History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

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

Thus did Phormio also encourage his soldiers. The Peloponnesians, when they saw the Athenians would not enter the gulf and strait, desiring to draw them in against their wills, weighed anchor and betime in the morning, having arranged their galleys by four and four in a rank, sailed along their own coast within the gulf, leading the way in the same order as they had lain at anchor, with their right wing.

In this wing they had placed twenty of their swiftest galleys to the end that if Phormio, thinking them going to Naupactus, should for safeguard of the town sail along his own coast likewise within the strait, the Athenians might not be able to get beyond that wing of theirs and avoid the impression but be inclosed by their galleys on both sides.

Phormio, fearing (as they expected) what might become of the town now without guard, as soon as he saw them from anchor, against his will and in extreme haste went aboard and sailed along the shore with the land forces of the Messenians marching by to aid him.

The Peloponnesians, when they saw them sail in one long file, galley after galley, and that they were now in the gulf and by the shore (which they most desired), upon one sign given turned suddenly everyone as fast as he could upon the Athenians, hoping to have intercepted them every galley.

But of those the eleven foremost, avoiding that wing and the turn made by the Peloponnesians, got out into the open sea. The rest they intercepted and, driving them to the shore, sunk them. The men, as many as swam not out, they slew;

and the galleys some they tied to their own and towed them away empty, and one with the men and all in her they had already taken. But the Messenian succours on land, entering the sea with their arms, got aboard of some of them and fighting from the decks recovered them again after they were already towing away.