History of the Peloponnesian War

After this, Demosthenes, being about Zacynthus and Cephallenia, took aboard their men of arms and sent to Naupactus for the Messenians. From thence he crossed over to the continent of Acarnania, to Alyzea and Anactorium, which belonged to the Athenians.

Whilst he was in these parts, he met with Eurymedon out of Sicily, that had been sent in winter unto the army with commodities, who told him amongst other things how he had heard by the way after he was at sea that the Syracusians had won Plemmyrium.

Conon also, the captain of Naupactus, came to them and related that the twenty-five galleys of Corinth that lay before Naupactus would not give over war and yet delayed to fight, and therefore desired to have some galleys sent him, as being unable with his eighteen to give battle to twenty-five of the enemy.

Whereupon Demosthenes and Eurymedon sent ten galleys more to those at Naupactus, the nimblest of the whole fleet, by Conon himself, and went themselves about furnishing of what belonged to the army. Of whom Eurymedon went to Corcyra, and having appointed them there to man fifteen galleys, levied men of arms; for now giving over his course to Athens, he joined with Demosthenes, as having been elected with him in the charge of general; and Demosthenes took up slingers and darters in the parts about Acarnania.

The ambassadors of the Syracusians, which after the taking of Plemmyrium had been sent unto the cities about, having now obtained and levied an army amongst them, were conducting the same to Syracuse. But Nicias, upon intelligence thereof, sent unto such cities of the Siculi as had the passages and were their confederates, the Centoripines, Halicyaeans, and others, not to suffer the enemy to go by, but to unite themselves and stop them, for that they would not so much as offer to pass any other way, seeing the Agrigentines had already denied them.

When the Sicilians were marching, the Siculi, as the Athenians had desired them, put themselves in ambush in three several places, and setting upon them unawares and on a sudden, slew about eight hundred of them, and all the ambassadors save only one, a Corinthian, which conducted the rest that escaped, being about fifteen hundred, to Syracuse.