26.
Demosthenes, when the reinforcements which he was to take to Sicily had all been collected,1 sailed from Aegina to Peloponnesus and joined Charicles and his thirty ships2. He embarked the Argive hoplites, and, proceeding to Laconia, first devastated some part of the lands of Epidaurus Limera.
[2]
Next the Athenians landed in the district of Laconia opposite Cythera, where there is a temple of Apollo. They ravaged various parts of the country, and fortified a sort of isthmus in the neighbourhood, that the Helots of the Lacedaemonians might desert and find a refuge there, and that privateers might make the place, as they did Pylos, their head-quarters for marauding expeditions.
[3]
Demosthenes assisted in the occupation, and then sailed for Corcyra, intending to collect additional forces from the allies in that region, and to make his way with all speed to Sicily. Charicles waited until he had completed the fort, and then leaving a garrison he sailed home with his thirty ships, accompanied by the Argives.
1 Devastation of Laconia and erection of a second Pylos opposite Cythera. Demosthenes, having assisted in these operations, sails forward to Corcyra.
2 Cp. 7.20 init.
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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