History of the Peloponnesian War

About that same time the Camarinaeans also came to their help with five hundred heavy-armed, three hundred dartmen, and three hundred bow-men. The Geloans, too, sent a squadron of five ships, four hundred dart-men, and two hundred horse.

For by this time pretty nearly the whole of Sicily—excepting the Acragantines, who were neutral—the rest, I say, who before had waited to see the result of events, now united with the Syracusans, and assisted them against the Athenians.

The Syracusans, then, after the disaster in the Sicel country had befallen them, ceased for the present from attacking the Athenians. Demosthenes and Eurymedon, on the other hand, their forces being now ready both from Corcyra and the continent, crossed the Ionian gulf with all their army to the Iapygian foreland. Starting thence, they touched at the Choerades islands, lying off Iapygia, and took on board their ships some Iapygian dart-men, one hundred and fifty in number, of the Messapian tribe;

and after renewing an old friendship with Artas, who also had provided them with the dart-men, being one of their chieftains, they arrived at Metapontum in Italy. After persuading the Metapontines to send with them, on the strength of their alliance, three hundred dart-men and two triremes, with this addition to their armament they coasted along to Thuria.

There they found the opponents of the Athenians recently expelled in consequence of a sedition.

And as they wished to muster there the whole army, in case any part had been left behind, and to review it, as well as to persuade the Thurians to join them as zealously as possible in the expedition, and to have considering their present position, the same foes and friends as the Athenians, they waited awhile in Thuria, and were prosecuting these designs.

About the same time, the Peloponnesians in the five and twenty ships, who, to secure the passage of the merchantmen to Sicily, were anchored over against the fleet at Naupactus, having made their preparations for a sea-fight, and having manned some additional ships, so that they were now but little inferior to the Athenian force, stationed themselves off Erineus in Achae, in the territory of Rhypa.

And the place in which they were stationed being in the form of a crescent, their land forces which had come to their assistance from the Corinthians, and from their allies on the spot, were ranged on the projecting headlands on both sides; while the ships occupied the intervening space, blocking up the entrance. The commander of the fleet was Polyanthes, a Corinthian.

The Athenians sailed out against them from Naupactus with three and thirty ships, under the command of Diphilus.