At the close of the same summer the Athenians despatched twenty ships to Sicily, with Laches son of Melanopus, and Charceades son of Euphiletus, in command of them.

For the Syracusans and Leontines had gone to war with each other; the Syracusans having, with the exception of Camarina, all the Dorian cities in alliance with them—for indeed these had joined the Lacedaemonian confederacy at the commencement of the war, though they had not taken any part in it with them—while the Leontines had the Chalcidian cities, and Camarina. In Italy the Locrians were on the side of the Syracusans; the Rhegians, on that of the Leontines, in consequence of their affinity to them.

So the allies of the Leontines sent to Athens, both on the ground of their former confederacy with them and because they were Ionians, and urged the Athenians to send them a fleet, for they were excluded by the Syracusans from the use both of land and sea.