NICIAS.
Crassus, in my opinion, may most properly be set against Nicias, and the Parthian disaster compared with that in Sicily. But here it will be well for me to entreat the reader, in all courtesy, not to think that I contend with Thucydides in matters so pathetically, vividly, and eloquently, beyond all imitation, and even beyond himself, expressed by him; nor to believe me guilty of the like folly with Timæus, who, hoping in his history to surpass Thucydides in art, and to make Philistus appear a trifler and a novice, pushes on in his descriptions, through all the battles, sea-fights, and public speeches, in receding which they have been most successful, without meriting so much as to be compared in Pindar's phrase, to
One that on his feet
Would with the Lydian cars compete.
He simply shows himself all along a half-lettered, childish writer; in the words of Diphilus,
—————of wit obese,
O'erlarded with Sicilian grease.
Often he sinks to the very level of Xenarchus, telling us that he thinks it ominous to the Athenians, that their
