with longer hair, locked up in prison, and feared them so little that they delivered them up to the Lacedaemonians again.  Timaeus says that the Sicilian Greeks despised Gylippus for his avaricious and contemptible character, and that when they first saw him, they ridiculed his long hair and Spartan cloak.  Afterwards, however, he tells us that as soon as Gylippus appeared they flocked round him as small birds flock round an owl, and were eager to take service under him.  This indeed is the more probable story; for they rallied round him, regarding his cloak and staff to be the symbols of the authority of Sparta.  And not only Thucydides, but Philistus, a Syracusan citizen by birth, who was an eye-witness of the whole campaign, tells us that nothing could have been done without Gylippus.  In the first battle after his arrival, the Athenians were victorious, and slew some few Syracusans, amongst whom was the Corinthian Gongylus, but on the following day Gylippus displayed the qualities of a true general.  He used the same arms, horses, and ground as before, but he dealt with them so differently that he defeated the Athenians.  Checking the Syracusans, who wished to chase them back to their camp, he ordered them to use the stones and timber which had been collected by the Athenians, to build a counter-wall, reaching beyond the line of circumvallation, so that the Athenians could no longer hope to surround the city.  And now the Syracusans, taking fresh courage, began to man their ships of war, and to cut off the stragglers with their cavalry.  Gylippus personally visited many of the Greek cities in Sicily, all of whom eagerly promised their aid, and furnished him with troops; so that Nikias, perceiving that he was losing ground, relapsed into his former desponding condition, and wrote a despatch to Athens, bidding the people either send out another armament, or let the one now in Sicily return to Athens, and especially beseeching them to relieve him from his command, for which he was incapacitated by disease.

XX.  The Athenians had long before proposed to send out a reinforcement to the army in Sicily, but as all had gone on prosperously, the enemies of Nikias had contrived to put it off.  Now, however, they were eager to send him assistance.  It was arranged that Demosthenes should employ himself actively in getting ready a large force, to go to reinforce Nikias in the early spring, while Eurymedon, although it was winter, started immediately with a supply of money, and with a decree naming Euthydemus and Menander, officers already serving in his army, to be joint commanders along with him.  Meanwhile, Nikias was suddenly attacked by the Syracusans both by sea and land.  His ships were at first thrown into confusion, but rallied and sank many of the enemy, or forced them to run on shore; but on land Gylippus managed at the same time to surprise the fort of Plemmyrium, where there was a magazine of naval stores and war material of all kinds.  A considerable number