History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

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

Upon this advertisement they abode that night, supposing it had been without fraud. And afterwards, because they went not presently, they thought good to stay there that day also, to the end that the soldiers might pack up their necessaries as commodiously as they could, and begone, leaving all things else behind them save what was necessary for their bodies.

But Gylippus and the Syracusians, with their land forces, went out before them, and not only stopped up the ways in the country about by which the Athenians were likely to pass and kept a guard at the fords of brooks and rivers, but also stood embattled to receive and stop their army in such places as they thought convenient. And with their galleys they rowed to the harbour of the Athenians and towed their galleys away from the shore. Some few whereof they burnt, as the Athenians themselves meant to have done, but the rest at their leisure, as any of them chanced in any place to drive ashore, they afterwards hauled into the city.