Nicias saw that a battle must be fought, and he ordered a great number of the land troops to go on board the fleet. At all costs he must strengthen his navy.
The first thing the Athenians had to do was to break through the ships that were lashed together at the mouth of the harbour. But before the chains could be broken the enemy was upon them, surrounding them on every side. Despair gave the Athenians courage, and so desperately did they fight that for a time it seemed that they might yet escape.
Above the crash of vessels rose the cheers or groans of those who watched the battle from the shore.
Thucydides gives us a picture of the hopes and fears, the triumph and despair of those who fought as of those who watched. He says:
‘The fortune of the battle varied, and it was not possible that the spectators on the shore should all receive the same impression of it. Being quite close and having different points of view, they would some of them see their own ships victorious; their courage would then revive, and they would earnestly call upon the gods not to take from them their hope of deliverance. But others, who saw their ships worsted, cried and shrieked aloud, and were by the sight alone more utterly unnerved than the defeated combatants themselves.
‘Others again who had fixed their gaze on some part of the struggle which was undecided were in a state of excitement still more terrible; they kept swaying their bodies to and fro in an agony of hope and fear, as the stubborn conflict went on and on; for at every instant they were all but saved or all but lost. And while the strife hung in the balance, you might hear in the Athenian army at once lamentation, shouting, cries of victory or defeat, and all the various sounds which are wrung from a great host in extremity of danger.’
At length the Athenians were pushed back and yet further back, until the fleet was stranded on the shore. The soldiers who had been left on land now rushed forward and succeeded in saving sixty of their ships from the enemy.
Demosthenes urged the men to embark and try once again to cut their way out of the harbour, but they refused, so crushed were they by their defeat. To retreat by land was all that the Athenians could now try to do, yet in their hearts they knew that the retreat must end in slavery or in death.
The sick and the wounded were left behind. But those who were stricken with fever, caused by the marsh land on which they had been encamped, clung to their comrades, and scarce knowing what they did, begged that they might not be left behind. But their strength soon failed, and they sank down by the wayside to die.
Nicias, ill as he was, did all in his power to encourage and cheer his men. He himself led the van, Demosthenes brought up the rear.