History of the Peloponnesian War

The Syracusians, when they had heard him, decreed all that he advised and elected three generals, him, Heracleides, the son of Lysimachus, and Sicanus, the son of Exekestus.

They sent also ambassadors to Corinth and Lacedaemon, as well to obtain a league with them as also to persuade the Lacedaemonians to make a hotter war against the Athenians and to declare themselves in the quarrel of the Syracusians, thereby either to withdraw them from Sicily or to make them the less able to send supply to their army which was there already.

The Athenian army at Catana sailed presently to Messana to receive it by treason of some within; but the plot came not to effect. For Alcibiades, when he was sent for from his charge, being resolved to fly and knowing what was to be done, discovered the same to the friends of the Syracusians in Messana, who with those of their faction slew such as were accused, and being armed upon occasion of the sedition, obtained to have the Athenians kept out.

And the Athenians, after thirteen days' stay, troubled with tempestuous weather, provision also failing and nothing succeeding, returned again to Naxos; and having fortified their camp with a pallisado, they wintered there, and dispatched a galley to Athens for money and horsemen to be with them early in the spring.

The Syracusians this winter raised a wall before their city, all the length of the side towards Epipolae, including Temenites, to the end, if they chanced to be beaten, they might not be so easily enclosed as when they were in a narrower compass. And they put a guard into Megara and another into Olympieium, and made pallisadoes on the seaside at all the places of landing.