History of the Peloponnesian War

for there were some of the piles which they drove that did not rise above the surface of the sea, so that it was dangerous to approach, lest any one, through not seeing them beforehand, might strike his ship on them, as on a sunken rock. But even in the case of these divers went down and sawed them off for a reward; but the Syracusans made, notwithstanding, a fresh stockade.

Many other also were the contrivances which they employed against one another, as was natural with the armaments lying near, and opposed to, each other; and they were engaged in skirmishes, and attempts of every kind.

The Syracusans also sent to the cities embassies composed of Corinthians, Ambraciots, and Lacedaemonians, with tidings of the capture of Plemyriunm, and to state, with regard to the sea-fight, that it was not so much by the power of the enemy as by their own confusion that they had been beaten; while, in other respects, they were to inform them that they were in good hope, and to call upon them to come to their aid, both with ships and troops; as the Athenians also were expected with a fresh force, and if they could but destroy their present armament before it came, there would be an end to the war. The parties in Sicily, then, were thus engaged.

Demosthenes, on the other hand, when the armament had been collected by him with which he was to sail to Sicily to the aid of the force there, having put to sea from Aegina and sailed to the Peloponnese, joined Charicles and the thirty ships of the Athenians.

After receiving the heavy-armed troops of the Argives on board their ships, they sailed to Laconia, and in the first place ravaged a part of Epidaurus Limera. Then, landing on the coast of Laconia opposite Cythera, where stands the temple of Apollo, they fortified a certain place in the form of an isthmus, in order that the Lacedaemonian helots might desert to them there, and at the same time foraging parties might make incursions from it, as from Pylus.