Book 7
Whereupon Demosthenes and Eurymedon sent ten galleys more to those at Naupactus, the nimblest of the whole fleet, by Conon himself, and went themselves about furnishing of what belonged to the army. Of whom Eurymedon went to Corcyra, and having appointed them there to man fifteen galleys, levied men of arms; for now giving over his course to Athens, he joined with Demosthenes, as having been elected with him in the charge of general; and Demosthenes took up slingers and darters in the parts about Acarnania.
The ambassadors of the Syracusians, which after the taking of Plemmyrium had been sent unto the cities about, having now obtained and levied an army amongst them, were conducting the same to Syracuse. But Nicias, upon intelligence thereof, sent unto such cities of the Siculi as had the passages and were their confederates, the Centoripines, Halicyaeans, and others, not to suffer the enemy to go by, but to unite themselves and stop them, for that they would not so much as offer to pass any other way, seeing the Agrigentines had already denied them.
When the Sicilians were marching, the Siculi, as the Athenians had desired them, put themselves in ambush in three several places, and setting upon them unawares and on a sudden, slew about eight hundred of them, and all the ambassadors save only one, a Corinthian, which conducted the rest that escaped, being about fifteen hundred, to Syracuse.
About the same time came unto them also the aid of the Camarinaeans, five hundred men of arms, three hundred darters, and three hundred archers. Also the Geloans sent them men for five galleys, besides four hundred darters and two hundred horsemen.
For now all Sicily, except the Agrigentines, who were neutral, but all the rest, who before stood looking on, came in to the Syracusian side against the Athenians.
[Nevertheless], the Syracusians, after this blow received amongst the Siculi, held their hands and assaulted not the Athenians for a while. Demosthenes and Eurymedon, having their army now ready, crossed over from Corcyra and the continent with the whole army to the promontory of Iapygia. From thence they went to the Choerades, islands of Iapygia, and here took in certain Iapygian darters to the number of two hundred and fifty, of the Messapian nation.
And having renewed a certain ancient alliance with Artas, who reigned there and granted them those darters, they went thence to Metapontum, a city of Italy. There, by virtue of a league, they got two galleys and three hundred darters, which taken aboard, they kept along the shore till they came to the territory of Thurii.
Here they found the adverse faction to the Athenians to have been lately driven out in a sedition.
And because they desired to muster their army here, that they might see if any were left behind, and persuade the Thurians to join with them freely in the war, and, as things stood, to have for friends and enemies the same that were so to the Athenians; they stayed about that in the territory of the Thurians.
The Peloponnesians and the rest, who were at the same time in the twenty-five galleys that for safeguard of the ships lay opposite to the galleys before Naupactus, having prepared themselves for battle, and with more galleys, so as they were little inferior in number to those of the Athenians, went to an anchor under Irineus of Achaia in Rhypica. The place where they rode was in form like a half moon;
and their land forces they had ready on either side to assist them, both Corinthians and their other confederates of those parts, embattled upon the points of the promontory; and their galleys made up the space between, under the command of Polyanthes, a Corinthian.
Against these the Athenians came up with thirty-three galleys from Naupactus, commanded by Diphilus. The Corinthians at first lay still;
but afterwards when they saw their time, and the signal given, they charged the Athenians and the fight began. They held each other to it long. The Athenians sank three galleys of the Corinthians;
and though none of their own were sunk, yet seven were made unserviceable, which, having encountered the Corinthian galleys a-head, were torn on both sides between the beaks and the oars by the beaks of the Corinthian galleys, made stronger for the same purpose. After they had fought with equal fortune, and so as both sides challenged the victory;
though yet the Athenians were masters of the wrecks, as driven by the wind into the main, and because the Corinthians came not out to renew the fight, they at length parted. There was no chasing of men that fled, nor a prisoner taken on either side; because the Peloponnesians and Corinthians fighting near the land easily escaped, nor was there any galley of the Athenians sunk.
But when the Athenians were gone back to Naupactus, the Corinthians presently set up a trophy as victors, in regard that more of the Athenian galleys were made unserviceable than of theirs, and thought themselves not to have had the worse for the same reason that the others thought themselves not to have had the better. For the Corinthians think they have the better when they have not much the worse; and the Athenians think they have the worse when they have not much the better.
And when the Peloponnesians were gone and their army by land dissolved, the Athenians also set up a trophy in Achaia, as if the victory had been theirs, distant from Erineus, where the Peloponnesians rode, about twenty furlongs. This was the success of that battle by sea.
Demosthenes and Eurymedon, after the Thurians had put in readiness to go with them seven hundred men of arms and three hundred darters, commanded their galleys to go along the coast to Croton, and conducted their land soldiers, having first taken a muster of them all upon the side of the river Sybaris, through the territory of the Thurians.
But coming to the river Hylias, upon word sent them from the men of Croton that if the army went through their territory it should be against their will, they marched down to the seaside and to the mouth of the river Hylias, where they stayed all that night and were met by their galleys. The next day embarking, they kept along the shore and touched at every town saving Locri till they arrived at Petra in the territory of Rhegium.
The Syracusians in the meantime, upon intelligence of their coming on, resolved to try again what they could do with their navy and with their new supply of landmen, which they had gotten together on purpose to fight with the Athenians before Demosthenes and Eurymedon should arrive.
And they furnished their navy, both otherwise and according to the advantages they had learnt in the last battle, and also made shorter the heads of their galleys, and thereby stronger, and made beaks to them of a great thickness, which they also strengthened with rafters fastened to the sides of the galleys, both within and without, of six cubits long, in such manner as the Corinthians had armed their galleys a-head to fight with those before Naupactus.
For the Syracusians made account that against the Athenian galleys not so built, but weak before, as not using so much to meet the enemy a-head as upon the side by fetching a compass, they could not but have the better, and that to fight in the great haven, many galleys in not much room was an advantage to them; for that using the direct encounter, they should break with their firm and thick beaks the hollow and infirm foreparts of the galleys of their enemies;
and that the Athenians, in that narrow room, would want means both to go about and to go through them, which was the point of art they most relied on. For as for their passing through, they would hinder it themselves as much as they could; and for fetching compass, the straitness of the place would not suffer it.
And that fighting a-head, which seemed before to be want of skill in the masters [to do otherwise], was what they would now principally make use of; for in this would be their principal advantage. For the Athenians, if overcome, would have no retiring but to the land, which was but a little way off and little in compass, near their own camp; and of the rest of the haven themselves should be masters.
And the enemy being pressed, could not choose, thronging together into a little room and all into one and the same place, but disorder one another, which was indeed the thing that in all their battles by sea did the Athenians the greatest hurt, having not, as the Syracusians had, the liberty of the whole haven to retire unto. And to go about into a place of more room, they having it in their power to set upon them from the main sea, and to retire again at pleasure, they should never be able, especially having Plemmyrium for enemy, and the haven's mouth not being large.
The Syracusians, having devised thus much over and above their former skill and strength, and far more confident now since the former battle by sea, assaulted them both with their army and with their navy at once.
The landmen from the city Gylippus drew sooner out a little and brought them to the wall of the Athenians' camp upon the side toward the city; and from Olympieium, the men of arms, all that were there, and the horsemen and light armed of the Syracusians came up to the wall on the other side. And by and by after, came sailing forth also the galleys of the Syracusians and their confederates.
The Athenians, that thought at first they would have made the attempt only with their landmen, seeing also the galleys on a sudden coming towards them, were in confusion; and some of them put themselves in order upon and before the walls against those that came from the city; and others went out to meet the horsemen and darters that were coming in great numbers and with speed from Olympieium and the parts without; others again went aboard, and withal came to aid those ashore. But when the galleys were manned they put off, being seventy-five in number, and those of Syracuse about eighty.
Having spent much of the day in charging and retiring and trying each other, and performed nothing worth the mentioning, save that the Syracusians sank a galley or two of the Athenians, they parted again; and the land soldiers retired at the same time from the wall of the Athenian camp.
The next day the Syracusians lay still without showing any sign of what they meant to do. Yet Nicias, seeing that the battle by sea was with equality and imagining that they would fight again, made the captains to repair their galleys, such as had been torn, and two great ships to be moored without those piles which he had driven into the sea before his galleys, to be instead of a haven enclosed.
These ships he placed about two acres' breadth asunder, to the end, if any galley chanced to be pressed, it might safely run in and again go safely out at leisure. In performing of this the Athenians spent a whole day from morning until night.
The next day the Syracusians assaulted the Athenians again with the same forces, both by sea and land, that they had done before, but begun earlier in the morning;
and being opposed fleet against fleet, they drew out a great part of the day now again as before in attempting upon each other without effect. Till at last Ariston, the son of Pyrrhichus, a Corinthian, the most expert master that the Syracusians had in their fleet, persuaded the commanders in the navy to send to such in the city as it belonged to and command that the market should be speedily kept at the seaside, and to compel every man to bring thither whatsoever he had fit for meat and there to sell it, that the mariners, disbarking, might presently dine by the galleys' side, and quickly again, unlooked for, assault the Athenians afresh the same day.
This advice being liked, they sent a messenger and the market was furnished. And the Syracusians suddenly rowed astern towards the city, and disbarking, dined there right on the shore.
The Athenians, supposing they had retired towards the city as vanquished, landed at leisure, and amongst other business went about the dressing of their dinner, as not expecting to have fought again the same day. But the Syracusians, suddenly going aboard, came towards them again;
and the Athenians, in great tumult and for the most part undined, embarking disorderly, at length with much ado went out to meet them. For a while they held their hands on both sides and but observed each other.
But anon after, the Athenians thought not fit by longer dallying to overcome themselves with their own labour, but rather to fight as soon as they could, and thereupon at once with a joint shout charged the enemy, and the fight began.
The Syracusians received [and resisted] their charge, and fighting, as they had before determined, with their galleys head to head with those of the Athenians, and provided with beaks for the purpose, brake the galleys of the Athenians very much between the heads of the galleys and the oars. The Athenians were also annoyed much by the darters from the decks, but much more by those Syracusians who, going about in small boats, passed under the rows of the oars of the enemy's galleys, and coming close to their sides, threw their darts at the mariners from thence.
The Syracusians, having fought in this manner with the utmost of their strength, in the end gat the victory; and the Athenians, between the [two] ships, escaped into their harbour.
The Syracusian galleys chased them as far as to those ships; but the dolphins hanging from the masts over the entrance of the harbour forbade them to follow any further.