440) with Pericles against the revolted Samians.[1] It must be remembered, however, that his early training had fitted him for active as well as artistic life, and that such a choice implies, on the part of those who made it, a knowledge of the personal character and capacities of the man which we do not possess. Even we are not accustomed to look on success in dramatic poetry or works of fiction as excluding a man from the higher offices of state. As might be expected in one who first entered on this line of service at the age of fifty-five, he does not appear to have either gained or sought military distinction. He could confess with a smile that he understood how to write poetry, but not how to command an army. He could acknowledge that though he was older in years, Nikias was, by right of skill and experience, his senior officer.[2] For us it has but little interest to learn what part he took in bringing up reinforcements from Chios, or, in a later campaign, in laying waste the territory of Sparta, or subduing the cities of Achaia. Far more noteworthy is the fact, that he was thus brought into close companionship with Pericles. Doubtless the two men must have met and known each other be-
- ↑ Vit. Anon. Comp. Athen., xiii. p. 604.
- ↑ Plutarch, Nikias, c. 15. The anecdote occurs, somewhat parenthetically, in the history of the Sicilian expedition, without a precise date. If we could infer from this that the poet was then one of the ten Athenian generals, we should get a fact of great interest; but Plutarch does not say that he was so, and mentions (c. 2) that Nikias had acted, young as he then was, as a general with Pericles.
