the Senate, and when Caesar routed thirty thousand Germans, Cato proposed that he should be delivered up to the vanquished, and that thus the anger of the gods should be turned away from the city upon the author of so great a crime as he had committed by breaking his word.  Yet the Romans slighted Cato’s proposals and held a solemn thanksgiving for fifteen days to show their joy at the news.  How many days then must we imagine they would have spent in rejoicing if Crassus had sent despatches announcing the capture of Babylon, and then had reduced Media, Persia, Hyrkania, Susa, and Bactria to the condition of Roman provinces.  “If a man must do wrong,” as Euripides says of those who cannot live in peace, and be contented when they are well off, they should do it on a grand scale like this, not capture contemptible places like Skandeia or Mende, or chase the people of AEgina, like birds who have been turned out of their nests.  If we are to do an injustice, let us not do it in a miserable pettifogging way, but imitate such great examples as Crassus and Alexander the Great.  Those who praise the one of these great men, and blame the other, do so only because they are unable to see any other distinction between them except that the one failed and the other succeeded.

V. When acting as general, Nikias did many great exploits, for he was many times victorious, all but took Syracuse, and ought not justly to bear the blame of the whole Sicilian disaster, because of his disease, and the ill will which some bore him at Athens.  Crassus on the other hand committed so many mistakes as to put it out of the power of fortune to aid him, so that one wonders not so much that his folly was overcome by the Parthians as that it could overcome the good fortune of the Romans.  Now as the one never disregarded religious observances and omens, the other despised them all, and yet both alike perished, it is hard to say what inference we ought to draw, as to which acted most wisely, yet we must incline rather to the side of him who followed the established rule in such matters rather than that of him who insolently discarded all such observances.  In his death Crassus is more to be commended, because he yielded himself against his will in consequence of the entreaties of his friends, and was most treacherously deceived by the enemy, while Nikias delivered himself up to his enemies through a base and cowardly desire to save his life, and thus made his end more infamous.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 100:  I cannot find that Nikias took any part in the massacre of the people of Melos in 416 B.C.]

LIFE OF SERTORIUS.