Nicias

They purposed to set out during the night, and Gylippus, who saw that the Syracusans were given over to sacrificial revels because of their victory and their festival of Heracles, despaired of persuading or compelling them to rise up from their pleasures at once and attack their enemy as he departed. But Hermocrates, all on his own account, concocted a trick to put upon Nicias,

and sent certain companions to him with assurances that they were come from those men who before this had often held secret conferences with him. They advised Nicias not to set out during the night, inasmuch as the Syracusans had laid snares for him and preoccupied the ways of escape. Nicias was completely out-generalled by this trick, and so ended by suffering in very truth at the hands of his enemies what their lies had made him fear.

For the Syracusans set forth at break of day, occupied the difficult points in the roads, fortified the river fords, cut away the bridges, and posted their cavalry in the smooth open spaces, so that no spot was left where the Athenians could go forward without fighting.

They waited therefore all that day and the following night, and then set out, for all the world as though they were quitting their native city and not an enemy’s country, with wailings and lamentations at their lack of the necessaries of life and their enforced abandonment of helpless friends and comrades. And yet they regarded these present sorrows as lighter than those which they must expect to come.