32.
The ambassadors from Syracuse who had gone to the cities of Sicily after the taking of Plemmyrium, and had persuaded them to join in the war,1 were now about to bring back the army which they had collected. Nicias, having previous information, sent word to the Sicel allies of Athens who commanded the road, such as the Centoripes and Alicyaei, and told them not to let the forces of the enemy pass, but to unite and stop them; there was no likelihood, he said, that they would even think of taking another road, since they were not allowed to go through the country of the Agrigentines.
[2]
So when the forces of the Sicilian towns were on their way, the Sicels, complying with the request of the Athenians, set an ambush in three divisions, and falling upon them suddenly when they were off their guard, destroyed about eight hundred of them, and all the envoys except the Corinthian; he brought the survivors, numbering fifteen hundred, to Syracuse.
1 Part of the reinforcements sent by the cities of Sicily to Syracuse are destroyed in an ambuscade by the Sicel allies of 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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