Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/264

246 240 HISTORY OF GREECE. Great Harbor at a spot not far westward of the junction of Ortygia with the main land. Or he might have landed in the Great Harbor, and executed the same wall, beginning from the opposite end. Or he might have preferred to construct two blockading walls, one for each city separately : a short wall would have sufficed in front of the isthmus joining Ortygia, while a separate wall might have been carried to shut up the outer city, across the unfortified space constituting the Nekropoli?, so as to end not in the Great Harbor 1, but in the coast of the Nekropolis opposite to Ortygia. Such were the possibilities of the case at the time when Nikias first reached Rhegium. But during the many months of inaction which he had allowed, the Syracusans had barred out both these possibilities, and had greatly augmented the difficulties of his intended enterprise. They had constructed a new wall, covering both their inner and their outer city, stretching across the whole front which faced the slope of Epipolrc, from the Great Harbor to the opposite sea near Santa Bonagia, and expanding westward so as to include within it the statue and consecrated ground of Apollo Temenites, with the cliff near adjoining to it known by the name of the Temenite Cliff. This was done for the express purpose of lengthening the line indis- pensable for the besiegers to make their wall a good blockade. 1 After it was finished, Nikias could not begin his blockade from the side of the Great Harbor, since he would have been obstructed by the precipitous southern cliff of Epipoke. He was under the necessity of beginning his wall from a portion of the higher ground of Epipolse, and of carrying it both along a greater space and higher up on the slope, until he touched the Great Harbor at a point farther removed from Ortygia. Syracuse having thus become assailable only from the side of Epipolas, the necessity so created for carrying on operations much higher up on the slope, gave to the summit of that eminence a greater importance than it had before possessed. Nikias, doubt- less furnished with good local information by the exiles, seems to 1 Thucyd. vi, 75. 'Em^tyov <Je nal oi Zvpanoaioi tv ry %Fcfi&vi, -oi-Tf t jrpcf - ry voAei, rbv TefteviTnv IvTof TroiTjaajisvot, T el %of irapd. irav r'f. K p H f 'af 'E7rt7ro?.f dpuv, oTrwf ur/ 6 i j i7iuc aovo( %to ro. 6)<Tt v, rv u(.a o ^a/U-uvrat, etc.