Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/261

243 MOVEMENTS OF NIKIAS. ^43 of his superior acquaintance with the circumstances of the Italian and Sicilian Greeks ; since his father Kleandridas, after having been banished from Sparta fourteen years before the Peloponne- sian war for taking Athenian bribes, had been domiciliated as a citizen at Thurii. 1 Gylippus desired the Corinthians to send immediately two triremes for him to Asine, in the Messenian gulf, and to prepare as many others as their docks could furnish. CHAPTER LIX. I ROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE SIEGE OF SYRACUSE Bl NIKIAS, DOWN TO THE SECOND ATHENIAN EXPEDITION UNDER DEMOSTHENES, AND THE RESUMPTION OF THE GENERAL WAR. THE Athenian troops at Katana, probably tired of inaction, were put in motion in the early spring, even before the arrival of the reinforcements from Athens, and sailed to the deserted walls of Megara, not far from Syracuse, which the Syracusans had recently garrisoned. Having in vain attacked the Syracusan garrison, and laid waste the neighboring fields, they reembarked, landed again for similar purposes at the mouth of the river Terias, and then, after an insignificant skirmish, returned to Katana. An expedition into the interior of the island pro- cured for them the alliance of the Sikel town of Kentoripa ; and the cavalry being now arrived from Athens, they prepared for operations against Syracuse. Nikias had received from Athens two hundred and fifty horsemen fully equipped, for whom horses were to be procured in Sicily, 2 thirty horse-bowmen, and three 1 Thucyd. vi, 104. 3 Horses were so largely bred in Sicily, that they even found their way Into Attica and Central Greece, Sophokles, (Ed. Kolon. 312: yvvaitf 6pti i]fJ-iv, uaaov, If the Scholiast is to be trusted, the Sicilian horses were of unusnallj great s/'zc.