History of the Peloponnesian War

When this proclamation had been made and they had observed the city and the harbours and the features of the country which they would have to make their base for warlike operations, they sailed back to Catana.

An assembly being held there, the Catanaeans would not receive the army but bade the generals come in and say what they wanted. While, then, Alcibiades was speaking, and the attention of the people in the city was wholly directed to the assembly, the soldiers, breaking unobserved through a posterngate that had been badly built into the wall, entered and were walking about in the market-place.

Those Catanaeans who were partisans of the Syracusans, seeing the soldiers inside, at once became much frightened and slipped away, not in any large numbers; the others voted alliance with the Athenians and bade them bring the rest of their army from Rhegium.