History of the Peloponnesian War

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.

About the same time in this summer, the Lacedaemonians and their allies invaded Argos and ravaged most of the country. And the Athenians brought succour to the Argives with thirty ships, an act which violated their treaty with the Lacedaemonians in the most overt manner.

For before this they waged the war, in cooperation with the Argives and Mantineans, by predatory excursions from Pylos and by making landings round the rest of the Peloponnesus rather than in Laconia; and although the Argives frequently urged them only to make a landing with arms on Laconian territory, devastate in concert with them even the least part, and then go away, they refused. But at this time, under the command of Pythodorus, Laespodias, and Demaratus, they landed at Epidaurus Limera, Prasiae, and other places, and laid waste some of their territory, and so gave the Lacedaemonians from now on a more plausible excuse for defending themselves against the Athenians.