History of the Peloponnesian War

Returning thence to Rhegium, they found that Pythodorus son of Isolochus, an Athenian general, had come to succeed Laches in command of the fleet.

For their allies in Sicily had sailed to Athens and persuaded them to aid them with a larger fleet; for though their territory was dominated by the Syracusans, yet since they were kept from the sea by only a few ships they were collecting a fleet and making preparations with the determination not to submit.

And the Athenians manned forty ships to send to them, partly because they believed that the war in Sicily could sooner be brought to an end in this way, and partly because they wished to give practice to their fleet.

Accordingly they despatched one of their generals, Pythodorus, with a few ships, and were planning later on to send Sophocles son of Sostratidas and Eurymedon son of Thucles with the main body of the fleet.

Pythodorus, now that he had taken over the command of Laches' ships, sailed toward the end of the winter against the Locrian fort which Laches had previously captured;[*](cf. ch. xcix.) but he was defeated in battle by the Locrians and returned to Rhegium.

At the beginning of the following spring[*](425 B.C.) the stream of fire burst from Aetna, as it had on

former occasions. And it devastated a portion of the territory of the Catanaeans who dwell on the slope of Mount Aetna, the highest mountain in Sicily. This eruption took place, it is said, fifty years after the last preceding one;[*](The eruption of Aetna mentioned in the Parian Marble, lii. 67 f., as contemporaneous with the battle of Plataea (479 B.C.); so that the expression “fiftieth year” is not quiet exact. From his form of expression in what follows, it is clear that Thucydides, when he wrote this passage, could have had no knowledge of an eruption later than 425 B.C. He must therefore have died before that of 396 B.C. or, if he lived after that date, never revised this passage.) and three eruptions all told are reported to have occurred since Sicily has been inhabited by

the Hellenes.[*](ie. , since the eighth century; see the account at the beginning of Book vi.) Such was the course of events in this winter, and therewith ended the sixth year of this war of which Thucydides composed the history.

The next summer, about the time of the earing[*](425 B.C.) of the grain, ten Syracusan and as many Locrian ships sailed to Messene in Sicily and occupied it, going thither on the invitation of the inhabitants; and Messene revolted