History of the Peloponnesian War

and after they had renewed an old alliance of friendship with Artas, who being a chieftain there had furnished them with the javelin-men, they arrived at Metapontum in Italy. There they persuaded the Metapontines to send with them, in accordance with the terms of their alliance, three hundred javelin-men and two triremes, and taking up these they sailed along the coast to Thuria.[*](The city, not the country. Steph. Byz. says that the name of the city was written θουρία and θούριον as well as θοίριοι.)

At Thuria they found that the faction opposed to the Athenians had recently been expelled in a revolution;

and as they were desirous, after collecting their whole armament at that place, to hold a review of it, on the chance that anyone had been left behind, and also to persuade the Thurians both to take part with them in the expedition with all zeal and, in view of the Athenians' present good fortune, to regard the same persons foes and friends as the Athenians did, they waited at Thuria and dealt with these matters.

About this same time the Peloponnesians in the twenty-five ships which lay facing the Athenian fleet at Naupactus in order to cover the passage of the merchant-ships to Sicily, having made preparations for a fight and having manned some additional ships, so that theirs were now but a little fewer than the Athenian ships, anchored off Erineus[*](A small place east of Rhium.) in Achaea in the district of Rhypae.

The place where they were anchored was crescent-shaped, and the land army, consisting of the Corinthians and the allies from the neighbourhood, having come to their support, was drawn up on either side of them on the projecting headlands, while the ships held the intervening space blocking the entrance; and the commander of the fleet was Polyanthes, a Corinthian.