History of the Peloponnesian War

For it was now winter; and to make war there, they thought it yet unpossible before they had sent for horsemen to Athens and levied other amongst their confederates there in Sicily, to the end they might not be altogether over-mastered in horse; and before they had also both levied money there and received more from Athens and made league with certain cities, which they hoped after this battle would the more easily hearken thereunto, and before they had likewise provided themselves of victuals and other things necessary, as intending the next spring to undertake Syracuse again.

With this mind they went to winter at Naxos and Catana. The Syracusians, after they had buried their dead, called an assembly;

and Hermocrates, the son of Hermon, a man not otherwise second to any in wisdom, and in war both able for his experience and eminent for his valour, standing forth gave them encouragement and would not suffer them to be dismayed with that which had happened. Their courage, he said, was not overcome, though their want of order had done them hurt.

And yet in that they were not so far inferior as it was likely they would have been, especially being (as one may say) homebred artificers, against the most experienced in the war of all the Grecians.