History of the Peloponnesian War

In the meantime the fleet of Corinth and the other confederates that was to set out from the Crisaean gulf and to join with Cnemus to hinder the lower Acarnanians from aiding the upper came not at all but were compelled to fight with Phormio and those twenty Athenian galleys that kept watch at Naupactus, about the same time that the skirmish was at Stratus.

For as they sailed along the shore, Phormio waited on them till they were out of the strait, intending to set upon them in the open sea.

And the Corinthians and their confederates went not as to fight by sea but furnished rather for the land service in Acarnania and never thought that the Athenians with their twenty galleys durst fight with theirs that were sevenand-forty. Nevertheless, when they saw that the Athenians as themselves sailed by one shore kept over against them on the other, and that now when they went off from Patrae in Achaia to go over to Acarnania in the opposite continent, the Athenians came towards them from Chalcis and the river Evenus and also knew that they had come to anchor there the night before, they found they were then to fight of necessity directly against the mouth of the strait.

The commanders of the fleet were such as the cities that set it forth had severally appointed, but of the Corinthians, these: Machon, Isocrates, and Agatharchidas.

The Peloponnesians ordered their fleet in such manner as they made thereof a circle as great as, without leaving the spaces so wide as for the Athenians to pass through, they were possibly able with the stems of their galleys outward and sterns inward, and into the midst thereof received such small vessels as came with them and also five of their swiftest galleys, the which were at narrow passages to come forth in whatsoever part the enemy should charge.