History of the Peloponnesian War

Toward the close of the same summer the Athenians sent twenty ships to Sicily under the command of Laches son of Melanopus and Charoeades son of Euphiletus.

For the Syracusans and the Leontines were now at war with each other. In alliance with the Syracusans were all the Dorian cities except Camarina—the cities which at the outbreak of the war had joined the Lacedaemonian alliance, although they had taken no active part in the war—while the Chalcidian cities and Camarina were allies of the Leontines. In Italy the Locrians allied themselves with the Syracusans, and the Rhegians with the Leontines, because they were kinsmen.[*](cf. 6.44.3.)

The Leontines and their allies sent an embassy[*](At the head of this embassy was the celebrated rhetorician Gorgins.) to Athens and urged them, both on the ground of an earlier alliance[*](See C.I.A. i. 33 for some fragments of treaties of alliance renewed under the archon Apseudes (433-432 B.C.).) and because they were Ionians, to send them ships; for they were being excluded from both the land and the sea by the Syracusans.

And the Athenians sent the ships, professedly on the ground of their relationship, but really because they wished to prevent the importation of grain from Sicily into the Peloponnesus, and also to make a preliminary test whether the affairs of Sicily could be brought under their own control.

So they established themselves at Rhegium in Italy and proceeded to carry on the war in concert with their allies. And the summer ended.