The Historians' History of the World 03

And the Athenians attacked them, and first of all sank one of the admiral-ships, then destroyed all wherever they went, and reduced them to such a condition, that owing to their confusion none of them thought of resistance, but they fled to Patræ and Dyme, in Achaia. The Athenians having closely pursued them, and taken twelve ships, picking up most of the men from them, and putting them on board their own vessels, sailed off to Molycrium; and after erecting a trophy at Rhium, and dedicating a ship to Neptune, they returned to Naupactus. The Peloponnesians also immediately coasted along with their remaining ships from Dyme and Patræ to Cyllene, the arsenal of the Eleans; and Cnemus and the ships that were at Leucas, which were to have formed a junction with these, came thence, after the battle of Stratus, to the same port.

Then the Lacedæmonians sent to the fleet, as counsellors to Cnemus, Timocrates, Brasidas, and Lycophron; commanding him to make preparations for a second engagement more successful than the former, and not to be driven off the sea by a few ships. For the result appeared very different from what they might have expected (particularly as it was the first sea-fight they had attempted); and they thought that it was not so much their fleet that was inferior, but that there had been some cowardice; for they did not weigh the long experience of the Athenians against their own short practice of naval matters. They despatched them, therefore, in anger; and on their arrival they sent round, in conjunction with Cnemus, orders for ships to be furnished by the different states, while they refitted those they already had, with a view to an engagement. Phormion, too, on the other hand, sent messengers to Athens to acquaint them with their preparations, and to tell them of the victory they had gained; at the same time desiring them to send him quickly the largest possible number of ships, for he was in daily expectation of an immediate engagement. They despatched to him twenty; but gave additional orders to the commander of them to go first to Crete. For Nicias, a Cretan of Gortyn, who was their proxenus, persuaded them to sail against Cydonia, telling them that he would reduce it under their power; for it was at present hostile to them. His object, however, in calling them in was, that he might oblige the Polichnitæ, who bordered on the Cydonians. The commander, therefore, of the squadron went with it to Crete, and in conjunction with the Polichnitæ laid waste the territory of the Cydonians; and wasted no little time in the country, owing to adverse winds and the impossibility of putting to sea.

During the time that the Athenians were thus detained on the coast of Crete, the Peloponnesians at Cyllene, having made their preparations for an engagement, coasted along to Panormus in Achaia, where the land-force of the Peloponnesians had come to support them. Phormion, too, coasted along to the Rhium near Molycrium, and dropped anchor outside of it, with twenty ships, the same as he had before fought with. This Rhium was friendly to the Athenians; the other, namely, that in the Peloponnesus, is opposite to it; the distance between the two being about seven stadia of sea, which forms the mouth of the Crissæan Gulf. At the Rhium in Achaia, then, being not far from Panormus, where their land-force was, the Peloponnesians also came to anchor with seventy-seven ships, when they saw that the Athenians had done the same. And for six or seven days they lay opposite each other, practising and preparing for the battle; the Peloponnesians intending not to sail beyond the Rhia into the open sea, for they were afraid of a disaster like the former; the Athenians, not to sail into the straits, for they thought that fighting in a confined space was in favour of the enemy.