ships, four hundred
darters, and two hundred horse. Indeed almost the whole of Sicily,
except the Agrigentines, who were neutral, now ceased merely to watch
events as it had hitherto done, and actively joined Syracuse against the
Athenians.

While the Syracusans after the Sicel disaster put off any immediate
attack upon the Athenians, Demosthenes and Eurymedon, whose forces from
Corcyra and the continent were now ready, crossed the Ionian Gulf with
all their armament to the Iapygian promontory, and starting from thence
touched at the Choerades Isles lying off Iapygia, where they took on
board a hundred and fifty Iapygian darters of the Messapian tribe, and
after renewing an old friendship with Artas the chief, who had furnished
them with the darters, arrived at Metapontium in Italy. Here they
persuaded their allies the Metapontines to send with them three hundred
darters and two galleys, and with this reinforcement coasted on to
Thurii, where they found the party hostile to Athens recently expelled
by a revolution, and accordingly remained there to muster and review the
whole army, to see if any had been left behind, and to prevail upon
the Thurians resolutely to join them in their expedition, and in the
circumstances in which they found themselves to conclude a defensive and
offensive alliance with the Athenians.

About the same time the Peloponnesians in the twenty-five ships
stationed opposite to the squadron at Naupactus to protect the passage
of the transports to Sicily had got ready for engaging, and manning
some additional vessels, so as to be numerically little inferior to the
Athenians, anchored off Erineus in Achaia in the Rhypic country. The
place off which they lay being in the form of a crescent, the land
forces furnished by the Corinthians and their allies on the spot came
up and ranged themselves upon the projecting headlands on either side,
while the fleet, under the command of Polyanthes, a Corinthian, held
the intervening space and blocked up the entrance. The Athenians under
Diphilus now sailed out against them with thirty-three ships from
Naupactus, and the Corinthians, at first not moving, at length thought
they saw their opportunity, raised the signal, and advanced and engaged
the Athenians. After an obstinate struggle, the Corinthians lost three
ships, and without sinking any altogether, disabled seven of the enemy,
which were struck prow to prow and had their foreships stove in by the
Corinthi