Dorians but Corinthians, were openly serving against Corinthians and
Syracusans, although colonists of the former and of the same race as
the latter, under colour of compulsion, but really out of free will
through hatred of Corinth. The Messenians, as they are now called in
Naupactus and from Pylos, then held by the Athenians, were taken
with them to the war. There were also a few Megarian exiles, whose
fate it was to be now fighting against the Megarian Selinuntines.
The engagement of the rest was more of a voluntary nature. It was
less the league than hatred of the Lacedaemonians and the immediate
private advantage of each individual that persuaded the Dorian Argives
to join the Ionian Athenians in a war against Dorians; while the
Mantineans and other Arcadian mercenaries, accustomed to go against
the enemy pointed out to them at the moment, were led by interest to
regard the Arcadians serving with the Corinthians as just as much
their enemies as any others. The Cretans and Aetolians also served for
hire, and the Cretans who had joined the Rhodians in founding Gela,
thus came to consent to fight for pay against, instead of for, their
colonists. There were also some Acarnanians paid to serve, although
they came chiefly for love of Demosthenes and out of goodwill to the
Athenians whose allies they were. These all lived on the Hellenic side
of the Ionian Gulf. Of the Italiots, there were the Thurians and
Metapontines, dragged into the quarrel by the stern necessities of a
time of revolution; of the Siceliots, the Naxians and the Catanians;
and of the barbarians, the Egestaeans, who called in the Athenians,
most of the Sicels, and outside Sicily some Tyrrhenian enemies of
Syracuse and Iapygian mercenaries.
Such were the peoples serving with the Athenians. Against these
the Syracusans had the Camarinaeans their neighbours, the Geloans
who live next to them; then passing over the neutral Agrigentines, the
Selinuntines settled on the farther side of the island. These
inhabit the part of Sicily looking towards Libya; the Himeraeans
came from the side towards the Tyrrhenian Sea, being the only Hellenic
inhabitants in that quarter, and the only people that came from thence
to the aid of the Syracusans. Of the Hellenes in Sicily the above
peoples joined in the war, all Dorians and independent, and of the
barbarians the Sicels only, that is to say, such as did not go over to
the Athenians. Of the Hellenes outside Sicily there were the
Lacedaemonians, who provided a Spartan to take the command, and a
force of Neodamodes or Freedmen, and of Helots; the Corinthians, who
alone joined with naval and land forces, with their Leucadian and
Ambraciot kinsmen; some mercenaries sent by Corinth from Arcadia; some
Sicyonians forced to serve, and from outside Peloponnese the
Boeotians. In comparison, however, with these foreign auxiliaries, the
great Siceliot cities furnished more in every department- numbers of
heavy infantry, ships, and horses, and an immense multitude besides
having been brought together; while in comparison, again, one may say,
with all the rest put together, more was provided by the Syracusans
themselves, both from the greatness of the city and from the fact that
they were in the greatest danger.
Such were the auxiliaries brought together on either side, all of
which had by this time joined, neither party experiencing any
subsequent accession. It was no wonder, therefore, if the Syracusans
and their allies thought that it would win them great glory if they
could follow up their recent victory in the sea-fight by the capture
of the whole Athenian armada, without letting it escape either by
sea or by land. They began at once to close up the Great Harbour by
means of boats, merchant vessels, and galleys moored broadside
across its mouth, which is nearly a mile wide, and made all their
other arrangements for the event of the Athenians again venturing to
fight at sea. There was, in fact, nothing little either in their plans
or their ideas.
The Athenians, seeing them closing up the harbour and informed of
their further designs, called a council of war. The generals and
colonels assembled and discussed the difficulties of the situation;