[83] This took place on the left wing of the naval fight. Calvisius directed his course from the right to the left and cut off some of Menecrates' ships from the main body, and when they fled pursued them to the open sea. Demochares, who was a fellow-freedman of Menecrates and his lieutenant, fell upon the remainder of Calvisius' ships, put some of them to flight, broke others in pieces on the rocks, and set fire to them after the crews had abandoned them. Finally Calvisius, returning from the pursuit, led back his own fleeing ships and prevented the burning of any more. As night was approaching, all returned to their former station. Such was the end of this naval fight, in which the forces of Pompeius had much the best of it; but Demochares, grieving over the death of Menecrates as the greatest possible defeat (for those two, Menecrates and Menodorus, had been the foremost of Pompeius' sea captains), abandoned everything1 and sailed for Sicily immediately, mediately, as though he had lost not merely the body of Menecrates and one ship, but his whole, fleet.
1 ἅπαντα μεθεὶς ἐκ χειρῶν: abandoned everything. All the codices read ἐκ κέρων (from the wings), which, being nonsense, led to much conjecture in the learned world. Schweighäuser solved the difficulty by striking them out, and marking a lacuna at that place. Tyrwhitt furnishes a happy solution (see preface to the Didot edition) by substituting χειρῶν for κέρων,, so that the phrase is equivalent to "released his hold" in English.
The Civil Wars. Appian. Horace White. London. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. 1899.
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