On the third day after the battle, the order was given to march. As the great army formed into column, the full horror of their situation came home to every heart. This, then, was the end of those grand dreams of conquest with which they had sailed to Sicily two years before! On the heights of Epipolae their walls and their fort was still standing, a monument of failure and defeat. Each familiar landmark reminded them of some fallen comrade, or some disastrous incident in the siege. If they glanced towards the Great Harbour, they could see the victorious Syracusans towing off the shattered hull of an Athenian trireme, the last sad remnant of two great armaments. If they turned their thoughts towards Athens and home, they found no comfort there; for their beloved city was beset with enemies, and in themselves, beaten and broken as they were, lay her chief hope of salvation. The past was all black with calamity, and the future loomed terrible before them, threatening captivity and death; and the present, in that last hour of parting, was full of such sights and sounds of woe as might have stirred pity even in the breasts of their enemies. Around them, the camp was strewn with the unburied corpses of brothers, comrades and sons, and thousands more were tossing on the waves, or flung up on the shores of the bay. And while the neglect of that sacred duty pressed heavily on their conscience, still more harrowing were the cries of the sick and wounded, who clung round their knees, imploring to be taken with them, and when the army began to move followed with tottering steps, until they sank down exhausted, calling down the curse of heaven on the retreating host. Such was the anguish of that moment, that it seemed as if the whole population of some great city had been driven into exile, and was seeking a new home in a distant soil.