Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/234

 212 HISTORY OF GI7KKCT. motion, and to make them strenuously attack the embarrassed enemy: whcse jhips, disordered by the heat of pursuit, and having beer, just suddenly stopped, could not be speedily got again under way, and expected nothing less than renewed attack. First, the Athenians broke the twenty pursuing ships, on the right wing ; next, they pursued their advantage against the left and centre, who had probably neared to the right ; so that after a short resistance, the whole were completely rouetd, and fled across the gulf to their original station at Panormus. 1 Not only did the eleven Athenian ships thus break, terrify, and drive away the entire fleet of the enemy, with the capture of six of the nearest Peloponnesian triremes, but they also rescued those ships of their own which had been driven ashore and taken in the early part of the action : moreover, the Peloponnesian crews sustained a considerable loss, both in killed and in pris- oners. Thus, in spite not only of the prodigious disparity of numbers, but also of the disastrous blow which the Athenians had sus- tained at first, Phormio ended by gaining a complete victory ; a victory, to which even the Lacedaemonians were forced to bear testimony, since they were obliged to ask a truce for burying and collecting their dead, while the Athenians on their part picked up the bodies of their own warriors. The defeated party, how- ever, still thought themselves entitled, in token of their success in the early part of the action, to erect a trophy on the Rhium of Achaia, where they also dedicated the single Athenian trireme which they had been able to carry off. Yet they were so com 1 Thucyd. ii, 92. It is sufficiently evident that the Athenians defeated and drove off not only the twenty Peloponnesian ships of the right or pur- suing wing, but also the left and centre. Otherwise, they would not have been able to recapture those Athenian ships which had been lost at the beginning of the battle. Thucydides, indeed, does not expressly mention the Peloponnesian left and centre as following the right in their pursuit towards Naupaktus. But we may presume that they partially did so, prob- ably careless of much order, as being at first under the impression that the victory was gained. They were probably, therefore, thrown into confusion without much difficulty, when the twenty ships of the right were beaten and driven back upon them, even though the victorious Athenian tiiremes verc no more than eleven in numoer.