History of the Peloponnesian War

Demosthenes, seeing the Lacedaemonians about to attack him both by sea and land at once, made his own preparations also; and having drawn up under the fortifications the triremes he had remaining from those that had been left him, he enclosed them in a stockade, and armed the crews taken out of them with shields of an inferior kind, and in most cases made of osiers. For it was not possible in so lonely a place to provide themselves with arms; but even these they had got from a thirty-oared privateer and skiff belonging to some Messenians, who happened to have come to them. Of these Messenians there were also about forty heavy-armed, whose services he used with the rest.

The main body, both of the unarmed and the armed, he posted at the most fortified and secure points of the place, facing the interior, with orders to repel the land-forces, should they make an assault; while lie himself, having picked from the whole force sixty heavy-armed and a few bowmen, proceeded outside the wall to the sea, where he most expected that they would attempt a landing, on ground which was difficult, indeed, and rocky, looking as it did to the open sea, but still, as their wall was weakest at that point, [*]( I have followed the usual interpretation of this sentence, though the sense cannot fairly be drawn from the words as they now stand. Either ἂν must be supplied with ἐπισπάσασθαι, or it must be changed into the future, as Dobree proposes, even allowing Göller's explanation of the following verb being put in the future: Futuro προθυμήσεσθαι usus est, quia in totâ sententià futureae rei significatio inest. Would it be possible to avoid the difficulty by taking ἐπισπάσασθαι in one of its other senses, to win or carry the wall? The general usage of Thucydides, I confess, is against this interpretation; but, on the other hand, there is in all the MSS. but one various reading of the passage, and that would not remedy the fault in the tense, if the ordinary force of the verb be retained.) he thought that this would tempt them to be eager in attacking it.

For they built it of no great strength just there, expecting never to be beaten at sea themselves; and also thinking that if the enemy once forced a landing, the place then became easy to take.

At this point then he went down to the very sea, and posted his heavy-armed, to prevent a landing, if possible; while he encouraged them with these words: