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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: punishment, but Hyperbolus was the last, as Hipparchus the
Cholargian, who was kin to the tyrant, was the first.
There is no judgment to be made of fortune; nor can any reasoning
bring us to a certainty about it. If Nicias had run the risk with
Alcibiades, whether of the two should undergo the ostracism, he had
either prevailed, and, his rival being expelled the city, he had
remained secure; or, being overcome, he had avoided the utmost
disasters, and preserved the reputation of a most excellent
commander. Meantime I am not ignorant that Theophrastus says, that
when Hyperbolus was banished Phaeax, not Nicias, contested it with
Alcibiades; but most authors differ from him.
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