History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides. The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Hobbes, Thomas. translator. London: John Bohn, 1843.

The Peloponnesians and the rest, who were at the same time in the twenty-five galleys that for safeguard of the ships lay opposite to the galleys before Naupactus, having prepared themselves for battle, and with more galleys, so as they were little inferior in number to those of the Athenians, went to an anchor under Irineus of Achaia in Rhypica. The place where they rode was in form like a half moon;

and their land forces they had ready on either side to assist them, both Corinthians and their other confederates of those parts, embattled upon the points of the promontory; and their galleys made up the space between, under the command of Polyanthes, a Corinthian.

Against these the Athenians came up with thirty-three galleys from Naupactus, commanded by Diphilus. The Corinthians at first lay still;

but afterwards when they saw their time, and the signal given, they charged the Athenians and the fight began. They held each other to it long. The Athenians sank three galleys of the Corinthians;

and though none of their own were sunk, yet seven were made unserviceable, which, having encountered the Corinthian galleys a-head, were torn on both sides between the beaks and the oars by the beaks of the Corinthian galleys, made stronger for the same purpose. After they had fought with equal fortune, and so as both sides challenged the victory;

though yet the Athenians were masters of the wrecks, as driven by the wind into the main, and because the Corinthians came not out to renew the fight, they at length parted. There was no chasing of men that fled, nor a prisoner taken on either side; because the Peloponnesians and Corinthians fighting near the land easily escaped, nor was there any galley of the Athenians sunk.

But when the Athenians were gone back to Naupactus, the Corinthians presently set up a trophy as victors, in regard that more of the Athenian galleys were made unserviceable than of theirs, and thought themselves not to have had the worse for the same reason that the others thought themselves not to have had the better. For the Corinthians think they have the better when they have not much the worse; and the Athenians think they have the worse when they have not much the better.

And when the Peloponnesians were gone and their army by land dissolved, the Athenians also set up a trophy in Achaia, as if the victory had been theirs, distant from Erineus, where the Peloponnesians rode, about twenty furlongs. This was the success of that battle by sea.