Lamachus overcame the difficulty before him with ability and bravery. Descending unexpectedly, one morning before daybreak, from his fort on the cliff of Epipolæ into the low ground beneath,—and providing his troops with planks and broad gates to bridge over the marsh where it was scarcely passable,—he contrived to reach and surprise the palisade with the first dawn of morning. Orders were at the same time given for the Athenian fleet to sail round from Thapsus into the Great Harbor, so as to divert the attention of the enemy, and get on the rear of the new palisade work. But before the fleet could arrive, the palisade and ditch had been carried, and its defenders driven off. A large Syracusan force came out from the city to sustain them, and retake it, so that a general action now ensued, in the low ground between the cliff of Epipolæ, the harbor, and the river Anapus. The superior discipline of the Athenians proved successful: the Syracusans were defeated and driven back on all sides, so that their right wing fled into the city, and their left (including the larger portion of their best force, the horsemen), along the banks of the river Anapus, to reach the bridge. Flushed with victory, the Athenians hoped to cut them off from this retreat, and a chosen body of three hundred hoplites ran fast in hopes of getting to the bridge first. In this hasty movement they fell into disorder, so that the Syracusan cavalry turned upon them, put them to flight, and threw them back upon the Athenian right wing, to which the fugitives communicated their own panic and disorder. The fate of the battle appeared to be turning against the Athenians, when Lamachus, who was on the left wing, hastened to their aid with the Argeian hoplites and as many bowmen as he could collect. His ardor carried him incautiously forward, so that he crossed a ditch with very few followers, before the remaining troops could follow him. He was here attacked and slain,[377] in single combat with a horseman named Kallikratês: but the Syracusans were driven back when his soldiers came up, and had only just time to snatch and carry off his dead body, with which they crossed the bridge and retreated behind the Anapus. The rapid movement of this gallant officer was thus crowned with complete success, restoring the victory to his own right wing: a victory dearly purchased by the forfeit of his own life.[378] [377] Thucyd. vi, 102; Plutarch, Nikias, c. 18. Diodorus erroneously places the battle, in which Lamachus was slain, _after_ the arrival of Gylippus (xiii, 8). [378] Thucyd. vi, 102.