1
During the same winter the Athenians wished to416 B.C. sail again to Sicily with a larger armament than that conducted by Laches and Eurymedon,Two separate earlier expeditions, one under Laches and Charoeades, 427 B.C. (3.86.1), the other under Pythodorus. Sophocles and Eurymedon, 424 B.C. (4.2.), are here comprised under the one formula. and subdue it, if they could, most of them being ignorant of the great size of the island and of the large number of its inhabitants, Hellenic as well as Barbarian, and that they were undertaking a war not very much inferior to that against
the Peloponnesians. For the voyage round Sicily, for a merchantman, is one of not much less than eight days; and although it is so large only a distance of about twenty stadia of the sea divides the island from the mainland.
Sicily was settled originally in the following manner, and the whole number of the nations that occupied it were these. Most ancient of all those who are reported to have settled in any part of the island were the Cyclopes and Laestrygonians, as to whom, however, I am able to tell neither their stock nor whence they came nor whither they went;