibiades, Nicias, Hermocrates, Gylippus - of central importance. Thucydides’ analogical theorizing concerns the very props of the State – the military organization, the political institutions as well as the character of the citizens - and, thanks to his refined historiographical technique, permits a more complete understanding of the Athenians’ defeat in Sicily, which is presented as a “necessity” in the serried network of events recounted.