History of the Peloponnesian War

The Syracusans, meanwhile, hearing of their approach, wished to make another trial with their fleet, and also with their land-force, which they had been collecting for the very purpose of striking a blow before the Athenian reinforcements came.

They had prepared the fleet generally in such a way as, after the experience of the former sea-fight, seemed likely to offer some advantage, and in particular had shortened the prows of the ships, and had made them stouter by attaching to them thick catheads and stretching underneath stay-beams extending from them to the ships' sides for the length of six cubits both inside and outside the vessel, adopting the same plan as that followed by the Corinthians when they reconstructed their ships at the prows for the battle fought against the Athenian fleet at Naupactus.

For the Syracusans thought that, in a contest with the ships of the Athenians which had not been built in the same manner for defence against their own, but were of light structure about the prows, inasmuch as the Athenians did not use prow-to-prow attacks so much as deploying and ramming the sides[*](ie. did not attack front with the prow, but sailed round (περίπλους) and struck the hostile ship in the side. διέκπλους was breaking through the line so as to ram the enemy's ship in the flank or astern.)—they themselves would not be at a disadvantage, and that the fighting in the Great Harbour, where there would be many ships in a narrow space, would be favourable to them; for by employing prow-to-prow attacks they would crush the prows of the enemy's ships, striking as they would with beaks stout and solid against hollow and weak ones. The Athenians, on the other hand, would not find it possible in the narrow space to use either the deploying or the breaking-through manoeuvre, on their skilled use of which they depended most;

for they themselves would as far as possible give them no opportunity of using the latter, and the narrow space would prevent them from deploying. But on the other hand they themselves would chiefly employ that method of crashing into their opponents prow to prow which had formerly been imputed to the ignorance of their pilots, because they would find it greatly to their advantage to do so;

for it would not be possible for the Athenians, if forced out of line, to back water in any other direction than towards the land, and that, too, for only a short distance and to a short stretch of shore—the space in front of their own camp—inasmuch as the Syracusans would command the rest of the harbour.

And the enemy, if they were forced to yield at any point, would be driven together into a small space and all to the same point, so that they would fall foul of each other and be thrown into confusion—the very thing that caused the Athenians most damage in all the fighting there, since it was not possible for them, as it was for the Syracusans, to back water to any part of the harbour. The Syracusans saw, moreover, that the Athenians would not be able to sail round into open water, since they themselves would control not only their entrance into the harbour from the sea outside, but also their backing out of the harbour into the sea, especially as Plemmyrium would be hostile to them and the mouth of the harbour was not large.