19, ao] REINFORCEMENTS SENT TO DOTH SIDES 275 designed for the devastation of the plain and the richest parts of the country, and was erected on a spot within sight of Athens. While the Peloponncsians and their allies in Attica were thus engaged, the Peloponncsians at Reinforcements leave home were despatching the hoplites in /"' Sicily, from which ., 1 . I 4. c •! TU Ihe altention of the the merchant- vessels to bicily. Ihe .,, . ■ / , / -' Aliuntdns ts atvertcd Lacedaemonians selected the best of by ti,e Corinthians at the Helots and Neodamodes, numbering Nauf>actus. in all six hundred, and placed them under the command of Eccritus, a Spartan. The Boeotians furnished three hun- dred hoplites, who were commanded by two Thebans, Xenon and Nicon, and by Hegesander, a Thespian. These started first and put out into the open sea from Taenarus in Laconia. Not long afterwards the Corin- thians sent five hundred heavy-armed, some of them from Corinth itself, others who were Arcadian mercenaries ; they were all placed under the command of Alexarchus, a Corinthian. The Sicyonians also sent with the Corin- thians two hundred hoplites under the command of Sargeus, a Sicyonian. Meanwhile the twenty five ships which the Corinthians had manned in the winter lay opposite to the twenty Athenian ships at Naupactus until the merchant-vessels conveying the heavy-armed troops had got safely off. So the design succeeded, and the attention of the Athenians was diverted from the merchant- ships to the triremes. At the beginning of spring, whilst the Lacedaemonians 20 were fortifying Decelea, the Athenians , , Chancles ivith thirty sent thn-ty ships under the command ^/„^,. ^„,/ ^^ Laconia. of CharicleS the son of ApollodorUS to The second annamcnt cruise about Peloponnesus. He was ""' Demosthenes , , t A 11 musters at Aegtna. told to touch at Argos, and there to summon and take on board a force of heavy-armed which the Argives, being allies of the Athenians, were bound to furnish. Meanwhile they despatched under Demosthenes their intended expedition to Sicily: it consisted of sixty
