History of the Peloponnesian War

But when the Athenians had sailed back to Naupactus, the Corinthians at once set up a trophy in token of victory, because a larger number of the enemy's ships had been disabled by them, and they considered that they had not been beaten for the very reason that made the other side consider themselves not victorious. For the Corinthians regarded themselves as conquerors if they were not decisively beaten, and the Athenians considered themselves defeated if they were not decisively victorious.

When, however, the Peloponnesians had sailed away and their army on land had dispersed, the Athenians also set up a trophy in token of victory, in Achaea at a distance of about twenty stadia from Erineus, where the Corinthians were formerly stationed. And so the sea-fight ended.

Demosthenes and Eurymedon,[*](cf. 7.33.6.) when the Thurians had been induced to join in the campaign with them with seven hundred hoplites and three hundred javelin-men, gave orders that the ships should sail along the coast toward the territory of Croton, while they themselves, after first reviewing all their land forces at the river Sybaris, advanced through the territory of Thuria.

And when they came to the river Hylias and the Crotoniates sent word to them that their army could not go through their territory with their consent, they went down and bivouacked near the sea at the mouth of the Hylias; and their ships met them at that point. On the next day they embarked their army and proceeded along the coast, touching at the various cities, with the exception of Locri, until they reached Petra in the territory of Rhegium.

The Syracusans, meanwhile, hearing of their approach, wished to make another trial with their fleet, and also with their land-force, which they had been collecting for the very purpose of striking a blow before the Athenian reinforcements came.

They had prepared the fleet generally in such a way as, after the experience of the former sea-fight, seemed likely to offer some advantage, and in particular had shortened the prows of the ships, and had made them stouter by attaching to them thick catheads and stretching underneath stay-beams extending from them to the ships' sides for the length of six cubits both inside and outside the vessel, adopting the same plan as that followed by the Corinthians when they reconstructed their ships at the prows for the battle fought against the Athenian fleet at Naupactus.

For the Syracusans thought that, in a contest with the ships of the Athenians which had not been built in the same manner for defence against their own, but were of light structure about the prows, inasmuch as the Athenians did not use prow-to-prow attacks so much as deploying and ramming the sides[*](ie. did not attack front with the prow, but sailed round (περίπλους) and struck the hostile ship in the side. διέκπλους was breaking through the line so as to ram the enemy's ship in the flank or astern.)—they themselves would not be at a disadvantage, and that the fighting in the Great Harbour, where there would be many ships in a narrow space, would be favourable to them; for by employing prow-to-prow attacks they would crush the prows of the enemy's ships, striking as they would with beaks stout and solid against hollow and weak ones. The Athenians, on the other hand, would not find it possible in the narrow space to use either the deploying or the breaking-through manoeuvre, on their skilled use of which they depended most;

for they themselves would as far as possible give them no opportunity of using the latter, and the narrow space would prevent them from deploying. But on the other hand they themselves would chiefly employ that method of crashing into their opponents prow to prow which had formerly been imputed to the ignorance of their pilots, because they would find it greatly to their advantage to do so;