ce against Centoripa,
a town of the Sicels, acquired it by capitulation, and departed, after
also burning the corn of the Inessaeans and Hybleans. Upon their return
to Catana they found the horsemen arrived from Athens, to the number of
two hundred and fifty (with their equipments, but without their horses
which were to be procured upon the spot), and thirty mounted archers and
three hundred talents of silver.

The same spring the Lacedaemonians marched against Argos, and went as
far as Cleonae, when an earthquake occurred and caused them to return.
After this the Argives invaded the Thyreatid, which is on their border,
and took much booty from the Lacedaemonians, which was sold for no less
than twenty-five talents. The same summer, not long after, the
Thespian commons made an attack upon the party in office, which was
not successful, but succours arrived from Thebes, and some were caught,
while others took refuge at Athens.

The same summer the Syracusans learned that the Athenians had been
joined by their cavalry, and were on the point of marching against them;
and seeing that without becoming masters of Epipolae, a precipitous
spot situated exactly over the town, the Athenians could not, even if
victorious in battle, easily invest them, they determined to guard its
approaches, in order that the enemy might not ascend unobserved by this,
the sole way by which ascent was possible, as the remainder is lofty
ground, and falls right down to the city, and can all be seen from
inside; and as it lies above the rest the place is called by the
Syracusans Epipolae or Overtown. They accordingly went out in mass at
daybreak into the meadow along the river Anapus, their new generals,
Hermocrates and his colleagues, having just come into office, and held
a review of their heavy infantry, from whom they first selected a
picked body of six hundred, under the command of Diomilus, an exile
from Andros, to guard Epipolae, and to be ready to muster at a moment's
notice to help wherever help should be required.

Meanwhile the Athenians, the very same morning, were holding a review,
having already made land unobserved with all the armament from Catana,
opposite a place called Leon, not much more than half a mile from
Epipolae, where they disembarked their army, bringing the fleet to
anchor at Thapsus, a peninsula running out into the sea, with a narrow
isthmus, and not far from the city of Syracuse either by land or water.
While the nav