History of the Peloponnesian War

Afterwards, such of the Corcyraeans as had fled (for there escaped about five hundred of them), having seized on the forts in the continent, impatronized themselves of their own territory on the other side and from thence came over and robbed the islanders and did them much hurt; and there grew a great famine in the city.

They likewise sent ambassadors to Lacedaemon and Corinth concerning their reduction; and when they could get nothing done, having gotten boats and some auxiliary soldiers, they passed, awhile after, to the number of about six hundred into the island. Where, when they had set fire on their boats that they might trust to nothing but to make themselves masters of the field, they went up into the hill Istone and, having there fortified themselves with a wall, infested those within and were masters of the territory.

In the end of the same summer the Athenians sent twenty galleys into Sicily under the command of Laches the son of Melanopus and Charoeadas the son of Euphiletus, for the Syracusians and the Leontines were now warring against each other.

The confederates of the Syracusians were all the Doric cities except the Camarinaeans, which also in the beginning of this war were reckoned in the league of the Lacedaemonians but had not yet aided them in the war. The confederates of the Leontines were the Chalcidique cities together with Camarina. And in Italy the Locrians were with the Syracusians; but the Rhegians, according to their consanguinity, took part with the Leontines.

Now the confederates of the Leontines, in respect of their ancient alliance with the Athenians as also for that they were Ionians, obtained of the Athenians to send them galleys, for that the Leontines were deprived by the Syracusians of the use both of the land and sea.