History of the Peloponnesian War

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.

By this accident, Demosthenes, the better discerning that the Lacedaemonians were more than he had imagined, having before, by victual sent unto them, thought them not so many, did now prepare himself for the enterprise as a matter deserving the Athenians' utmost care and as having better commodity of landing in the island than before he had, and both sent for the forces of such confederates as were near and put in readiness every other needful thing.