History of the Peloponnesian War

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;