History of the Peloponnesian War

Meanwhile tidings came from Caunus that the twenty-seven ships and the Lacedaemonian advisers had arrived; whereupon Astyochus, thinking that everything else was of secondary importance compared with convoying so large a reinforcement of the fleet, so that they might be more completely masters of the sea, and with getting the Lacedaemonians, who had come to observe his conduct, safely across, immediately gave up the expedition to Chios and sailed to Caunus.

As he proceeded along the coast he landed at Cos Meropis and sacked the town, which was without walls and by reason of an earthquake that had befallen it—the most violent of all within our memory—was now in ruins, the inhabitants having fled to the mountains; and by forays he despoiled the country of everything, except the free population, which he let go.

Coming then from Cos to Cnidos by night, he was forced by the importunity of the Cnidians not to permit his sailors to land, but, just as he was, to sail straight against the twenty Athenian ships, with which Charminus, one of the generals from Samos, was on the look-out for the twenty-seven ships that were approaching from the Peloponnesus—the ships which Astyochus was sailing along the coast to meet.

For the Athenians at Samos had received word from Melos of their approach, and the outposts of Charminus were on the look-out for them in the neighbourhood of Syme, Chalce, Rhodes and the coast of Lycia; for he was already aware of their being at Caunus.