Summary: By Leslien Lupien Read by Shawn Robertson Setting: Ancient Greece Period: Around the Peloponnesian War Nicias’s legs quivered as he confronted his family clad in his panoply as a hoplite. He had no idea what their reaction would be. Shock, he suspected, especially with his cheeks and nose concealed by the mask-like Corinthian helmet topped with a giant horsehair crest. They might not even recognize him. His family had assembled to await him in the tiny courtyard of their meagre residence in Athens, a baked-mud hovel on a dreary street not far from the Temple of Zeus. They squatted on small, backless wooden stools. He would so much have preferred to meet them in the great courtyard of their real home in the Attica countryside. There they could sit on comfortable wicker chairs with a clear view of their lush wheat fields and numerous olive trees. But that was not possible at present. Their popular assembly had decided to abandon the countryside to the invading Spartans rather than risk Athenian hoplites in unequal battle. They might not even have a farm left.
