Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/310

292 292 HISTORY OF GREECE. crews were made prisoners, the rest being mostly slain. 1 Thre< Athenian triremes were destroyed also. But this victory, itself not easily won, was more than counter- balanced by the irreparable loss of Plemmyrium. During the first excitement at the Athenian naval station, when the ships were in course of being manned to meet the unexpected onset from both ports at once, the garrison of Plemmyrium went to the water's edge to watch and encourage their countrymen, leaving their own walls thinly guarded, and little suspecting the presence of their enemy on the land side. This was just what Gylippus had anticipated. He attacked the forts at daybreak, taking the garrison completely by surprise, and captured them after a feeble resistance ; first the greatest and most important fort, next the two smaller. The garrison sought safety as they could, on board the transports and vessels of burden at the station, and rowed across the Great Harbor to the land-camp of Nikias on the other Fide. Those who fled from the greater fort, which was the first taken, ran some risk from the Syracusan triremes, which were at that moment victorious at sea. But by the time that the two lesser forts were taken, the Athenian fleet had regained its supe- riority, so that there was no danger of similar pursuit in the crossing of the Great Harbor. This well-concerted surprise was no less productive to the cap- tors than fatal as a blow to the Athenians. Not only were many men slain, and many made prisoners, in the assault, but there were vast stores of every kind, and even a large stock of money found within the fort; partly belonging to the military chest, partly the property of the trierarchs and of private merchants, who had deposited it there as in the place of greatest security. The sails of not less than forty triremes were also found there, and three triremes which had been dragged up ashore. Gylip- pus caused one of the three forts to be pulled down, and care- fully garrisoned the other two. 2 Great as the positive loss was here to the Athenians at a time when their situation could ill bear it, the collateral damage and peril growing out of the capture of Plemmyrium was yet more serious, besides the alarm and discouragement which it spread - Thucy. vii, 23 : DiocI xiii, 9 : Plut. Nikias, c. 20. 2 Thucy. vii, 23, 2 I.