CHAPTER LX - From the Resumption of direct Hostilities between Athens and Sparta down to the Destruction of the Athenian Armament in Sicily

Summary

Active warlike preparations thoughout Greece during the winter of 414–413 B.C.

The Syracusan war now no longer stands apart, as an event by itself, but becomes absorbed in the general war rekindling throughout Greece. Never was any winter so actively and extensively employed in military preparations, as the winter of 414–413 B.C., the months immediately preceding that which Thucydidês terms the nineteenth spring of the Peloponnesian war, but which other historians call the beginning of the Dekeleian war. While Eurymedon went with his ten triremes to Syracuse even in midwinter, Demosthenês exerted himself all the winter to get together the second armament for early spring. Twenty other Athenian triremes were farther sent round Peloponnesus to the station of Naupaktus—to prevent any Corinthian reinforcements from sailing out of the Corinthian Gulf. Against these latter, the Corinthians on their side prepared twenty-five fresh triremes, to serve as a convoy to the transports carrying their hoplites. In Corinth, Sikyon, and Bœotia, as well as at Lacedæmon, levies of hoplites were going on for the armament to Syracuse—at the same time that everything was getting ready for the occupation of Dekeleia. Lastly, Gylippus was engaged with not less activity in stirring up all Sicily to take a more decisive part in the coming year's struggle.

From Cape Tænarus in Laconia, at the earliest moment of spring, embarked a force of 600 Lacedæmonian hoplites (Helots and Neodamodes) under the Spartan Ekkritus—and 300 Bœotian hoplites under the Thebans Xenon and Nikon, with the Thespian Hegesandrus.