Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/362

 246 THE AFFAIRS OF SICILY [ill hundred in all ; then, burning their boats, that they might have no hope but in the conquest of the island, they went into Mount Istone, and building a fort there, became masters of the country to the ruin of the inhabitants of the city. 86 At the end of the same summer the Athenians sent „, . ^ twenty ships to Sicily under the com- IVartnStaly between, rr 1 1 r tvt 1 ihe Syracusans and mand of Laches the son of Melanopus, Leontiues; the latter and Charoeades the son of Euphiletus. obtain assistance from Syracuse and Leontini were now at war with one another. All the Dorian cities, except Camarina, were in alliance with Syracuse ; they were the same which at the beginning of the war were reckoned in the Lacedaemonian confederacy, but they had taken no active part*^. The allies of the Leon- tines were the Chalcidian cities and Camarina. In Italy the Locrians sided with the Syracusans, and the Rhegians with the Leontines, who were their kinsmen k The Leon- tines and their allies sent to Athens, and on the ground, partly of an old alliance, partly of their Ionian descent, begged the Athenians to send them ships, for they were driven off both sea and land by their S3^racusan enemies. The Athenians sent the ships, professedly on the ground of relationship, but in reality because they did not wish the Peloponnesians to obtain corn from Sicily. Moreover they meant to try what prospect they had of getting the affairs of Sicily into their hands. So the com- manders of the fleet came to Rhegium in Italy, where they established themselves, and carried on the war in concert with their allies. Thus the summer ended. 87 In the following winter the plague, which had never Reappearance of the entirely disappeared, although abating plague after it had f^j. ^ ^^ ^ jj^ attacked the abated. At the same -,. t • j time 7iumerous earih- Athenians. It contmued on this quakes ocair. second occasion not less than a year, having previously lasted for two years. To the power of Athens certainly nothing was more ruinous ; not less than « Cp. ii. 7 med. ^ Cp. vi. 44 fin.