History of the Peloponnesian War

Upon this advertisement they abode that night, supposing it had been without fraud. And afterwards, because they went not presently, they thought good to stay there that day also, to the end that the soldiers might pack up their necessaries as commodiously as they could, and begone, leaving all things else behind them save what was necessary for their bodies.

But Gylippus and the Syracusians, with their land forces, went out before them, and not only stopped up the ways in the country about by which the Athenians were likely to pass and kept a guard at the fords of brooks and rivers, but also stood embattled to receive and stop their army in such places as they thought convenient. And with their galleys they rowed to the harbour of the Athenians and towed their galleys away from the shore. Some few whereof they burnt, as the Athenians themselves meant to have done, but the rest at their leisure, as any of them chanced in any place to drive ashore, they afterwards hauled into the city.

After this, when everything seemed unto Nicias and Demosthenes sufficiently prepared, they dislodged, being now the third day from their fight by sea.

It was a lamentable departure, not only for the particulars, as that they marched away with the loss of their whole fleet, and that instead of their great hopes they had endangered both themselves and the state, but also for the dolorous objects which were presented both to the eye and mind of every of them in particular in the leaving of their camp.

For their dead lying unburied, when any one saw his friend on the ground, it struck him at once both with fear and grief. But the living that were sick or wounded both grieved them more than the dead, and were more miserable.