History of the Peloponnesian War

Demosthenes, however, would not consent on any consideration whatever to continue the siege; if they could not lead the army home without a vote of the Athenians, but must stay on in Sicily, he said that they should do this only after removing to Thapsus or to Catana. From this new base they could overrun with their army large tracts of the country and support themselves by ravaging the enemy's property, and at the same time do him damage; and as for the fleet, they would thenceforth do their fighting, not in a narrow space, which was more in the enemy's favour, but in the open sea, where there was plenty of room and the advantages of skill would be on their side, and they would not have to make their retreats and advances setting out from and falling back into a scant and circumscribed base.

To sum up his position in a word, he said that he did not at all approve of remaining any longer in the same place, but urged that they should now as quickly as possible move to another place and make no delay.

And Eurymedon concurred with him in these views. But since Nicias objected, some hesitation and delay ensued; and at the same time there was a suspicion that it was because of some superior knowledge that he insisted. And so in this way the Athenians delayed to the end and continued to remain where they were.

Meanwhile Gylippus and Sicanus[*](cf. ch. xlvi.) had returned to Syracuse. Sicanus had failed to win over Agrigentum, for while he was still at Gela the party at Agrigentum that was friendly to the Syracusans had been driven out; but Gylippus brought with him a large additional force from Sicily as well as the hoplites that had been sent on board the merchant-ships from the Peloponnesus the preceding spring,[*](cf. 7.19.3.) and had reached Selinus on their way from Libya. It seems that they had been driven out of their course to Libya, where the Cyrenaeans had given them two triremes and pilots for their voyage;

as they sailed along the shore of Libya they had joined forces with the Euesperitae, who were being besieged by the Libyans, and had defeated the latter; and sailing thence along the coast to Neapolis, an emporium of the Carthaginians, from which place the distance to Sicily is shortest—two days and one night—and from there crossing to Sicily, they arrived at Selinus.

As soon as these reinforcements arrived, the Syracusans began their preparations to attack the Athenians again on both elements—by sea and by land. The Athenian generals, on the other hand, seeing that the enemy had been reinforced by a fresh army, while their own situation was not only not improving, but on the contrary was daily growing worse in all respects, and especially through the distress caused by the sickness among the troops, repented that they had not moved away before. And since even Nicias no longer opposed as earnestly as before, but only urged that the matter be not openly put to a vote, they sent out word as secretly as possible to all the officers for a departure by sea from the camp, and that they should be ready whenever the signal should be given.

But after all was ready and when they were about to make their departure, the moon, which happened then to be at the full, was eclipsed.[*](August 27, 413 B.C.) And most of the Athenians, taking the incident to heart, urged the generals to wait. Nicias also, who was somewhat too much given to divination and the like, refused even to discuss further the question of their removal until they should have waited thrice nine days, as the soothsayers prescribed. Such, then, was the reason why the Athenians delayed and stayed on.

The Syracusans on their part, on learning about this, were far more aroused than before and determined not to give the Athenians any respite, seeing that these had now of their own act confessed themselves no longer superior either with their fleet or with their land-force, for otherwise they would not have laid plans for their departure; and at the same time, because they did not want them to settle down somewhere else in Sicily where it would be more difficult to carry on war against them, they were determined to force them to fight a sea-battle as quickly as possible on the spot, in a place that suited themselves.

Accordingly they regularly manned their ships and practised for as many days as they thought sufficient. Then, when the favourable moment came, they assaulted on the first day the Athenian walls, and when a small body of hoplites and of horsemen came out against them by certain gates, they cut off a number of the hoplites, and putting them to flight followed in pursuit; and as the entrance to the camp was narrow, the Athenians lost seventy horses and a few of the hoplites.

So on this first day the Syracusan army withdrew; but on the following day they sailed out with their ships, seventy-six in number, and at the same time advanced with their land-force against the walls. The Athenians put out to sea to meet them with eighty-six ships, and closing with them commenced the battle.

Eurymedon, who commanded the right wing of the Athenians, wished to surround the ships of the enemy, and had therefore steered his ships out from the line rather too near the shore, when the Syracusans and their allies, after they had defeated the Athenian centre, cut off him also in a recess of the inner bay of the harbour and destroyed both him and the ships that followed him; and after that they set about pursuing the entire Athenian fleet and driving them ashore.