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from different directions at once, while their own were heavy and clumsy and all crowded together. Besides, they were bombarded with stones, whose blow is just as effective however they light; whereas they could only reply with javelins and arrows, whose proper cast was disturbed by the tossing water, so that they did not all fly head on to their mark. This method of fighting was taught the Syracusans by Ariston the Corinthian captain, who fought zealously while the battle lasted, only to fall just as the Syracusans were victorious. The Athenians suffered such great rout and loss that they were cut off from flight by sea. Even by land they saw that their salvation was a difficult matter, so that they neither tried to hinder the enemy from towing away their ships under their very eyes, nor did they ask the privilege of taking up their dead. These, forsooth, could go unburied ; the survivors were confronted with a more pitiful sight in the abandonment of their sick and wounded, and thought themselves more wretched still than their dead, since they were sure to come with more sorrows than they to the same end after all. XXVI. They purposed to set out during the night, and Gylippus, who saw that the Syracusans were given over to sacrificial revels because of their victory and their festival of Heracles, despaired of persuad- ing or compelling them to rise up from their pleasures at once and attack their enemy as he departed. But Hermocrates, all on his own account, concocted a trick to put upon Nicias, and sent certain com- panions to him with assurances that they were come from those men who before this had often held secret conferences with him. They advised Nicias not to