History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides. The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Hobbes, Thomas. translator. London: John Bohn, 1843.

The Corinthians not assenting to any of these propositions, since their galleys were manned and their confederates present, having defied them first by a herald, put to sea with seventy-five galleys and two thousand men of arms, and set sail for Epidamnus against the Corcyraeans.

Their fleet was commanded by Aristeus the son of Pellicas, Callicrates the son of Callias, and Timanor the son of Timanthes; and the land forces by Archetimus the son of Eurytimus and Isarchidas the son of Isarchus.

After they were come as far as Actium, in the territory of Anactorium (which is a temple of Apollo and ground consecrated unto him) in the mouth of the Gulf of Ambracia, the Corcyraeans sent a herald to them at Actium to forbid their coming on, and in the meantime manned out their fleet, and, having repaired and made fit for service their old galleys and furnished the rest with things necessary, shipped their munition and went aboard.

The herald was no sooner returned from the Corinthians with an answer not inclining to peace but having their galleys already manned and furnished to the number of eighty sail (for forty attended always the siege of Epidamnus), they put to sea and, arranging themselves, came to a battle in which the Corcyraeans were clearly victors;

and on the part of the Corinthians there perished fifteen galleys. And the same day it happened likewise that they that besieged Epidamnus had the same rendered unto them, with conditions, that the strangers therein found should be ransomed and the Corinthians kept in bonds till such time as they should be otherwise disposed of.