Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/225

 SECOND AND THIRD YEARS OF THE WAK. 203 commissioners Brasidas, Timokrates, and Lykophron were sent down to assist him with their advice and exertions in call- ing together naval contingents from the different allied cities : and by this means, under the general resentment occasioned by the recent defeat, a large fleet of seventy-seven triremes was speedily mustered at Panormus, a harbor of Achaia near to the promontory of Rhium, and immediately within the interior gulf. A land-force was also collected at the same place ashore, to aid the operations of the fleet. Such preparations did not escape the vigilance of Phormio, who transmitted to Athens news of his victory, at the same time urgently soliciting rein- forcements to contend with the increasing strength of the enemy. The Athenians immediately sent twenty fresh ships to join him : but they were induced by the instances of a Kretan named Nikias, their proxenus at Gortyn, to allow him to take the ships first to Krete, on the faith of his promise to reduce the hostile town of Kydonia. He had made this promise as a private favor to the inhabitants of Polichna, border enemies of Kydonia ; but when the fleet arrived he was unable to fulfil it : nothing was effected except ravage of the Kydonian lands, and the fleet was long prevented by adverse winds and weather from getting away. 1 This ill-advised diversion of the fleet from its straight course to join Phormio is a proof how much the counsels of Athens were beginning to suffer from the loss of Perikles, who was just now in his last illness and died shortly afterwards. That liability to be seduced by novel enterprises and projects of acquisition, against which he so emphatically warned his countrymen, 2 was even now beginning to manifest its disastrous consequences. Through the loss of this precious interval, Phormio now found himself, with no more than his original twenty triremes, opposed to the vastly increased forces of the enemy, seventy-seven tri- remes, with a large force on land to back them: the latter, no mean help in ancient warfare. He took up his station 1 Thucyd. ii, 85. 1 Thucyd. i, 144. IIo/./l<i 6e Kal uA/,a l?x u ''f eAmda rov 7repie<T<n?a<, j}i/ ttft'Ajyre apxqv re ft?) iirtKTucr&ai ufia iro^efiovvref, /cat icivdvv ovf avdaipErovf It)) irpoari-&cr&ai fiaMiov yap TCE^ojirjiiat, rf oiKeiae f}/j.uv afiapvias fj rut uv kvavriuv diavoiaf.