Indeed, he often lapses unawares into the manner of Xenarchus, as, for instance, when he says he thinks it was a bad omen for the Athenians that Nicias, whose name was derived from victory, declined at first to head their expedition; also that, by the mutilation of the Hermae, See Plut. Nic. 13.2 . Heaven indicated to them in advance that by the hands of Hermocrates the son of Hermon they were to suffer most of their reverses during the war; and, further, that it was fitting that Heracles should aid the Syracusans, for the sake of their goddess Cora who delivered Cerberus into his hands, but should be angry with the Athenians because they were trying to succour the Egestaeans although they were descendants of the Trojans, whose city he had once destroyed because of the wrong done him by Laomedon their king. As for Timaeus, he may possibly have been moved to write thus in the exercise of the same critical taste which led him to correct the language of Philistus and abuse Plato and Aristotle; but as for me, I feel that jealous rivalry with other writers in matters of diction is altogether undignified and pedantic, and if it be practised toward what is beyond all imitation, utterly silly.