Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/492

 470 HISTORY OF GREECR. mancler been Demosthenes instead of Nikias. The prodigious importance of the slope of Epipolae to the safety of the city had been demonstrated by the most unequivocal evidence. In my seventh volume, I have already described the site of Syracuse and the relation of this slope to the outer city called Achradina, Epipolae was a gentle ascent west of Achradina. It was bor- dered, along both the north side and the south side, by lines of descending cliif, cut down precipitously, about twenty feet deep in their lowest part. These lines of cliff nearly converged at the summit of the slope, called Euryalus ; leaving a narrow pass or road between elevated banks, which communicated with the coun- try both north and west of Syracuse. Epipolaa thus formed a triangle upon an inclined plane, sloping upward from its base, the outer wall of Achradina, to its apex at Euryalus ; and having its two sides formed, the one by the northern, the other by the south- ern, line of cliffs. This apex formed a post of the highest impor- tance, commanding the narrow road which approached Epipolae from its western extremity or summit, and through which alone it was easy for an army to get on the declivity of Epipolae, since the cliffs on each side were steep, though less steep on the northern side than on the southern. 1 Unless an enemy acquired possession of this slope, Syracuse could never be blocked up from the north- em sea at Trogilus to the Great Harbor ; an enterprise, which Nikias and the Athenians were near accomplishing, because they first surprised from the northward the position of Euryalus, and from thence poured down upon the slope of Epipolaj. I have already described, in my seventh volume, how the arrival of Gy- lippus deprived them of superiority in the field, at a time when their line of circumvallation was already half finished, having been carried from the centre of Epipolaa southward down to Great Harbor, and being partially completed from the same point across the northern half of Epipolae to the sea at Trogilus ; how he next intercepted their farther progress, by carrying out, from the outer wall of Achradina, a cross wall traversing their intended line of circumvallation and ending at the northern cliff; how he finally erected a fort or guard-post on the summit of Euryalus, which he 1 See the Disseitation of Saierio Cavallari, Sur Topographic vow Byrakus (Gb'ttingen, 1845), p. 22.