But this victory, itself not easily won, was more than counterbalanced by the irreparable loss of Plemmyrium. During the first excitement at the Athenian naval station, when the ships were in course of being manned to meet the unexpected onset from both ports at once, the garrison of Plemmyrium went to the water’s edge to watch and encourage their countrymen, leaving their own walls thinly guarded, and little suspecting the presence of their enemy on the land side. This was just what Gylippus had anticipated. He attacked the forts at daybreak, taking the garrison completely by surprise, and captured them after a feeble resistance; first the greatest and most important fort, next the two smaller. The garrison sought safety as they could, on board the transports and vessels of burden at the station, and rowed across the Great Harbor to the land-camp of Nikias on the other side. Those who fled from the greater fort, which was the first taken, ran some risk from the Syracusan triremes, which were at that moment victorious at sea. But by the time that the two lesser forts were taken, the Athenian fleet had regained its superiority, so that there was no danger of similar pursuit in the crossing of the Great Harbor.

This well-concerted surprise was no less productive to the captors than fatal as a blow to the Athenians. Not only were many men slain, and many made prisoners, in the assault, but there were vast stores of every kind, and even a large stock of money found within the fort; partly belonging to the military chest, partly the property of the trierarchs and of private merchants, who had deposited it there as in the place of greatest security. The sails of not less than forty triremes were also found there, and three triremes which had been dragged up ashore. Gylippus caused one of the three forts to be pulled down, and carefully garrisoned the other two.[426]

Great as the positive loss was here to the Athenians at a time when their situation could ill bear it, the collateral damage and peril growing out of the capture of Plemmyrium was yet more serious, besides the alarm and discouragement which it spread among the army. The Syracusans were now masters of the mouth of the harbor on both sides, so that not a single storeship could enter without a convoy and a battle. What was of not less detriment, the Athenian fleet was now forced to take station under the fortified lines of its own land-force, and was thus cramped up on a small space in the innermost portion of the Great Harbor, between the city-wall and the river Anapus; the Syracusans being masters everywhere else, with full communication between their posts all round, hemming in the Athenian position both by sea and by land.

To the Syracusans, on the contrary, the result of the recent battle proved every way encouraging; not merely from the valuable acquisition of Plemmyrium, but even from the sea-fight itself, which had indeed turned out to be a defeat, but which promised at first to be a victory, had they not thrown away the chance by their own disorder. It removed all superstitious fear of Athenian nautical superiority; while their position was so much improved by having acquired the command of the mouth of the harbor, that they began even to assume the aggressive at sea. They detached a squadron of twelve triremes to the coast of Italy, for the purpose of intercepting some merchant vessels coming with a supply of money to the Athenians. So little fear was there of an enemy at sea, that these vessels seem to have been coming without convoy, and were for the most part destroyed by the Syracusans, together with a stock of ship-timber which the Athenians had collected near Kaulonia. In touching at Lokri, on their return, they took aboard a company of Thespian hoplites who had made their way thither in a transport. They were also fortunate enough to escape the squadron of twenty triremes which Nikias detached to lie in wait for them near Megara, with the loss of one ship, however, including her crew.[427]

One of this Syracusan squadron had gone forward from Italy with envoys to Peloponnesus, to communicate the favorable news of the capture of Plemmyrium, and to accelerate as much as possible, the operations against Attica, in order that no reinforcements might be sent from thence. At the same time, other envoys went from Syracuse—not merely Syracusans, but also Corinthians and Lacedæmonians—to visit the cities in the interior of Sicily. They made known everywhere the prodigious improvement in Syracusan affairs arising from the gain of Plemmyrium, as well as the insignificant character of the recent naval defeat. They strenuously pleaded for farther aid to Syracuse without delay, since there were now the best hopes of being able to crush the Athenians in the harbor completely, before the reinforcements about to be despatched could reach them.[428]

While these envoys were absent on their mission, the Great Harbor was the scene of much desultory conflict, though not of any comprehensive single battle. Since the loss of Plemmyrium, the Athenian naval station was in the northwest interior corner of that harbor, adjoining the fortified lines occupied by their land-army. It was inclosed and protected by a row of posts or stakes stuck in the bottom and standing out of the water.[429] The Syracusans on their side had also planted a stockade in front of the interior port of Ortygia, to defend their ships, their ship-houses, and their docks within. As the two stations were not far apart, each party watched for opportunities of occasional attack or annoyance by missile weapons to the other; and daily skirmishes of this sort took place, in which on the whole the Athenians seem to have had the advantage. They even formed the plan of breaking through the outworks of the Syracusan dockyard, and burning the ships within. They brought up a ship of the largest size, with wooden towers and side defences, against the line of posts fronting the dockyard, and tried to force the entrance, either by means of divers, who sawed them through at the bottom, or by boat-crews, who fastened ropes round them and thus unfixed or plucked them out. All this was done under cover of the great vessel with its towers manned by light-armed, who exchanged showers of missiles with the Syracusan bowmen on the top of the ship-houses, and prevented the latter from coming near enough to interrupt the operation. The Athenians contrived thus to remove many of the posts planted, even the most dangerous among them, those which did not reach to the surface of the water, and which therefore a ship approaching could not see. But they gained little by it, since the Syracusans were able to plant others in their room. On the whole, no serious damage was done, either to the dockyard or to the ships within. And the state of affairs in the Great Harbor stood substantially unaltered, during all the time that the envoys were absent on their Sicilian tour, probably three weeks or a month.[430]

These envoys had found themselves almost everywhere well received. The prospects of Syracuse were now so triumphant, and those of Nikias with his present force so utterly hopeless, that the waverers thought it time to declare themselves; and all the Greek cities in Sicily, except Agrigentum, which still remained neutral (and of course except Naxos and Katana), resolved on aiding the winning cause. From Kamarina came five hundred hoplites, four hundred darters, and three hundred bowmen; from Gela, five triremes, four hundred darters, and two hundred horsemen. Besides these, an additional force from the other cities was collected, to march to Syracuse in a body across the interior of the island, under the conduct of the envoys themselves. But this part of the scheme was frustrated by Nikias, who was rendered more vigilant by the present desperate condition of his affairs, than he had been in reference to the cross march of Gylippus. At his instance, the Sikel tribes Kentoripes and Halikyæi, allies of Athens, were prevailed upon to attack the approaching enemy. They planned a skilful ambuscade, set upon them unawares, and dispersed them with the loss of eight hundred men. All the envoys were also slain, except the Corinthian, who conducted the remaining force, about fifteen hundred in number, to Syracuse.[431]

This reverse—which seems to have happened about the time when Demosthenês with his armament were at Korkyra, on the way to Syracuse—so greatly dismayed and mortified the Syracusans, that Gylippus thought it advisable to postpone awhile the attack which he intended to have made immediately on the reinforcement arriving.[432] The delay of these few days proved nothing less than the salvation of the Athenian army.

It was not until Demosthenês was approaching Rhegium within two or three days’ sail of Syracuse, that the attack was determined on without farther delay. Preparation in every way had been made for it long before, especially for the most effective employment of the naval force. The captains and ship-masters of Syracuse and Corinth had now become fully aware of the superiority of Athenian nautical manœuvre, and of the causes upon which that superiority depended. The Athenian trireme was of a build comparatively light, fit for rapid motion through the water, and for easy change of direction: its prow was narrow, armed with a sharp projecting beak at the end, but hollow and thin, not calculated to force its way through very strong resistance. It was never intended to meet, in direct impact and collision, the prow of an enemy: such a proceeding passed among the able seamen of Athens for gross awkwardness. In advancing against an enemy’s vessel, they evaded the direct shock, steered so as to pass by it, then, by the excellence and exactness of their rowing, turned swiftly round, altered their direction and came back before the enemy could alter his: or perhaps rowed rapidly round him, or backed their ship stern foremost, until the opportunity was found for driving the beak of their ship against some weak part of his, against the midships, the quarter, the stern, or the oarblades without. In such manœuvres the Athenians were unrivalled: but none such could be performed unless there were ample sea-room, which rendered their present naval station the most disadvantageous that could be imagined. They were cooped up in the inmost part of a harbor of small dimensions, close on the station of their enemies, and with all the shore, except their own lines, in possession of those enemies: so that they could not pull round from want of space, nor could they back water, because they durst not come near shore. In this contracted area, the only mode of fighting possible was by straightforward collision, prow against prow; a process which not only shut out all their superior manœuvring, but was unsuited to the build of their triremes. On the other hand, the Syracusans, under the advice of the able Corinthian steersman Aristo, altered the construction of their triremes to meet the special exigency of the case, disregarding all idea of what had been generally looked upon as good nautical manœuvring.[433] Instead of the long, thin, hollow, and sharp, advancing beak, striking the enemy considerably above the water-level, and therefore doing less damage, they shortened the prow, but made it excessively heavy and solid, and lowered the elevation of the projecting beak: so that it became not so much calculated to pierce, as to break in and crush by main force all the opposing part of the enemy’s ship, not far above the water. What were called the epôtids, “ear-caps,” or nozzles, projecting forwards to the right and left of the beak, were made peculiarly thick, and sustained by under-beams let in to the hull of the ship. In the Attic build, the beak stood forward very prominent, and the epôtids on each side of it were kept back, serving the same purpose as what are called catheads, in modern ships, to which the anchors are suspended: but in the Corinthian build, the beak projected less, and the epôtids more, so that they served to strike the enemy: instead of having one single beak, the Corinthian ship might be said to have three nozzles.[434] The Syracusans relied on the narrowness of the space, for shutting out the Athenian evolutions, and bringing the contest to nothing more than a straightforward collision; in which the weaker vessel would be broken and stove in at the prow, and thus rendered unmanageable.

Having completed these arrangements, their land-force was marched out under Gylippus to threaten one side of the Athenian lines, while the cavalry and the garrison of the Olympieion marched up to the other side. The Athenians were putting themselves in position to defend their walls from what seemed to be a land attack, when they saw the Syracusan fleet, eighty triremes strong, sailing out from its dock prepared for action: upon which they too, though at first confused by this unexpected appearance, put their crews on shipboard, and went out of their palisaded station, seventy-five triremes in number, to meet the enemy. The whole day passed off, however, in desultory and indecisive skirmish, with trifling advantage to the Syracusans, who disabled one or two Athenian ships, yet merely tried to invite the Athenians to attack, without choosing themselves to force on a close and general action.[435]