History of the Peloponnesian War

So the war at Pylus was on both sides renewed with all their power; the Athenians went every day about the island with two galleys, one going one way, another another way, and lay at anchor about it every night with their whole fleet, except on that part which lieth to the open sea; and that only when it was windy. (From Athens also there came a supply of thirty galleys more, to guard the island, so that they were in the whole threescore and ten.) And the Lacedaemonians made assaults upon the fort, and watched every opportunity that should present itself to save their men in the island.

Whilst these things passed, the Syracusians and their confederates in Sicily, adding to those galleys that lay in garrison at Messana the rest of the fleet which they had prepared, made war out of Messana,

instigated thereto chiefly by the Locrians, as enemies to the Rhegians, whose territory they had also invaded with their whole forces by land;

and seeing the Athenians had but a few galleys present and hearing that the greater number which were to come to them were employed in the siege of the island, desired to try with them a battle by sea.

For if they could get the better with their navy, they hoped, lying before Rhegium, both with their land-forces on the field side and with their fleet by sea, easily to take it into their hands and thereby strengthen their affairs. For Rhegium, a promontory of Italy, and Messana in Sicily lying near together, they might both hinder the Athenians from lying at anchor there against them and make themselves masters of the strait.

This strait is the sea between Rhegium and Messana where Sicily is nearest to the continent, and is that which is called Charybdis, where Ulysses is said to have passed through. Which, for that it is very narrow, and because the sea falleth in there from two great mains, the Tyrrhene and Sicilian, and is rough, hath therefore not without good cause been esteemed dangerous.

In this strait then the Syracusians and their confederates, with somewhat more than thirty galleys, were constrained in the latter end of the day to come to a sea-fight, having been drawn forth about the passage of a certain boat to undertake sixteen galleys of Athens and eight of Rhegium, and being overcome by the Athenians, fell off with the loss of one galley and went speedily each [side] to their own camp at Messana and Rhegium;

and the night overtook them in the action.

After this the Locrians departed out of the territory of the Rhegians, and the fleet of the Syracusians and their confederates came together to an anchor at Peloris and had their land-forces by them.