History of the Peloponnesian War

After that, when it was already midsummer, the departure for Sicily was made. Orders had been given beforehand for most of the allies, as well as for the provision-ships and smaller boats and all the rest of the armament that went with them, to assemble at Corcyra, with the intention that from there they should all cross the Ionian Gulf to the promontory of lapygia in one body. But the Athenians themselves and the allies that were present went down to the Peiraeus at dawn on a day appointed and proceeded to man the ships for the purpose of putting to sea.

And with them went down also all the general throng, everyone, we may almost say, that was in the city, both citizens and strangers, the natives to send off each their own, whether friends or kinsmen or sons, going at once in hope and with lamentations —hope that they would make conquests in Sicily, lamentations that they might never see their friends again, considering how long was the voyage from their own land on which they were being sent. And at this crisis, when under impending dangers they were now about to take leave of one another, the risks came home to them more than when they were voting for the expedition; but still their courage revived at the sight of their present strength because of the abundance of everything they saw before their eyes. The strangers on the other hand and the rest of the multitude had come for a spectacle, in the feeling that the enterprise was noteworthy and surpassing belief.

For this first armament that sailed for Sicily was the costliest and most splendid, belonging to a single city and with a purely Hellenic force, that had ever up to that time set sail. In number of ships, however, and of hoplites the expedition against Epidaurus under Pericles, and the same one afterwards under Hagnon against Potidaea, was not inferior; for in that voyage four thousand Athenian hoplites and three hundred knights and one hundred triremes had participated, and from Lesbos and Chios fifty triremes, and allied troops besides in large numbers.