History of the Peloponnesian War

But coming to the river Hylias, upon word sent them from the men of Croton that if the army went through their territory it should be against their will, they marched down to the seaside and to the mouth of the river Hylias, where they stayed all that night and were met by their galleys. The next day embarking, they kept along the shore and touched at every town saving Locri till they arrived at Petra in the territory of Rhegium.

The Syracusians in the meantime, upon intelligence of their coming on, resolved to try again what they could do with their navy and with their new supply of landmen, which they had gotten together on purpose to fight with the Athenians before Demosthenes and Eurymedon should arrive.

And they furnished their navy, both otherwise and according to the advantages they had learnt in the last battle, and also made shorter the heads of their galleys, and thereby stronger, and made beaks to them of a great thickness, which they also strengthened with rafters fastened to the sides of the galleys, both within and without, of six cubits long, in such manner as the Corinthians had armed their galleys a-head to fight with those before Naupactus.

For the Syracusians made account that against the Athenian galleys not so built, but weak before, as not using so much to meet the enemy a-head as upon the side by fetching a compass, they could not but have the better, and that to fight in the great haven, many galleys in not much room was an advantage to them; for that using the direct encounter, they should break with their firm and thick beaks the hollow and infirm foreparts of the galleys of their enemies;

and that the Athenians, in that narrow room, would want means both to go about and to go through them, which was the point of art they most relied on. For as for their passing through, they would hinder it themselves as much as they could; and for fetching compass, the straitness of the place would not suffer it.