Nicias and Crassus were the rich, cautious men of their cities, and both died at the head of an expedition they should not have led. Nicias was destroyed in Sicily. Crassus was destroyed in Parthia.

Plutarch says Nicias came by his money more cleanly, and that his fear of the Athenian assembly was its own kind of cowardice. Crassus made his fortune on other men's ruin, and his hunger for a command equal to Caesar and Pompey took him into the desert. The two disasters have the same shape.