2–5
By day it was thought impossible not to be discovered, either in their approach or in their ascent. Having therefore first commanded to take five days' provision of victual, and all the masons and workmen, as also store of casting weapons, and whatsoever they might need, if they overcame, for fortification, he and Eurymedon and Menander, with the whole army, marched about midnight to Epipolae, leaving Nicias in the camp.
Being come to Epipolae at Euryelus, where also the army went up before, they were not only not discovered by the Syracusians that kept the watch, but ascending took a certain fortification of the Syracusians there and killed part of them that kept it.
But the greatest number, escaping, ran presently to the camps, of which there were in Epipolae three walled about without the city, one of Syracusians, one of other Sicilians, and one of confederates, and carried the news of their coming in, and told it to those six hundred Syracusians that kept this part of Epipolae at the first, who presently went forth to meet them.
But Demosthenes and the Athenians lighting on them, though they fought valiantly, put them to flight, and presently marched on, making use of the present heat of the army to finish what he came for before it were too late; and others [going on] in their first course took the cross-wall of the Syracusians, they flying that kept it, and were throwing down the battlements thereof.