Gylippus, on arriving at Himera, as commander named by Sparta, and announcing himself as forerunner of Peloponnesian reinforcements, met with a hearty welcome. The Himeræans agreed to aid him with a body of hoplites, and to furnish panoplies for the seamen in his vessels. On sending to Selinus, Gela, and some of the Sikel tribes in the interior, he received equally favorable assurances; so that he was enabled in no very long time to get together a respectable force. The interest of Athens among the Sikels had been recently weakened by the death of one of her most active partisans, the Sikel prince Archonidês, a circumstance which both enabled Gylippus to obtain more of their aid, and facilitated his march across the island. He was enabled to undertake this inland march from Himera to Syracuse at the head of seven hundred hoplites from his own vessels, seamen and epibatæ taken together; one thousand hoplites and light troops, with one hundred horse, from Himera, some horse and light troops from Selinus and Gela, and one thousand Sikels.[389] With these forces, some of whom joined him on the march, he reached Euryâlus and the heights of Epipolæ above Syracuse, assaulting and capturing the Sikel fort of Ietæ in his way, but without experiencing any other opposition.
His arrival was all but too late, and might have been actually too late, had not the Corinthian admiral Goggylus got to Syracuse a little before him. The Corinthian fleet of twelve triremes, under Erasinidês—having started from Leukas later than Gylippus, but as soon as it was ready—was now on its way to Syracuse. But Goggylus had been detained at Leukas by some accident, so that he did not depart until after all the rest. Yet he reached Syracuse the soonest; probably striking a straighter course across the sea, and favored by weather. He got safely into the harbor of Syracuse, escaping the Athenian guardships, whose watch doubtless partook of the general negligence of the besieging operations.[390]
The arrival of Goggylus at that moment was an accident of unspeakable moment, and was in fact nothing less than the salvation of the city. Among all the causes of despair in the Syracusan mind, there was none more powerful than the circumstance, that they had not as yet heard of any relief approaching, or of any active intervention in their favor, from Peloponnesus. Their discouragement increasing from day to day, and the interchange of propositions with Nikias becoming more frequent, matters had at last so ripened that a public assembly was just about to be held to sanction a definitive capitulation.[391] It was at this critical juncture that Goggylus arrived, apparently a little before Gylippus reached Himera. He was the first to announce that both the Corinthian fleet and a Spartan commander were now actually on their voyage, and might be expected immediately, intelligence which filled the Syracusans with enthusiasm and with renewed courage. They instantly threw aside all idea of capitulation, and resolved to hold out to the last.
It was not long before they received intimation that Gylippus had reached Himera, which Goggylus at his arrival could not know, and was raising an army to march across for their relief. After the interval necessary for his preparations and for his march, probably not less than between a fortnight and three weeks, they learned that he was approaching Syracuse by the way of Euryâlus and Epipolæ. He was presently seen coming, having ascended Epipolæ by Euryâlus; the same way by which the Athenians had come from Katana in the spring, when they commenced the siege. As he descended the slope of Epipolæ, the whole Syracusan force went out in a body to hail his arrival and accompany him into the city.[392]
Few incidents throughout the whole siege of Syracuse appear so unaccountable as the fact, that the proceedings and march of Gylippus, from his landing at Himera to the moment of his entering the town, were accomplished without the smallest resistance on the part of Nikias. After this instant, the besiegers pass from incontestable superiority in the field, and apparent certainty of prospective capture of the city, to a state of inferiority, not only excluding all hope of capture, but even sinking, step by step, into absolute ruin. Yet Nikias had remained with his eyes shut and his hands tied, not making the least effort to obstruct so fatal a consummation. After having despised Gylippus, in his voyage along the coast of Italy, as a freebooter with four ships, he now despises him not less at the head of an army marching from Himera. If he was taken unawares, as he really appears to have been,[393] the fault was altogether his own, and the ignorance such as we must almost call voluntary. For the approach of Gylippus must have been well known to him beforehand. He must have learned from the four ships which he sent to Rhegium, that Gylippus had already touched thither in passing through the strait, on his way to Himera. He must therefore have been well aware, that the purpose was to attempt the relief of Syracuse by an army from the interior; and his correspondence among the Sikel tribes must have placed him in cognizance of the equipment going on at Himera. Moreover, when we recollect that Gylippus reached that place without either troops or arms; that he had to obtain forces not merely from Himera, but also from Selinus and Gela, as well as to sound the Sikel towns, not all of them friendly; lastly, that he had to march all across the island, partly through hostile territory, it is impossible to allow less interval than a fortnight or three weeks between his landing at Himera and his arrival at Epipolæ. Farther, Nikias must have learned, through his intelligence in the interior of Syracuse, the important revolution which had taken place in Syracusan opinion through the arrival of Goggylus, even before the landing of Gylippus in Sicily was known. He was apprized, from that moment, that he had to take measures, not only against renewed obstinate hostility within the town, but against a fresh invading enemy without. Lastly, that enemy had first to march all across Sicily, during which march he might have been embarrassed and perhaps defeated,[394] and could then approach Syracuse only by one road, over the high ground of Euryâlus in the Athenian rear, through passes few in number, easy to defend, by which Nikias had himself first approached, and through which he had only got by a well-laid plan of surprise. Yet Nikias leaves these passes unoccupied and undefended; he takes not a single new precaution; the relieving army enters Syracuse as it were over a broad and free plain.
If we are amazed at the insolent carelessness with which Nikias disdained the commonest precautions for repelling the foreknown approach, by sea, of an enemy formidable even single-handed, what are we to say of that unaccountable blindness which led him to neglect the same enemy when coming at the head of a relieving army, and to omit the most obvious means of defence in a crisis upon which his future fate turned? Homer would have designated such neglect as a temporary delirium inflicted by the fearful inspiration of Atê: the historian has no such explanatory name to give, and can only note it as a sad and suitable prelude to the calamities too nearly at hand.
At the moment when the fortunate Spartan auxiliary was thus allowed to march quietly into Syracuse, the Athenian double wall of circumvallation, between the southern cliff of Epipolæ and the Great Harbor, eight stadia long, was all but completed: a few yards only of the end close to the harbor were wanting. But Gylippus cared not to interrupt its completion. He aimed at higher objects, and he knew, what Nikias, unhappily, never felt and never lived to learn, the immense advantage of turning to active account that first impression and full tide of confidence which his arrival had just infused into the Syracusans. Hardly had he accomplished his junction with them, when he marshalled the united force in order of battle, and marched up to the lines of the Athenians. Amazed as they were, and struck dumb by his unexpected arrival, they too formed in battle order, and awaited his approach. His first proceeding marked how much the odds of the game were changed. He sent a herald to tender to them a five days’ armistice, on condition that they should collect their effects and withdraw from the island. Nikias disdained to return any reply to this insulting proposal; but his conduct showed how much he felt, as well as Gylippus, that the tide was now turned. For when the Spartan commander, perceiving now for the first time the disorderly trim of his Syracusan hoplites, thought fit to retreat into more open ground farther removed from the walls, probably in order that he might have a better field for his cavalry, Nikias declined to follow him, and remained in position close to his own fortifications.[395] This was tantamount to a confession of inferiority in the field. It was a virtual abandonment of the capture of Syracuse, a tacit admission that the Athenians could hope for nothing better in the end than the humiliating offer which the herald had just made to them. So it seems to have been felt by both parties; for from this time forward, the Syracusans become and continue aggressors, the Athenians remaining always on the defensive, except for one brief instant after the arrival of Demosthenês.
After drawing off his troops and keeping them encamped for that night on the Temenite cliff, seemingly within the added fortified inclosure of Syracuse, Gylippus brought them out again the next morning, and marshalled them in front of the Athenian lines, as if about to attack. But while the attention of the Athenians was thus engaged, he sent a detachment to surprise the fort of Labdalum, which was not within view of their lines. The enterprise was completely successful. The fort was taken, and the garrison put to the sword; while the Syracusans gained another unexpected advantage during the day, by the capture of one of the Athenian triremes which was watching their harbor. Gylippus pursued his successes actively, by immediately beginning the construction of a fresh counter-wall, from the outer city wall in a northwesterly direction aslant up the slope of Epipolæ; so as to traverse the intended line of the Athenian circumvallation on the north side of their Circle, and render blockade impossible. He availed himself, for this purpose, of stones laid by the Athenians for their own circumvallation, at the same time alarming them by threatening attack upon their lower wall, between the southern cliff of Epipolæ and the Great Harbor, which was now just finished, so as to leave their troops disposable for action on the higher ground. Against one part of the wall, which seemed weaker than the rest, he attempted a nocturnal surprise, but finding the Athenians in vigilant guard without, he was forced to retire. This part of the wall was now heightened, and the Athenians took charge of it themselves, distributing their allies along the remainder.[396]
These attacks, however, appear to have been chiefly intended as diversions, in order to hinder the enemy from obstructing the completion of the counter-wall. Now was the time for Nikias to adopt vigorous aggressive measures both against this wall and against the Syracusans in the field, unless he chose to relinquish all hope of ever being able to beleaguer Syracuse. And, indeed, he seems actually to have relinquished such hope, even thus early after he had seemed certain master of the city. For he now undertook a measure altogether new; highly important in itself, but indicating an altered scheme of policy. He resolved to fortify Cape Plemmyrium,—the rocky promontory which forms one extremity of the narrow entrance of the Great Harbor, immediately south of the point of Ortygia,—and to make it a secure main station for the fleet and stores. The fleet had been hitherto stationed in close neighborhood of the land-force, in a fortified position at the extremity of the double blockading wall between the southern cliff of Epipolæ and the Great Harbor. From such a station in the interior of the harbor, it was difficult for the Athenian triremes to perform the duties incumbent on them, of watching the two ports of Syracuse—one on each side of the isthmus which joins Ortygia to the mainland—so as to prevent any exit of ships from within, or ingress of ships from without, and of insuring the unobstructed admission by sea of supplies for their own army. For both these purposes, the station of Plemmyrium was far more convenient; and Nikias now saw that henceforward his operations would be for the most part maritime. Without confessing it openly, he thus practically acknowledged that the superiority of land-force had passed to the side of his opponents, and that a successful prosecution of the blockade had become impossible.[397]
Three forts, one of considerable size and two subsidiary, were erected on the seaboard of Cape Plemmyrium, which became the station for triremes as well as for ships of burden. Though the situation was found convenient for all naval operations, it entailed also serious disadvantages; being destitute of any spring of water, such as the memorable fountain of Arethusa on the opposite island of Ortygia. So that for supplies of water, and of wood also, the crews of the ships had to range a considerable distance, exposed to surprise from the numerous Syracusan cavalry placed in garrison at the temple of Zeus Olympius. Day after day, losses were sustained in this manner, besides the increased facilities given for desertion, which soon fatally diminished the efficiency of each ship’s crew. As the Athenian hopes of success now declined, both the slaves and the numerous foreigners who served in their navy became disposed to steal away. And though the ships of war, down to this time, had been scarcely at all engaged in actual warfare, yet they had been for many months continually at sea and on the watch, without any opportunity of hauling ashore to refit. Hence the naval force, now about to be called into action as the chief hope of the Athenians, was found lamentably degenerated from that ostentatious perfection in which it had set sail fifteen months before, from the harbor of Peiræus.