Book 7
Accordingly Demosthenes and Eurymedon sent with Conon ten ships, the best sailers of all their fleet, to reinforce the ships at Naupactus. They then directed their own attention to the preparations for collecting troops for the expedition, Eurymedon sailing to Corcyra, where he made levies of hoplites and directed the Corcyraeans to man fifteen ships—he was now exercising the joint command with Demosthenes, to which he had been elected, and turned his face again toward Sicily—while Demosthenes gathered slingers and javelin-men from the region of Acarnania.
Meanwhile the envoys, who after the capture of Plemmyrium had gone from Syracuse to visit the cities of Sicily,cf. 7.25.9. had succeeded in their mission, and having raised a body of troops were about to bring them home, when, Nicias, hearing of this in time, sent word to the SicelsSicels, aboriginal inhabitants of Sicily; Siceliots, Hellenic colonists of Sicily. who were allies of the Athenians and controlled the territory through which the troops would have to pass—and these were the Centoripes,Centoripa was situated on the Symaethus above Catana and about twenty-five miles south-west of Aetna. It is now Centorbi (Holm, Gesch. Sic. i. 68). A town Alicyae in this region is unknown. Alicyaeans and others—that they should not allow the enemy to pass, but should get together and prevent their coming through; they would not, he said, attempt it by any other route, since the Agrigentines had refused to give them passage through their territory.
And when the Siceliots were already on the march, the Sicels did as the Athenians requested, and setting an ambush and falling suddenly upon the Siceliots while they were off their guard, destroyed about eight hundred of them and all the envoys except one, the Corinthian; and he conducted those who made their escape, about fifteen hundred in number, to Syracuse.
About the same time the Camarinaeanscf. 6..1, 2. also arrived with reinforcements, consisting of five hundred hoplites, three hundred javelin-men, and three hundred bowmen. The Geloanscf . 6.67.2; 7.1.4. also sent a squadron of five ships and four hundred javelin-men and two hundred cavalry.
For already almost the whole of Sicily—except the Agrigentines, who were neutral, but the rest without exception who had before been watching the course of events—had united with the Syracusans and was giving them aid against the Athenians. As for the Syracusans, after the disaster that happened to them in the country of the Sicels they put off their project of attacking the Athenians immediately;
but Demosthenes and Eurymedon, the army being now ready which they had gathered from Corcyra and the mainland, sailed with all their forces across the Ionian Sea to the Iapygian promontory. Proceeding from there, they touched at the Choerades, which are islands of Iapygia, and took on board their ships some Iapygian javelin-men, one hundred and fifty in number, belonging to the Messapian tribe;
and after they had renewed an old alliance of friendship with Artas, who being a chieftain there had furnished them with the javelin-men, they arrived at Metapontum in Italy. There they persuaded the Metapontines to send with them, in accordance with the terms of their alliance, three hundred javelin-men and two triremes, and taking up these they sailed along the coast to Thuria.The city, not the country. Steph. Byz. says that the name of the city was written θουρία and θούριον as well as θοίριοι.
At Thuria they found that the faction opposed to the Athenians had recently been expelled in a revolution;
and as they were desirous, after collecting their whole armament at that place, to hold a review of it, on the chance that anyone had been left behind, and also to persuade the Thurians both to take part with them in the expedition with all zeal and, in view of the Athenians' present good fortune, to regard the same persons foes and friends as the Athenians did, they waited at Thuria and dealt with these matters.
About this same time the Peloponnesians in the twenty-five ships which lay facing the Athenian fleet at Naupactus in order to cover the passage of the merchant-ships to Sicily, having made preparations for a fight and having manned some additional ships, so that theirs were now but a little fewer than the Athenian ships, anchored off ErineusA small place east of Rhium. in Achaea in the district of Rhypae.
The place where they were anchored was crescent-shaped, and the land army, consisting of the Corinthians and the allies from the neighbourhood, having come to their support, was drawn up on either side of them on the projecting headlands, while the ships held the intervening space blocking the entrance; and the commander of the fleet was Polyanthes, a Corinthian.
Against these the Athenians sailed out from Naupactus with thirty-three ships under the command of Diphilus.He seems to have brought a reinforcement of fifteen ships and to have superseded Conon (cf. 7.31.4).
At first the Corinthians kept quiet; then the signal was raised, when the moment seemed favourable, and advancing against the Athenians they engaged them. And for a long time they withstood one another. Three ships of the Corinthians were destroyed;
of the Athenian ships, none was sunk outright, but some seven were rendered unseaworthy, being struck full in front and having their foreships stove in by the Corinthian galleys, which had their catheadsBeams projecting on either side of the beak and serving to strengthen it. The anchors hung from them. thicker for this very purpose.
The fight was undecided, so that either side claimed the victory— although the Athenians got possession of the wrecks because the wind drove these out to sea and the Corinthians no longer advanced against them—and they drew apart from one another. And no pursuit was made, nor were prisoners taken on either side; for the Corinthians and Peloponnesians were fighting near the shore and thus easily saved themselves, and on the side of the Athenians no ship was sunk.
But when the Athenians had sailed back to Naupactus, the Corinthians at once set up a trophy in token of victory, because a larger number of the enemy's ships had been disabled by them, and they considered that they had not been beaten for the very reason that made the other side consider themselves not victorious. For the Corinthians regarded themselves as conquerors if they were not decisively beaten, and the Athenians considered themselves defeated if they were not decisively victorious.
When, however, the Peloponnesians had sailed away and their army on land had dispersed, the Athenians also set up a trophy in token of victory, in Achaea at a distance of about twenty stadia from Erineus, where the Corinthians were formerly stationed. And so the sea-fight ended.
Demosthenes and Eurymedon,cf. 7.33.6. when the Thurians had been induced to join in the campaign with them with seven hundred hoplites and three hundred javelin-men, gave orders that the ships should sail along the coast toward the territory of Croton, while they themselves, after first reviewing all their land forces at the river Sybaris, advanced through the territory of Thuria.
And when they came to the river Hylias and the Crotoniates sent word to them that their army could not go through their territory with their consent, they went down and bivouacked near the sea at the mouth of the Hylias; and their ships met them at that point. On the next day they embarked their army and proceeded along the coast, touching at the various cities, with the exception of Locri, until they reached Petra in the territory of Rhegium.
The Syracusans, meanwhile, hearing of their approach, wished to make another trial with their fleet, and also with their land-force, which they had been collecting for the very purpose of striking a blow before the Athenian reinforcements came.
They had prepared the fleet generally in such a way as, after the experience of the former sea-fight, seemed likely to offer some advantage, and in particular had shortened the prows of the ships, and had made them stouter by attaching to them thick catheads and stretching underneath stay-beams extending from them to the ships' sides for the length of six cubits both inside and outside the vessel, adopting the same plan as that followed by the Corinthians when they reconstructed their ships at the prows for the battle fought against the Athenian fleet at Naupactus.
For the Syracusans thought that, in a contest with the ships of the Athenians which had not been built in the same manner for defence against their own, but were of light structure about the prows, inasmuch as the Athenians did not use prow-to-prow attacks so much as deploying and ramming the sidesie. did not attack front with the prow, but sailed round (περίπλους) and struck the hostile ship in the side. διέκπλους was breaking through the line so as to ram the enemy's ship in the flank or astern.—they themselves would not be at a disadvantage, and that the fighting in the Great Harbour, where there would be many ships in a narrow space, would be favourable to them; for by employing prow-to-prow attacks they would crush the prows of the enemy's ships, striking as they would with beaks stout and solid against hollow and weak ones. The Athenians, on the other hand, would not find it possible in the narrow space to use either the deploying or the breaking-through manoeuvre, on their skilled use of which they depended most;
for they themselves would as far as possible give them no opportunity of using the latter, and the narrow space would prevent them from deploying. But on the other hand they themselves would chiefly employ that method of crashing into their opponents prow to prow which had formerly been imputed to the ignorance of their pilots, because they would find it greatly to their advantage to do so;
for it would not be possible for the Athenians, if forced out of line, to back water in any other direction than towards the land, and that, too, for only a short distance and to a short stretch of shore—the space in front of their own camp—inasmuch as the Syracusans would command the rest of the harbour.
And the enemy, if they were forced to yield at any point, would be driven together into a small space and all to the same point, so that they would fall foul of each other and be thrown into confusion—the very thing that caused the Athenians most damage in all the fighting there, since it was not possible for them, as it was for the Syracusans, to back water to any part of the harbour. The Syracusans saw, moreover, that the Athenians would not be able to sail round into open water, since they themselves would control not only their entrance into the harbour from the sea outside, but also their backing out of the harbour into the sea, especially as Plemmyrium would be hostile to them and the mouth of the harbour was not large.
Such were the devices adopted by the Syracusans as appropriate to their own skill and strength, and at the same time they had now gained greater confidence as the result of the former sea-fight;
so they made their preparations to attack simultaneously by land and by sea. And a short time before the fleet left its station Gylippus led out the land-force from the city and brought it up against that part of the Athenians' wall that faced the city; and the troops stationed at the Olympieium —all the hoplites that were there and the cavalry and the light-armed forces of the Syracusans— advanced against the wall from the other side; and immediately after this the ships of the Syracusans and their allies sailed out against the Athenian fleet.
The Athenians, who at first thought that the enemy would make an attempt with his land-forces only, were thrown into confusion when they saw the ships also suddenly bearing down upon them. Some arrayed themselves upon the walls and in front of them to meet their assailants there; others went out to confront the forces that were rapidly advancing from the Olympieium and the country outside, consisting of cavalry in large numbers and javelin-men; and still others began to man the ships or to run down to the beach to give aid. And when the vessels were manned they put out to meet the Syracusans with seventy-five ships; the ships of the Syracusans numbering about eighty.
But after they had skirmished with one another for a great part of the day, advancing and backing away, and neither side was able to win any advantage worth mentioning, except that the Syracusans sank one or two of the Athenian ships, they separated;
and the land-force at the same time withdrew from the walls. On the next day the Syracusans kept quiet, giving no indication of what they would do next. Nicias, on the other hand, seeing that the issue of the sea-fight had been a draw and expecting the enemy to attack again, compelled the trierarchs to repair their ships, in case any had suffered damage, and anchored merchant-ships in front of the Athenian stockade, which had been planted in the sea in front of their ships to serve in place of an enclosed harbour.
These merchant-ships he placed at intervals of about two hundred feet from one another, in order that any ships which should be hard pressed might find safe refuge inside and again sail out at leisure. In these preparations the Athenians spent the whole day until nightfall.
On the day following the Syracusans came into conflict with the Athenians at an earlier hour, but using the same offensive as before both by land and by sea.
The two fleets faced one another in the same fashion and again spent a great part of the day in skirmishing, until at last Ariston son of Pyrrhichus, a Corinthian, the best pilot of the Syracusan fleet, persuaded the commanders of the Syracusan naval forces to send word to the officers in control in the city and request them to move down to the shore as quickly as possible the market in which goods are offered for sale, forcing all the hucksters to bring there whatever food supplies they had and sell them, in order that the crews might land and at once take dinner close to the ships, and then after a short interval on the same day make a second attack on the Athenians when they were not expecting it.
The Syracusan commanders accordingly, being won over to this plan, sent a messenger, and the market was prepared. Then the Syracusans, suddenly rowing astern, sailed back to the city, where they disembarked and at once made their dinner on the spot.
But the Athenians, thinking that the enemy had withdrawn to the city because they believed themselves to be outmatched, disembarked at their leisure and busied themselves with various other duties as well as with their dinner, in the belief that for that day at least there would be no more fighting at sea.
But suddenly the Syracusans manned their ships and again sailed against them; whereupon the Athenians, in great confusion and most of them without food, embarked in disorder and at last with much ado got under weigh.
For some time they held off from one another, keeping on their guard; but after a while the Athenians thought it unwise, by further delay, to exhaust themselves with fatigue by their own act, and decided to attack as quickly as possible, and accordingly bore down upon the enemy and with a cheer began the fight.
The Syracusans received them, and employing their ships in prow-to-prow attacks, as they had planned to do, with their specially prepared beaks stove in the forward parts of the Athenian vessels for a considerable distance, while the men on the decks hurled their javelins at the Athenians and inflicted great damage upon them. But far greater damage was done by the Syracusans who rowed around in light boats, darted under the oar-banks of the hostile ships, and running up alongside hurled javelins from their boats in among the sailors.Doubtless through the port-holes through which the oars passed.
Finally, by pursuing this manner of fighting with all their strength, the Syracusans won, and the Athenians took to flight, endeavouring to make their escape through the line of merchant-shipscf. 7.38.2. into their own place of anchorage.
The Syracusan ships pursued them hotly as far as the merchantmen, but there the dolphin-bearing cranesProjecting beams of a crane supporting heavy metal weights in the shape of dolphins, ready to be dropped upon hostile vessels passing near. that were suspended from the merchantmen over the channels between the vessels checked them.