History of the Peloponnesian War

The Athenians also sent twenty ships to cruise round the Peloponnese, and to keep guard that none might cross over from Corinth and the Peloponnese to Sicily.

For the Corinthians, after the ambassadors came to them, and brought a more favourable report of affairs in Sicily, thinking that they had not been unseasonable in sending their former squadron, were now much more encouraged, and prepared, on their part, to despatch heavy-armed troops for Sicily in vessels of burden, as the Lacedaemonians did likewise from the rest of the Peloponnese.

The Corinthians manned also five and twenty triremes, to try the result of a battle with the squadron keeping watch at Naupactus, and that the Athenians there might be less able to prevent their transports from putting out, having to keep an eye upon the Corinthian line of triremes drawn up against them.

The Lacedaemonians prepared, too, for their invasion of Attica, both in accordance with their own previous resolution, and at the instigation of the Syracusans and Corinthians, since they had heard of the reinforcements about to be sent from Athens to Sicily; that they might be stopped by an incursion being made into the country. Alcibiades also kept urgently advising them to fortify Decelea, and not to let the war rest.

But most of all had they gained confidence, because they thought that the Athenians, being engaged in a two-fold war with both themselves and the Siceliots, would be more easily subdued; and also because they considered them to have first broken the truce. For in the former course of hostilities they thought the guilt lay more on their own side, both because the Thebans had entered Plataea during a time of truce; and because, when it had been specified in the former treaty, that none should take up arms against others, if they were willing to submit to a judicial decision, they themselves had not listened to the Athenians when appealing to such a decision. On which account they considered that they were justly unsuccessful, and made both their misfortune at Pylus, and whatever other might have befallen them, a subject of [*]( Or, of religious scruple, as in some other passages.) serious reflection.