Nicias

And as they fled to their camp, he halted his Syracusans in their pursuit, and with the very stones and timbers which his enemies had brought up for their own use, he carried on the cross wall until it intersected the besiegers’ wall of enclosure, so that their superior strength in the field really availed them naught.

After this the Syracusans plucked up heart and went to manning their ships, while their own horsemen and those of their allies would ride about and cut off many of their besiegers.

Gylippus also went out in person to the cities of Sicily and roused up and united them all into vigorous and obedient concert with him. Nicias therefore fell back again upon those views of the undertaking which he had held at the outset, and, fully aware of the reversal which it had suffered, became dejected, and wrote a dispatch[*](Cf. Thuc. 7.11-15.) to the Athenians urging them to send out another armament, or else to recall the one already in Sicily, begging them also in any case to relieve him of his command because of his disease.

Even before this the Athenians had made preparations to send another force to Sicily, but the leading men among them felt some jealousy of the preliminary good fortune of Nicias, and so had induced many delays. Now, however, they were all eagerness to send aid. It was therefore determined that Demosthenes should sail with a large armament in the spring, and while it was yet winter Eurymedon preceded him with a smaller fleet, bringing money, and announcing the selection of colleagues for Nicias from among the members of the expedition there,—to wit, Euthydemus and Menander.

But in the meantime Nicias was suddenly attacked by land and sea. With his fleet, though vanquished at first, he yet succeeded in repulsing the enemy and sank many of their ships; but he was not prompt enough in sending aid to his garrison at Plemmyrium,[*](A promontory which runs out opposite the city of Syracuse, and narrows the entrance into the great harbor.) and so Gylippus, who had fallen upon it suddenly, captured it. Large naval stores and moneys were in deposit there, all of which Gylippus secured, besides killing many men and taking many prisoners.

What was most important of all, he robbed Nicias of his easy importation of supplies. These had been safely and speedily brought in past to Plemmyrium as long as the Athenians held that post; but now that they had been driven from it, the process was a difficult one, and involved fighting with the enemy who lay at anchor there. And besides all this, the Syracusans felt that their fleet had been defeated, not through any superior strength in their enemy, but by reason of their own disorderly pursuit of that enemy. Accordingly, they were making more vigorous preparations to try the issue again.