Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/269

251 FIRST SYRACUSAN COUNTER-WALL. 251 Accordingly, they took their start from the postern-gate neai the grove of Apollo Temenites ; a gate in the new wall, erected four or five months before, to enlarge the fortified space of the city. From this point, which was lower down on the slope of Kpipolce than the Athenian circle, they carried their palisade and counter-wall up the slope, in a direction calculated to inter- sect the intended line of hostile circumvallation southward of the Circle. The nautical population from Ortygia could be employed in this enterprise, since the city was still completely undisturbed by sea, and mistress of the great harbor, the Athenian fleet not having yet moved from Thapsus. Besides this active crowd of workmen, the sacred olive-trees in the Temenite grove were cut down to serve as materials ; and by such efforts the work was presently finished to a sufficient distance for traversing and inter- cepting the blockading wall intended to come southward from the Circle. It seems to have terminated at the brink of the precip- itous southern cliff of Epipolaa, which prevented the Athenians from turning it and attacking it in flank ; while it was defended in front by a stockade and topped with wooden towers for dis- charge of missiles. One tribe of hoplites was left to defend it, while the crowd of Syracusans who had either been employed on the work or on guard, returned back to the city. During all this process, Nikias had not thought it prudent to interrupt them. 1 Employed as he seems to have been on the Circle, and on the wall branching out from his Circle northward, he was unwilling to march across the slope of Epipolse to attack them with half his forces, leaving his own rear exposed to attack from the numerous Syracusans in the city, and his own Circle Athenians," without intending to denote any special assailable points ; Trpo- Kara^.a/n(3aviv Tuf t-^odof o, means li to get beforehand with the attacks," (see Thucyd. i, 57, v, 30.) This is in fact the more usual meaning of t'dofJof (compare vii, 5; vii, 43; i, 6 ; v, 35 ; vi, 63), "attack, approach, visit," etc. There are doubtless other passages in which it means, " the way or road through which the attack was made:" in one of these, however (vii, 51 ), all the best editors now read eaodov instead of kfyotiov. It will be seen that arguments have been founded upon the inadmissible 'sense which the Scholiast here gives to the word iodoi: see Dr. Arnold. Memoir on the Map of Syracuse, Appendix to his cd. of Thucyd. vol. iii p 271. ' Thucyd. vi, 100.