Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/305

287 SPARTAN INVASION OF ATTICA.-DEKELE1A. 287 CHAPTER LX. FROM THE RESUMPTION OF DIRECT HOSTILITIES BETWEEN ATHENS AND SPARTA, DOWN TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ATHENIAN ARMAMENT IN SICILY. THE Syracusan war now no longer stands apart, as an event by itself, but becomes absorbed in the general war rekindling throughout Greece. Never -was any winter so actively and ex- tensively employed in military preparations, as the winter of 414-413 B.C., the months immediately preceding that which Thucydides terms the nineteenth spring of the Peloponnesian war, but which other historians call the beginning of the Dekeleian war. 1 While Eurymedon went with his ten triremes to Syracuse, even in midwinter, Demosthenes exerted himself all the winter to get together the second armament for early spring. Twenty other Athenian triremes were farther sent round Peloponnesus to the station of Naupaktus, to prevent any Corinthian reinforce- ments from sailing out of the Corinthian gulf. Against these latter, the Corinthians on their side prepared twenty-five fresh triremes, to serve as a convoy to the transports carrying their hoplites. 9 In Corinth, Sikyon, and Bceotia, as well as at Lace- dasmon, levies of hoplites were going on for the armament to Syracuse, at the same time that everything was getting ready for the occupation of Dekeleia. Lastly, Gylippus was engaged with not less activity in stirring up all Sicily to take a more decisive part in the coming year's struggle. From Cape Trenarus in Laconia, at the earliest moment of spring, embarked a force of six hundred Lacedaemonian hoplites Helots and Neodamodes under the Spartan Ekkritus, and three hundred Breotian hoplites under the Thebans Xenon and Nikon, with the Thespian Hegesandrus. They were directed to cross the sea southward to Kyrene in Libya, and from thence to make their way along the African co^st to Si-Uy. At the same time a body of seven hundred hoplites Tjr.de; 1 -"Icxarchus, partly 1 Diodor. xii;', 8. z Thucyd. viL 17