ABSTRACT
Nikias, the leader of the aristocratic party, derived his wealth and influence chiefly from the exploitation of silver mines; and Thucydides was himself engaged in the gold-mining industry. Whereas, according to Thucydides, Pericles had to use his utmost endeavours to induce the Athenian people first to go to war and then to persevere in it. Thucydides tells us that one of the disadvantages which handicapped the Peloponnesians in war was their dependence for food supplies on their own agricultural labour: this debarred them from prolonged campaigning on land and, of course, from manning ships. The Athenian people, at the outset of the Peloponnesian War, according to Thucydides, far from envisaging the possibility of getting more, were terribly afraid that they might lose what they had got—and Pericles himself based his strategy expressly on the prudent avoidance of all attempts at expansion during the war.
