History of the Peloponnesian War

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