sired as many ships as possible to be speedily
sent to him, as he stood in daily expectation of a battle. Twenty were
accordingly sent, but instructions were given to their commander to go
first to Crete. For Nicias, a Cretan of Gortys, who was proxenus of
the Athenians, had persuaded them to sail against Cydonia, promising
to procure the reduction of that hostile town; his real wish being to
oblige the Polichnitans, neighbours of the Cydonians. He accordingly
went with the ships to Crete, and, accompanied by the Polichnitans,
laid waste the lands of the Cydonians; and, what with adverse winds and
stress of weather wasted no little time there.

While the Athenians were thus detained in Crete, the Peloponnesians in
Cyllene got ready for battle, and coasted along to Panormus in Achaea,
where their land army had come to support them. Phormio also coasted
along to Molycrian Rhium, and anchored outside it with twenty ships,
the same as he had fought with before. This Rhium was friendly to the
Athenians. The other, in Peloponnese, lies opposite to it; the sea
between them is about three-quarters of a mile broad, and forms the
mouth of the Crissaean gulf. At this, the Achaean Rhium, not far off
Panormus, where their army lay, the Peloponnesians now cast anchor with
seventy-seven ships, when they saw the Athenians do so. For six or seven
days they remained opposite each other, practising and preparing for the
battle; the one resolved not to sail out of the Rhia into the open sea,
for fear of the disaster which had already happened to them, the other
not to sail into the straits, thinking it advantageous to the enemy, to
fight in the narrows. At last Cnemus and Brasidas and the rest of the
Peloponnesian commanders, being desirous of bringing on a battle as
soon as possible, before reinforcements should arrive from Athens, and
noticing that the men were most of them cowed by the previous defeat and
out of heart for the business, first called them together and encouraged
them as follows:

"Peloponnesians, the late engagement, which may have made some of you
afraid of the one now in prospect, really gives no just ground for
apprehension. Preparation for it, as you know, there was little enough;
and the object of our voyage was not so much to fight at sea as an
expedition by land. Besides this, the chances of war were largely
against us; and perhaps also inexperience had something to do with our
failure in our first naval action. I