in the city would
make it easy for them to reduce it. Demosthenes also, who had remained
without employment since his return from Acarnania, applied and
obtained permission to use the fleet, if he wished it, upon the coast of
Peloponnese.

Off Laconia they heard that the Peloponnesian ships were already at
Corcyra, upon which Eurymedon and Sophocles wished to hasten to the
island, but Demosthenes required them first to touch at Pylos and do
what was wanted there, before continuing their voyage. While they were
making objections, a squall chanced to come on and carried the fleet
into Pylos. Demosthenes at once urged them to fortify the place, it
being for this that he had come on the voyage, and made them observe
there was plenty of stone and timber on the spot, and that the place
was strong by nature, and together with much of the country round
unoccupied; Pylos, or Coryphasium, as the Lacedaemonians call it, being
about forty-five miles distant from Sparta, and situated in the old
country of the Messenians. The commanders told him that there was no
lack of desert headlands in Peloponnese if he wished to put the city
to expense by occupying them. He, however, thought that this place was
distinguished from others of the kind by having a harbour close by;
while the Messenians, the old natives of the country, speaking the same
dialect as the Lacedaemonians, could do them the greatest mischief
by their incursions from it, and would at the same time be a trusty
garrison.

After speaking to the captains of companies on the subject, and failing
to persuade either the generals or the soldiers, he remained inactive
with the rest from stress of weather; until the soldiers themselves
wanting occupation were seized with a sudden impulse to go round and
fortify the place. Accordingly they set to work in earnest, and having
no iron tools, picked up stones, and put them together as they happened
to fit, and where mortar was needed, carried it on their backs for want
of hods, stooping down to make it stay on, and clasping their hands
together behind to prevent it falling off; sparing no effort to be
able to complete the most vulnerable points before the arrival of the
Lacedaemonians, most of the place being sufficiently strong by nature
without further fortifications.

Meanwhile the Lacedaemonians were celebrating a festival, and also at
first made light of the news, in the idea that whenever they chose to
take the field the place