Historians unanimously agree, that the Athenians were instigated to this fatal war by the celebrated Pericles. Thucydides, who was not only cotemporary with Pericles, but actually bore a command in that war, does real honour to that great man’s character; for he assigns his desire of humbling the Spartans, and his zeal for the glory and interest of his country, as the real motives of his conduct upon that occasion.[71] But, as a detail of this tedious and ruinous war is wholly foreign to my purpose, I shall only remark, that if ever union and harmony are necessary to the preservation of a state, they are more essentially so when that state is engaged in a dubious war with a powerful enemy. For not only the continuation, but the event, of that long war, so fatal to the Athenians, must (humanly speaking) be wholly attributed to the disunion of their counsels, and the perpetual fluctuation in their measures, occasioned by the influence of the ambitious and factious demagogues. Not the calamities of war, nor the most dreadful plague, ever yet recorded in history, were able to fix the volatile temper of that unsteady people.[72] Elate beyond measure with any good success, they were deaf to the most reasonable overtures of peace from their enemies, and their views were unbounded. Equally dejected with any defeat, they thought the enemy just at their doors, and threw the whole blame upon their commanders, who were always treated as unpardonably criminal when unsuccessful. The demagogues, who watched every turn of temper in that variable people, took care to adapt every circumstance that offered to their own ambitious views, either of gaining or supporting an ascendency in the state, which kept up a perpetual spirit of faction in that unhappy republick. Thus, in the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, Cleon, a noisy seditious demagogue, declaimed violently against Pericles, and was the constant opposer of all his measures:[73] but the firmness and superior abilities of that great man enabled him to baffle all his antagonists. When Pericles was carried off by that fatal pestilence which almost depopulated Athens, the nobility, jealous of that sway which Cleon had acquired over the people, set up Nicias in opposition. Nicias was honest, and a real lover of his country, but a man of no great abilities; and though an experienced officer, yet cautious and diffident even to timidity.[74] In his temper he was mild, humane, and averse to bloodshed, and laboured to put an end to a war which spread such general destruction: but all his measures were opposed by the turbulent Cleon; for when the Spartans proposed an accommodation, Cleon persuaded the Athenians to insist upon such high terms that the treaty broke off, and war was again renewed with the same inveterate fury: but the incendiary Cleon, the chief obstacle to all pacifick measures, falling in battle in the tenth year of that war, negociations were again set on foot, and a peace for fifty years