31.
Which when they refused, the Athenians for one day held their hands;
but the next day, having put aboard upon a few galleys all their men of arms, they put off in the night and landed a little before day on both sides of the island, both from the main and from the haven, to the number of about eight hundred men of arms, and marched upon high speed towards the foremost watch of the island.
[2]
For thus the Lacedaemonians lay quartered.
In this foremost watch were about thirty men of arms;
the middest and evenest part of the island and about the water was kept by Epitadas, their captain, with the greatest part of the whole number;
and another part of them, which were not many, kept the last guard towards Pylus, which place to the seaward was on a cliff and least assailable by land.
For there was also a certain fort which was old and made of chosen [not of hewn] stones, which they thought would stand them in stead in case of violent retreat.
Thus they were quartered.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.