History of the Peloponnesian War

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;