History of the Peloponnesian War

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.

And knowing that the Athenians wintered at Naxos, they marched with all the power of the city unto Catana, and after they had wasted the territory and burnt the cabins and camp where the Athenians had lodged before, returned home.

And having heard that the Athenians had sent ambassadors to Camarina, according to a league made before in the time of Laches, to try if they could win them to their side, they also sent ambassadors to oppose it. For they suspected that the Camarinaeans had sent those succours in the former battle with no great good will; and that now they would take part with them no longer, seeing the Athenians had the better of the day, but would rather join with the Athenians upon the former league.

Hermocrates, therefore, and others being come to Camarina from the Syracusians, and Euphemus and others from the Athenians, when the assembly was met, Hermocrates, desiring to increase their envy to the Athenians, spake unto them to this effect:

"Men of Camarina, we come not hither upon fear that the forces of the Athenians here present may affright you, but lest their speeches which they are about to make may seduce you before you have also heard what may be said by us.

They are come into Sicily with that pretence indeed which you hear given out, but with that intention which we all suspect; and to me they seem not to intend the replantation of the Leontines, but rather our supplantation. For surely it holdeth not in reason that they who subvert the cities yonder should come to plant any city here; nor that they should have such a care of the Leontines, because Chalcideans, for kindred's sake, when they keep in servitude the Chalcideans themselves of Euboea, of whom these here are but the colonies.

But they both hold the cities there and attempt those here in one and the same kind. For when the Ionians and the rest of the confederates, their own colonies, had willingly made them their leaders in the war to avenge them of the Medes, the Athenians, laying afterwards to their charge, to some the not sending of their forces, to some their war amongst themselves, and so to the rest the most colourable criminations they could get, subdued them all to their obedience.