History of the Peloponnesian War

No decision was reached; but, as is natural when men are in perplexity and more straitly besieged than before, many proposals were made to him, and still more were discussed in the city. For under their present evils they had some suspicion even of one another; and the generals under whose lead these things had happened were deposed, on the ground that their disasters were due to their ill-luck or treachery, and in their stead were chosen Heracleides, Eucles, and Tellias.

Meanwhile Gylippus the Lacedaemonian and the ships from Corinth[*](cf. 6.93.3.) were already at Leucas, proposing to bring aid to Sicily in all haste. As the reports that were coming to them were alarming and all to the same false purport, that Syracuse had already been completely walled off, Gylippus no longer had any hope of Sicily, but wishing to save Italy, he himself and Pythen the Corinthian, with two Laconian vessels and two Corinthian, crossed the Ionian gulf to Tarentum as quickly as possible; while the Corinthians, after manning, in addition to their own ten, two Leucadian and three Ambracian ships, were to sail later.

From Tarentum, Gylippus, after first going on a mission to Thuria, on account of his father having been once a citizen there,[*](Or, reading, with BH, καὶ τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς ἀναιεωσάμενος, “and having revived the sometime citizenship of his father.”) and failing to win them over, weighed anchor and sailed along the coast of Italy. Caught by a wind, which settling in the north blows violently in that region, he was carried out to sea, and then after a most violent storm again reached Tarentum; and there hauling ashore all of his ships that had suffered from the storm he set to repairing them.

But Nicias, although he heard that he was sailing up, despised the small number of his ships, just as the Thurians had done, and thinking they were coming equipped rather as privateers than as men-of-war, he took as yet no precautions.