History of the Peloponnesian War

Now the Argives with their wing rushed out ahead of the rest and advanced in some disorder, feeling contempt of the enemy as being Ionians and men who would not await their attack, and so were defeated by the Milesians and not fewer than three hundred of them destroyed.

But the Athenians, after defeating the Peloponnesians first and then driving back the barbarians and the miscellaneous crowd—yet without engaging the Milesians, who after their rout of the Argives had withdrawn into the city, when they saw that the rest of their army was being worsted—finally halted, as being already victorious, close to the city itself.

And it so happened in this battle that on both sides the Ionians were victorious over the Dorians; for the Athenians defeated the Peloponnesians opposed to themselves, and the Milesians the Argives. But the Athenians, after setting up a trophy, made preparations for shutting off the place, which had the shape of an isthmus, with a wall, thinking that, if they should bring Miletus over to their side, the other places would readily come over also.

In the meantime, when it was already approaching dusk, word was brought to them that the fifty-five ships from the Peloponnesus and from Sicily were all but there. For from Sicily, where Hermocrates the Syracusan took the lead in urging the Siceliots to take part in what remained to be done for the complete destruction of the Athenians, there had come twenty Syracusan and two Selinuntian ships, besides those from the Peloponnesus, which they had been equipping and which were at last ready; and both squadrons were put in charge of Therimenes the Lacedaemonian with orders to take them to Astyochus the admiral. They first put in to harbour at Leros, the island off Miletus;

and from there, on finding that the Athenians were at Miletus, they sailed into the Iasic Gulf, wishing to know the state of affairs at Miletus.

And when Alcibiades came by horse to Teichiussa, a town in Milesian territory on that part of the gulf to which they had sailed and where they had bivouacked, they learned the story of the battle; for Alcibiades had been present and had fought with the Milesians and with Tissaphernes. And he urged them, if they did not wish to ruin matters in Ionia and their whole cause, to aid Miletus as quickly as possible, and not to suffer it to be invested.