History of the Peloponnesian War

Gylippus, then, having first gone on an embassy from Tarentum to Thuria, on the ground of his father's having formerly been presented with the franchise there, and not being able to bring them over, weighed anchor, and coasted along Italy. Having been caught, when opposite the Terinaean gulf, by a wind which in this quarter blows violently and steadily from the north, he was carried out to sea, and after enduring exceedingly foul weather, again made Tarentum, and there drew up and refitted such of his ships as had suffered from the tempest.

Nicias on hearing of his approach, despised the number of his ships, (as had been the feeling of the Thurians also,) and thought that they were sailing more like a piratical armament than any thing else; and so at present he took no precautions against him.

About the same period of this summer, the Lacedaemonians invaded Argos, themselves and their allies, and ravaged the greater part of the country. The Athenians went to the assistance of the Argives with thirty ships; and it was these that broke their treaty with the Lacedaemonians in a most decisive manner.

For before this they only joined in hostilities with the Argives and Mantineans by plundering excursions from Pylus, and by landing on the other coasts around the Peloponnese, rather than on the Laconian; and though the Argives often desired them only to touch at Laconia with their heavy-armed, and to withdraw after devastating it with them ever so little, they would not do it. But at that time, having landed under the command of Pythodorus, Laespodias, and Demaratus, at Epidaurus Limera, Prasiae, and other places, they ravaged part of the territory, and so rendered the excuse of the Lacedaemonians more plausible now for defending themselves against the Athenians.

After the Athenians had with their fleet withdrawn from Argos, and the Lacedaemonians also, the Argives having made an irruption into the Phiasian territory, ravaged part of their land, killed some of their men, and returned home.