Having thus resolved, they put over into the island their men of arms out of every band by lot. Some also had been sent over before by turns; but they which went over now last and were left there, were four hundred and twenty, besides the Helotes that were with them. And their captain was Epitadas, the son of Molobrus.
Demosthenes, when he saw the Lacedaemonians bent to assault him both from their galleys and with their army by land, prepared also to defend the place. And when he had drawn up his galleys, all that were left him, to the land, he placed them athwart the fort and armed the mariners that belonged to them with bucklers, though bad ones, and for the greatest part made of osiers. For they had no means in a desert place to provide themselves of arms. Those they had they took out of a piratical boat of thirty oars and a light-horseman of the Messenians, which came by chance. And the men of arms of the Messenians were about forty, which he made use of amongst the rest.