Nicias

Moreover, that the whole achievement of deliverance was his, is the testimony not only of Thucydides, but also of Philistus, who was a Syracusan, and an eye-witness of the events thereof.

Well, then, in the first battle the Athenians were victors and slew some few of the Syracusans, and also Gongylus the Corinthian; but on the day following, Gylippus showed what a great thing experience is. Although he had the same infantry and the same cavalry and the same localities to deal with he did not do it in the same way as before, but changed his tactics, and thereby conquered the Athenians.

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.