Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/335

317 NAVAL DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS. 317 did not inflict much loss upon the enemy, yet they saved most of their own triremes which had been driven ashore, together with he crews, and carried them into the naval station. Except for this success on land, the entire Athenian fleet would have been destroyed : as it was, the defeat was still complete, and eighteen triremes were lost, all their crews being slain. This was proba- bly the division of Eurymedon, which having been driven ashore in the recess of Daskon, was too far off from the Athenian station to receive any land assistance. As the Athenians were hauling in their disabled triremes, the Syracusans made a last effort to destroy them by means of a fireship, for which the wind happened to be favorable. But the Athenians found means to prevent her approach, and to extinguish the flames. 1 Here was a complete victory gained over Athens on her own element, gained with inferior numbers, gained even over the fresh and yet formidable fleet recently brought by Demosthenes. It told but too plainly on which side the superiority now lay, how well the Syracusans had organized their naval strength for the specialties of their own harbor, how ruinous had been the folly of Nikias in retaining his excellent seamen imprisoned within that petty and unwholesome lake, where land and water alike did the work of their enemies. It not only disheartened the Athenians, but belied all their past experience, and utterly confounded them. Sickness of the whole enterprise, and repentance for having undertaken it, now became uppermost in their minds : yet it is remarkable that we hear of no complaints against Nikias sepa- rately. 2 But repentance came too late. The Syracusans, fully alive to the importance of their victory, sailed round the harbor in triumph as again their own,3 and already looked on the enemy within it as their prisoners. They determined to close up and guard the mouth of it, from Plemmyrium to Ortygia, so as to leave no farther liberty of exit. Nor were they insensible how vastly the scope of the contest 1 Thucyd. vii, 52, 53 ; Diodor. xiii, 13. Thucyd. vii, 55. Ol fiev 'A.T&TJVO.IOI iv iravrl 6r) advpiaf qffav, nai 6 TTC pahoyof avTOif /ieyaf 7/v, noM Se /uei&v sn TJjf ffrpareiac 6 (leTapehoe. etc. This elate and visible manifestation of feeling cght not to pass unno- ticed, as an evidence of Grecian character.
 * Thucyd. vii, 56. Oi 6s Svpanoffioi TOV re 7i.ifj.fvf ewWf irapenfaov uJewf,