History of the Peloponnesian War

The Syracusians the same summer, when they heard that the Athenians had horsemen sent to them from Athens and that they were ready now to come against them, conceiving that if the Athenians gat not Epipolae, a rocky ground and lying just against the city, they would not be able, though masters of the field, to take in the city with a wall, intended therefore, lest the enemy should come secretly up, to keep the passages by which there was access unto it with a guard.

For the rest of the place is to the outside high and steep, falling to the city by degrees, and on the inside wholly subject to the eye. And it is called by the Syracusians Epipolae, because it lieth above the level of the rest.

The Syracusians, coming out of the city with their whole power into a meadow by the side of the river Anapus betimes in the morning (for Hermocrates and his fellow-commanders had already received their charge), were there taking a view of their arms; but first they had set apart seven hundred men of arms, under the leading of Diomilus, an outlaw of Andros, both to guard Epipolae and to be ready together quickly upon any other occasion wherein there might be use of their service.

The Athenians the day following, having been already mustered, came from Catana with their whole forces and landed their soldiers at a place called Leon, six or seven furlongs from Epipolae, unperceived, and laid their navy at anchor under Thapsus. Thapsus is almost an island, lying out into the sea and joined to the land with a narrow isthmus, not far from Syracuse, neither by sea nor land. And the naval forces of the Athenians, having made a pallisado across the said isthmus, lay there quiet.