“In the mean time the Syracusans and their confederates, as soon as day appeared, and that they knew the Athenians were gone, most of them accusing Gylippus, as if he had let them go with his consent, followed them with speed the same way, which they easily understood they were gone, and about dinner–time overtook them. When they were come up to those with Demosthenes, who were the hindmost, and had marched more slowly and disorderly than the other part had done, as having been put into disorder in the night, they fell upon them and fought. And the Syracusan horsemen hemmed them in, and forced them up into a narrow compass, the more easily now, because they were divided from the rest. Now the army of Nicias was gone by this time one hundred[152] and fifty furlongs further on. For he led away the faster, because he thought not that their safety consisted in staying and fighting voluntarily, but rather in a speedy retreat, and then only fighting when they could not choose. But Demosthenes was both in greater and in more continual toil, in respect that he marched in the rear, and consequently was pressed by the enemy. And seeing the Syracusans pursuing him, he went not on, but put his men in order to fight, till by his stay he was encompassed and reduced, he and the Athenians with him, into great disorder. For being shut up within a place enclosed round with a wall, through which there was a road from side to side, and in it a considerable number of olive–trees, they were charged from all sides at once with the enemies’ shot. For the Syracusans assaulted them in this kind, and not in close battle, upon very good reason. For to hazard battle against men desperate was not so much for theirs, as for the Athenians’ advantage. And besides, their success being now manifest, they spared themselves that they should not waste men, and thought by this kind of fight, to subdue and take them alive. “Whereupon after they had plied the Athenians and their confederates all day long from every side with shot, and saw that with their wounds and other annoyance, they were already tired, Gylippus and the Syracusans and their confederates first made proclamation that if any of the islanders would come over to them, they should be at liberty; and the men of some few cities went over. And by and by they made agreement with all the rest that were with Demosthenes, ‘that they should deliver up their arms, and none of them be put to death, neither violently nor by bonds, nor by want of the necessaries of life.’ And they all yielded, to the number of 6000 men, and the silver they had they laid it all down, casting it into the hollow of targets, and filled with the same four targets. And these men they carried presently into the city.