and above all by Hermocrates, instead of risking any more
general engagements, determined to build a counterwork in the direction
in which the Athenians were going to carry their wall. If this could be
completed in time, the enemy's lines would be cut; and meanwhile, if he
were to attempt to interrupt them by an attack, they would send a part
of their forces against him, and would secure the approaches beforehand
with their stockade, while the Athenians would have to leave off working
with their whole force in order to attend to them. They accordingly
sallied forth and began to build, starting from their city, running
a cross wall below the Athenian Circle, cutting down the olives and
erecting wooden towers. As the Athenian fleet had not yet sailed round
into the great harbour, the Syracusans still commanded the seacoast, and
the Athenians brought their provisions by land from Thapsus.

The Syracusans now thought the stockades and stonework of their
counterwall sufficiently far advanced; and as the Athenians, afraid of
being divided and so fighting at a disadvantage, and intent upon their
own wall, did not come out to interrupt them, they left one tribe to
guard the new work and went back into the city. Meanwhile the Athenians
destroyed their pipes of drinking-water carried underground into the
city; and watching until the rest of the Syracusans were in their tents
at midday, and some even gone away into the city, and those in the
stockade keeping but indifferent guard, appointed three hundred picked
men of their own, and some men picked from the light troops and
armed for the purpose, to run suddenly as fast as they could to the
counterwork, while the rest of the army advanced in two divisions, the
one with one of the generals to the city in case of a sortie, the other
with the other general to the stockade by the postern gate. The three
hundred attacked and took the stockade, abandoned by its garrison, who
took refuge in the outworks round the statue of Apollo Temenites. Here
the pursuers burst in with them, and after getting in were beaten out by
the Syracusans, and some few of the Argives and Athenians slain; after
which the whole army retired, and having demolished the counterwork and
pulled up the stockade, carried away the stakes to their own lines, and
set up a trophy.

The next day the Athenians from the Circle proceeded to fortify the
cliff above the marsh which on this side of Epipolae looks towards the
grea