History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

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

The Corinthians, when their enemies fled, stayed not to fasten the hulls of the galleys they had sunk unto their own galleys that so they might tow them after, but made after the men, rowing up and down, to kill rather than to take alive, and through ignorance (not knowing that their right wing had been discomfited) slew also some of their own friends.

For the galleys of either side being many and taking up a large space at sea, after they were once in the medley they could not easily discern who were of the victors and who of the vanquished party. For this was the greatest naval battle for number of ships that ever had been before of Grecians against Grecians.

When the Corinthians had chased the Corcyraeans to the shore, they returned to take up the broken galleys and bodies of their dead, which for the greatest part they recovered and brought to Sybota where also lay the land forces of the barbarians that were come to aid them. This Sybota is a desert haven of Thesprotis. When they had done, they reunited themselves and made again to the Corcyraeans.

And they likewise, with such galleys as they had fit for the sea remaining of the former battle together with those of Athens, put forth to meet them, fearing lest they should attempt to land upon their territory.

By this time the day was far spent, and the song which they used to sing when they came to charge was ended, when suddenly the Corinthians began to row astern, for they had descried twenty Athenian galleys sent from Athens to second the former ten for fear lest the Corcyraeans (as it also fell out) should be overcome and those ten galleys of theirs be too few to defend them.