History of the Peloponnesian War

Meanwhile the envoys, who after the capture of Plemmyrium had gone from Syracuse to visit the cities of Sicily,[*](cf. 7.25.9.) had succeeded in their mission, and having raised a body of troops were about to bring them home, when, Nicias, hearing of this in time, sent word to the Sicels[*](Sicels, aboriginal inhabitants of Sicily; Siceliots, Hellenic colonists of Sicily.) who were allies of the Athenians and controlled the territory through which the troops would have to pass—and these were the Centoripes,[*](Centoripa was situated on the Symaethus above Catana and about twenty-five miles south-west of Aetna. It is now Centorbi (Holm, Gesch. Sic. i. 68). A town Alicyae in this region is unknown.) Alicyaeans and others—that they should not allow the enemy to pass, but should get together and prevent their coming through; they would not, he said, attempt it by any other route, since the Agrigentines had refused to give them passage through their territory.

And when the Siceliots were already on the march, the Sicels did as the Athenians requested, and setting an ambush and falling suddenly upon the Siceliots while they were off their guard, destroyed about eight hundred of them and all the envoys except one, the Corinthian; and he conducted those who made their escape, about fifteen hundred in number, to Syracuse.

About the same time the Camarinaeans[*](cf. 6..1, 2.) also arrived with reinforcements, consisting of five hundred hoplites, three hundred javelin-men, and three hundred bowmen. The Geloans[*](cf . 6.67.2; 7.1.4.) also sent a squadron of five ships and four hundred javelin-men and two hundred cavalry.

For already almost the whole of Sicily—except the Agrigentines, who were neutral, but the rest without exception who had before been watching the course of events—had united with the Syracusans and was giving them aid against the Athenians. As for the Syracusans, after the disaster that happened to them in the country of the Sicels they put off their project of attacking the Athenians immediately;

but Demosthenes and Eurymedon, the army being now ready which they had gathered from Corcyra and the mainland, sailed with all their forces across the Ionian Sea to the Iapygian promontory. Proceeding from there, they touched at the Choerades, which are islands of Iapygia, and took on board their ships some Iapygian javelin-men, one hundred and fifty in number, belonging to the Messapian tribe;