History of the Peloponnesian War

THE same winter the Athenians wished to sail again to Sicily, with a larger armament than that under Laches and Eurymedon, and bring it into subjection to them, if they could; the mass of the people being ignorant of the size of the island, and the number of its inhabitants, both Greeks and barbarians; and that they were undertaking a war not much inferior in magnitude to that with the Peloponnesians.

For the voyage round Sicily in a merchant vessel is one of not much less than eight days; and [*]( The reasoning employed in the words τοσαύτη οὖσα is very much in the style of the geography of Herodotus. The notion is, that so large an island ought to have been in the midst of a wide sea, proportioned to its own magnitude; and not to have been so close upon the coast, as to seem a sort of appendage to the mainland, —Arnold.) though it is of such extent, it is only excluded by the space of about twenty stades of sea from being mainland.