Peace
This time, Nicias is coming back to Athens, and he finds that Cleon and a friend of Cleon are dead. This is good news, because they had both been stirring up trouble. Nicias found that both the Spartans and the Athenians were tired of the war. He made a friendship between the two cities, and also helped some of the other states of Greece as well, helping to free them from the evils and calamities that they labored under, thus making a great name for himself in statecraft. He found that everywhere the men of substance, the elder men, and the farmers all inclined to peace. And when the Athenians had tasted peace, they liked it, and wanted no more war. They remembered with joy this line:
My lance I'll leave
Laid by, for spiders to o'weave
and the proverb:
Those in peace are wakened by the cock, not by the trumpet
So he made peace betwixt them, and to this day it is called the Peace of Nicias.
I think it is not surprising that he found that everywhere the men of substance, the elder men, and the farmers all inclined to peace, because the war was getting tiresome, and the people wanted to be without fear. And I think that even though they wanted peace, they needed a leader to rouse them to action.
Bell
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