Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/217

 SECOND AND THIRD YEARS OF THE WAR. Uo preeminently skilful ; nor did Knemus choose to persist in bis attack under such discouraging circumstances. As soon as night arrived, so that there was no longer any fear of slingers, he retreated to the river Anapus, a distance of between nine and ten miles. Well aware that the news of the victory would attract other Akarnanian forces immediately to the aid of Stra- tus, he took advantage of the arrival of bis own Akarnanian allies from CEniadae (the only town in the country vhich was attached to the Lacedaemonian interest), and sought shelter near their city. From thence his troops dispersed, and returned to their respective homes. 1 Meanwhile, the Peloponnesian fleet from Corinth, which had been destined to cooperate with Knemus oft' the coast of Akar- nania, had found difficulties in its passage, alike unexpected and insuperable. Mustering forty-seven triremes of Corinth, Sikyon, and other places, with a body of soldiers on board, and with accompanying store-vessels, it departed from the harbor of Corinth, and made its way along the northern coast of Achaia. Its commanders, not intending to meddle with Phormio and his twenty ships at Naupaktus, never for a moment imagined that he would venture to attack a number so greatly superior: the triremes were, accordingly, fitted out more as transports for numerous soldiers than with any view to naval combat, and with little attention to the choice of skilful rowers. 2 Except in the combat near Korkyra, and there only partially, the Peloponnesians had never yet made actual trial of Athenian maritime efficiency, at the point of excellence which it had now reached : themselves retaining the old unimproved mode of fight- ing and of working ships at sea, they had no practical idea of the degree to which it had been superseded by Athenian training. Among the Athenians, on the contrary, not only the seamen generally had a confirmed feeling of their own superiority, but Phormio especially, the ablest of all their captains, always famil- iarized his men with the conviction, that no Peloponnesian fleet, 1 Thucyd. ii. 82 ; Diodor. xii, 48. aoftevoi : compare the speech of Knemus, c. 87. The unskilfulness c f the rowers is noticed (c. 84).
 * Thucyd. ii, 83. ov% f exl vavfiaxiav, uMu aTpaTiuriKurepov