History of the Peloponnesian War

Brasidas showed himself most conspicuous of all. Being captain of a galley, he noticed that the captains and pilots, because the shore was rocky, were inclined to hesitate and be careful of their ships, even when it seemed to be practicable to make a landing, for fear of dashing them to pieces. He would therefore shout that it ill became them through being thrifty of timber to allow their enemy to have built a fort in their country; nay, he urged, they must break their own ships so as to force a landing; and the allies he bade, in return for great benefits received from the Lacedaemonians, not to shrink from making them a free gift of their ships in the present emergency, but to run them aground, get ashore in any way they could, and master both the men and the place.

And he not only urged on the rest in this way, but, compelling his own pilot to beach his ship, he made for the gangway; and in trying to land he was knocked back by the Athenians, and after receiving many wounds fainted away. As he fell into the forward part of the ship his shield slipped off into the sea, and, being carried ashore, was picked up by the Athenians, who afterward used it for the trophy which they set up in commemoration of this attack.

The crews of the other Peloponnesian ships showed no lack of zeal, but were unable to land, both by reason of the difficulty of the ground and because the Athenians stood firm and would not give way at all.

In such fashion had fortune swung round that the Athenians, fighting on land, and Laconian land at that, were trying to ward off a Lacedaemonian attack from the sea, while the Lacedaemonians, fighting in ships, were trying to effect a landing upon their own territory, now hostile, in the face of the Athenians. For at this time it was the special renown ot the Lacedaemonians that they were a land power and invincible with their army, and of the Athenians that they were seamen and vastly superior with their fleet.