63.
Early in the ensuing winter the Athenians made preparations for an attack upon Syracuse;1 the Syracusans likewise prepared to take the offensive.
[2]
For when they found that their enemies did not assail them at once, as in their first panic they had expected, day by day their spirits rose. And now the Athenians, after cruising about at the other end of Sicily, where they seemed to be a long way off, had gone to Hybla, and their attack upon it had failed. So the Syracusans despised them more than ever. After the manner of the populace when elated, they insisted that since the Athenians would not come to them, their generals should lead them against Catana.
[3]
Syracusan horsemen, who were always riding up to the Athenian army and watching their movements, would ask insultingly whether, instead of resettling the Leontines in their old home, they were not themselves going to settle down with their good friends the Syracusans in a new one.
1 The Syracusans begin to despise the Athenians.
Thucydides translated into English; with introduction, marginal analysis, notes, and indices. Volume 1. Thucydides. Benjamin Jowett. translator. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1881.
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