History of the Peloponnesian War

And it was especially in consequence of this that the condition of the crews then first began to decline. For their water supply was scanty and not near at hand, and at the same time, whenever the sailors went out to fetch firewood they suffered heavily at the hands of the Syracusan horsemen, who overran the country. For the Syracusans had posted a third part of their cavalry at the hamlet near the Olympieum on account of the troops at Plemmyrium, that these might not go out and commit depredations.

Meanwhile Nicias, learning that the rest of the Corinthian ships were sailing up, sent twenty vessels to watch for them, with orders to waylay them in the neighbourhood of Locri, Rhegium, or the approach to Sicily.

Gylippus, on the other hand, continued to build the wall across Epipolae, using the stones which the Athenians had previously dumped along the line for their own use, and at the same time he continually led out the Syracusans and their allies and drew them up before the wall; and the Athenians would always draw up to meet them.

But when it seemed to Gylippus that the right moment had come, he commenced the onset; and coming to close quarters they fought between the walls, where the cavalry of the Syracusans was of no use.

And when the Syracusans and their allies had been defeated and had taken up their dead under a truce, and the Athenians had set up a trophy, Gylippus called his troops together and said that the mistake was not theirs but his own, for by arranging his line of battle too much between the walls he had deprived them of the benefit of their cavalry and javelin-men. He would therefore now lead them on again, and he urged them to make up their minds to this—that in point of men and equipment they would not be inferior;