Niceas

If Diodorus is Kineas’s best friend, Niceas must be his “other” best friend, although there is a firm dividing line of social class. Niceas is a free Athenian, a citizen, but of the poorest kind, and he has been a prostitute in a brothel without being a slave. However, Niceas was rescued from this life by Kineas’s family (in a story that is recounted in Tyrant: Storm of Arrows) and becomes, in effect, Kineas’s squire.

In addition to being something like a servant, Niceas is the hyperetes of the Olbian hippeis, having served in that capacity with the Allied Cavalry. It is possible that the word hyperetes refers to military servants, as it does in Thucydides, but it is also possible that these paid attendants of cavalry officers were the equivalent of troop Sergeant-Majors. These men would be responsible for horse care and the thousands of details that keep a troop of cavalry operational; responsible also, perhaps, for the training cycle that the “young gentlemen” would probably avoid if they could. I give Niceas the trumpet, although that office was called the salpingtes.

If Niceas seems rude or blunt, I invite the reader to peruse his Aristophanes, from whence a great deal of Niceas was drawn!