trial and conflict of soul. The Sicilian soldier was
animated by the hope of increasing the glory which he had already won,
while the invader was tormented by the fear that his fortunes might
sink lower still. The last chance of the Athenians lay in their ships,
and their anxiety was dreadful. 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 fixt 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. Not less agonizing were the feelings of those on board.

At length the Syracusans and their allies, after a protracted
struggle, put the Athenians to flight, and triumphantly bearing down
upon them, and encouraging one another with loud cries and
exhortations, drove them to the land. Then that part of the navy which
had not been taken in the deep water fell back in confusion to the
shore, and the crews rushed out of the ships into the camp. And the
land-forces, no longer now divided in feeling, but uttering one
universal groan of intolerable anguish ran, some of them to save the
ships, others to defend what remained of the wall; but the greater
number began to look to themselves and to their own safety. Never had
there been a greater panic in an Athenian army than at that moment.
They now suffered what they had done to others at Pylos. For at
Pylos[42] the Lacedaemonians, when they saw their ships destroyed, knew
that their friends who had crossed over into the island of
Sphacteria[43] were lost with them. And so now the Athenians, after
the rout of their fleet, knew that they had no