(7.7) Not long afterwards the remaining Corinthian with the Ambraciot and Leucadian ships9 sailed in, under the command of Erasinides the Corinthian, having eluded the Athenian guardships. They assisted the Syracusans in completing what remained of the Syracusan wall up to the Athenian wall which it crossed. Gylippus meanwhile had gone off into Sicily to collect both naval and land forces, and also to bring over any cities which either were slack in the Syracusan cause or had stood aloof from the war. More ambassadors, Syracusan and Corinthian, were despatched to Lacedaemon and Corinth, requesting that reinforcements might be sent across the sea in merchantships or small craft, or by any other available means, since the Athenians were sending for assistance. The Syracusans, who were in high spirits, also manned a fleet, and began to practise, intending to try their hand at this new sort of warfare.
(7.8) Nicias observing how they were employed, and seeing that the strength of the enemy and the helplessness of the Athenians was daily increasing, sent to Athens a full report of his circumstances, as he had often done before, but never in such detail. He now thought the situation so critical that, if the Athenians did not at once recall them or send another considerable army to their help, the expedition was lost. Fearing lest his messengers, either from inability to speak or from want of intelligence,10 or because they desired to please the people, might not tell the whole truth, he wrote a letter, that the Athenians might receive his own opinion of their affairs unimpaired in the transmission, and so be better able to judge of the real facts of the case. The messengers departed carrying his letter and taking verbal instructions. He was now careful to keep his army on the defensive, and to run no risks which he could avoid.
(7.9) At the end of the same summer, Euetion, an Athenian general, in concert with Perdiccas and assisted by a large force of Thracians, made an attack upon Amphipolis, which he failed to take. He then brought round triremes into the Strymon and besieged the place from the river, making Himeraeum his head-quarters. So the summer ended.
(7.10) In the following winter the messengers from Nicias arrived at Athens. They delivered their verbal instructions, and answered any questions which were put to them. They also presented his letter, which the registrar of the city, coming forward, read to the Athenian people. It ran as follows:
(7.11) 'Athenians, in many previous despatches I have reported to you the course of events up to this time, but now there is greater need than ever that you should inform yourselves of our situation, and come to some decision. After we had engaged the Syracusans, against whom you sent us, in several battles, and conquered in most of them, and had raised the lines within which we are now stationed, Gylippus, a Lacedaemonian arrived, bringing an army from Peloponnesus and from certain of the cities of Sicily. In the first engagement he was defeated by us, but on the following day we were overcome by numerous horsemen and javelin-men, and retired within our lines. We have therefore desisted from our siege-works and remain idle, since we are overpowered by the superior numbers of the enemy, and indeed cannot bring our whole army into the field, for the defence of our wall absorbs a large part of our heavy-armed. The enemy meanwhile have built a single wall which crosses ours, and we cannot now invest them, unless a large army comes up and takes this cross-wall. So that we, who are supposed to be the besiegers, are really the besieged,11 at least by land; and the more so because we cannot go far even into the country, for we are prevented by their horsemen.
JOWETT'S FOOTNOTES
10.(From 7.8) Or, reading mnêmês instead of gnômês: 'from defect of memory.'