Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/334

316 516 HISTORY OF GREECE. What interpretation the Syracusans, confident and victorious, put on the eclipse, we are not told. But they knew well how to interpret the fact, which speedily came to their knowledge, that the Athenians had fully resolved to make a furtive escape, and had only been prevented by the eclipse. Such a resolution, amounting to an unequivocal confession of helplessness, em- boldened the Syracusans yet farther, to crush them as they were in the harbor, and never to permit them to occupy even any other post in Sicily. Accordingly, Gylippus caused his triremes to be manned and practised for several days : he then drew oui his land-force, and made a demonstration of no great significance against the Athenian lines. On the morrow, he brought out all his forces, both land and naval ; with the former of which he beset the Athenian lines, while the fleet, seventy-six triremes in num- ber, was directed to sail up to the Athenian naval station. The Athenian fleet, eighty-six triremes strong, sailed out to meet it, and a close, general, and desperate action took place. The fortune of Athens had fled. The Syracusans first beat the centre di- vision of the Athenians ; next, the right division under Euryme- don, who in attempting an evolution to outflank the enemy's left, forgot those narrow limits of the harbor which were at every turn the ruin of the Athenian mariner, neared the land too much, and was pinned up against it, in the recess of Daskon, by the vigor- ous attack of the Syracusans. He was here slain, and his division destroyed : successively, the entire Athenian fleet was beaten and driven ashore. Few of the defeated ships could get into their own station. Most of them were forced ashore or grounded on points without those limits ; upon which Gylippus marched down his land-force to the water's edge, in order to prevent the retreat of the crews as well as to assist the Syracusan seamen in hauling off the ships as prizes. His march, however, was so hurried and disorderly, that the Tyrrhenian troops, on guard at the flank of the Athenian station, sallied out against them as they approached, beat the fore- most of them, and drove them away from the shore into the marsh called Lysimeleia. More Syracusan troops came to their aid ; but the Athenians also, anxious above all things for the protection of their ships, came forth in greater numbers ; and a general battle ensued in which the latter were victorious. Though they