History of the Peloponnesian War

Now it was in this strait that the Syracusans and their allieswere compelled one day toward evening to fight for a vessel which was making the passage; and with thirty odd ships they put out against sixteen Athenian and eight Rhegian ships.

They were defeated by the Athenians, and hastily sailed back, each contingent as best it could, to their own camps, having lost one ship; and night came on while they were in action. After this the Locrians left the territory of the Rhegians;

and the ships of the Syracusans and their allies assembled at Peloris in Messene, where they anchored and were joined by their land-forces. The Athenians and the Rhegians sailed up, and seeing that the Syracusan ships were unmanned attacked them;

but they themselves lost one ship, which was caught by a grappling-iron cast upon it, the crew having leaped overboard.

After this the Syracusans embarked and their ships were being towed along the shore by ropes toward Messene when the Athenians attacked again, but lost another ship, since the Syracusans made a sudden turn outwards and charged them first.

In the passage along the shore, then, and in the sea-fight that followed in this unusual fashion, the Syracusans had the best of it, and at length gained the harbour at Messene. But the Athenians, on the report that Camarina was to be betrayed to the Syracusans by Archias and his faction, sailed thither.

The Messenians meanwhile took all their land-forces and also the allied fleet and made an expedition against Naxos, the Chalcidian settlement on their borders.

On the first day they confined the Naxians within their walls and ravaged their lands; on the next day, while their fleet sailed round to the river Acesines and ravaged the land there, their army assaulted the city of Naxos.

Meanwhile the Sicels came down over the heights in large numbers to help in resisting the Messenians. When the Naxians saw them coming, they took heart, and calling to each other that the Leontines and their other Hellenic allies were approaching to defend them rushed suddenly out of the city and fell upon the Messenians, putting them to flight and killing over a thousand of them. The rest got back home with difficulty; for the barbarians attacked them in the roads and killed most of them. And the allied fleet, after putting in at Messene, dispersed to their several homes.

Thereupon the Leontines and their allies, in company with the Athenians, immediately made an expedition against Messene, believing it to be weakened, and attempted an assault upon it, the Athenians attacking with their ships on the side of the harbour, while the land forces moved against the town.

But the Messenians and some of the Locrians, who, under the command of Demoteles, had been left there as a garrison after the disaster at Naxos, made a sortie, and falling suddenly upon them routed the larger part of the army of the Leontines and killed many of them. Seeing this the Athenians disembarked and came to their aid, and attacking the Messenians while they were in disorder pursued them back into the city; they then set up a trophy and withdrew to Rhegium.

After this the Hellenes in Sicily, without the cooperation of the Athenians, continued to make expeditions against one another by land.