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others for war, he now encouraged the hopes of the Lace- daemonians, and counselled them to seek peace. They confided in him, as on account of his general character for moderation and equity, so, also, because of the kind- ness and care he had shown to the prisoners taken at Pylos and kept in confinement, making their misfortune the more easy to them. The Athenians and the Spartans had before this con- cluded a truce for a year, and during this, by associating with one another, they had tasted again the sweets of peace and security, and unimpeded intercourse with friends and connections, and thus longed for an end of that fighting and bloodshed, and heard with delight the chorus sing such verses as my lance I '11 leave Laid by, for spiders to o'erweave, and remembered with joy the saying, In peace, they who sleep are awaked by the cock-crow, not by the trum- pet. So shutting their ears, with loud reproaches, to the forebodings of those who said that the Fates decreed this to be a war of thrice nine years, the whole question hav- ing been debated, they made a peace. And most people thought, now, indeed, they had got an end of all their evils. And Nicias was in every man's mouth, as one especially beloved of the gods, who, for his piety and de- votion, had been appointed to give a name to the fairest and greatest of all blessings. For in fact they considered the peace Nicias's work, as the war the work of Pericles ; because he, on light occasions, seemed to have plunged the Greeks into great calamities, while Nicias had in- duced them to forget all the evils they had done each other and to be friends again ; and so to this day it is called the Peace of Nicias. The articles being, that the garrisons and towns taken