History of the Peloponnesian War

confirmed therein the more for that the island had been burnt. For having been for the most part wood and (by reason it had lain ever desert) without path, they were before [the more] afraid and thought it the advantage of the enemy; for assaulting them out of sight, they might annoy a very great army that should offer to come aland. For their errors being in the wood and their preparation could not so well have been discerned, whereas all the faults of their own army should have been in sight, so that the enemy might have set upon them suddenly in what part soever they had pleased, because the onset had been in their own election.

Again, if they should by force come up to fight with the Lacedaemonians at hand in the thick woods, the fewer and skilful of the ways, he thought, would be too hard for the many and unskilful. Besides, their own army being great it might receive an overthrow before they could know of it, because they could not see where it was needful to relieve one another.

These things came into his head especially from the loss he received in Aetolia; which in part also happened by occasion of the woods.

But the soldiers, for want of room, having been forced to put in at the outside of the island to dress their dinners with a watch before them, and one of them having set fire on the wood, [it burnt on by little and little], and the wind afterwards rising, the most of it was burnt before they were aware.