[393] Thucyd. vii, 3. Οἱ δὲ Ἀθηναῖοι, ~αἰφνιδίως~ τοῦ τε Γυλίππου καὶ τῶν Συρακοσίων σφίσιν ἐπιόντων, etc. [394] Compare an incident in the ensuing year, Thucyd. vii, 32. The Athenians, at a moment when they had become much weaker than they were now, had influence enough among the Sikel tribes to raise opposition to the march of a corps coming from the interior to the help of Syracuse. This auxiliary corps was defeated and nearly destroyed in its march. If we are amazed at the insolent carelessness with which Nikias disdained the commonest precautions for repelling the foreknown approach, by sea, of an enemy formidable even single-handed, what are we to say of that unaccountable blindness which led him to neglect the same enemy when coming at the head of a relieving army, and to omit the most obvious means of defence in a crisis upon which his future fate turned? Homer would have designated such neglect as a temporary delirium inflicted by the fearful inspiration of Atê: the historian has no such explanatory name to give, and can only note it as a sad and suitable prelude to the calamities too nearly at hand. At the moment when the fortunate Spartan auxiliary was thus allowed to march quietly into Syracuse, the Athenian double wall of circumvallation, between the southern cliff of Epipolæ and the Great Harbor, eight stadia long, was all but completed: a few yards only of the end close to the harbor were wanting. But Gylippus cared not to interrupt its completion. He aimed at higher objects, and he knew, what Nikias, unhappily, never felt and never lived to learn, the immense advantage of turning to active account that first impression and full tide of confidence which his arrival had just infused into the Syracusans. Hardly had he accomplished his junction with them, when he marshalled the united force in order of battle, and marched up to the lines of the Athenians. Amazed as they were, and struck dumb by his unexpected arrival, they too formed in battle order, and awaited his approach. His first proceeding marked how much the odds of the game were changed. He sent a herald to tender to them a five days’ armistice, on condition that they should collect their effects and withdraw from the island. Nikias disdained to return any reply to this insulting proposal; but his conduct showed how much _he_ felt, as well as Gylippus, that the tide was now turned. For when the Spartan commander, perceiving now for the first time the disorderly trim of his Syracusan hoplites, thought fit to retreat into more open ground farther removed from the walls, probably in order that he might have a better field for his cavalry, Nikias declined to follow him, and remained in position close to his own fortifications.[395] This was tantamount to a confession of inferiority in the field. It was a virtual abandonment of the capture of Syracuse, a tacit admission that the Athenians could hope for nothing better in the end