neutralized the effect of the wall built by the Syracusans inclosing the ground to the east of the temple of Apollon Temenites. The building of a fort on Labdalon was followed immediately by the erection of another work with a rapidity which amazed their enemies. The strongly fortified inclosure was to serve as a stronghold of the army, and as a centre and starting point for the blockading walls, which were to run thence eastward to Trogilos and westward to the great harbour. The first counterwork of the Syracusans which, starting probably from Temenites and extending to the cliffs of Epipolai, cut the intended southern wall of the besiegers, was carried by storm, the wall itself being destroyed and the materials used by the Athenians in their work of circumvallation.

The Athenian generals now resolved that the Syracusans should not have the opportunity of throwing out fresh counterworks running like the last to the cliffs of Epipolai. The cliffs were themselves fortified, and the Athenians thus started with an immense advantage in their further task of carrying their southward wall to the great harbour. Meanwhile the Syracusans were busied in a second counterwork carried from the new wall of the city across the low and marshy ground stretching to the banks of the Anapos. The Athenians thus found themselves opposed by a fresh obstacle in their progress to the sea. And Lamachos determined to make himself master of this counterwork and of the trench by which it was defended. The fleet was ordered to sail round into the great harbour, and an attack on the counterwork at daybreak was rewarded by the capture of almost the whole of it. The rest of it was taken later on in the day. The real purpose of Lamachos was now accomplished; but a picked body of Athenian hoplites, having hurried to the bridge across the Anapos in order to cut off some of the Syracusan fugitives, was attacked by a body of Syracusan horse and thrown into disorder. Lamachos saw the danger, and hurried to their aid from the left wing with the Argive allies and a small force of archers. In his haste he advanced with a few companions, and crossing a trench was for a moment separated from his followers. In an instant he was struck down and killed. The Syracusans gained no immediate advantage from his death, and the doom of their city seemed to be sealed when their whole army retreated within the walls, and the magnificent Athenian

ATHENIAN OPERATIONS BEFORE SYRACUSE (PLATE II.),

fleet was seen sweeping round into the harbour which it was destined never to leave.

Some weeks were yet to pass before Gylippos could attempt to enter Syracuse; and the one thing of vital moment was that the city should be completely invested before that attempt should be made. A single wall carried from the great harbour to the central fort, and thence to the sea at the northern extremity of Achradina, would have amply sufficed for this purpose. But Lamachos was no longer at hand to insist on the necessity of speed; and Nikias wasted time in building the southward wall double from the first, while much of the ground which should have been guarded by the eastward wall was left open. The Syracusans were therefore able still to bring in supplies by the road which passed under the rock of Euryelos; but even thus their prospects were sufficiently gloomy. They were, in fact, beginning to feel the miseries of a state of siege, and their irritation was vented first upon their generals. Hermokrates and his colleagues were deprived of their command. Even this measure of success was fully enough to lull Nikias into a feeling of fatal security; and the temptation to abandon himself to an inactivity which a painful internal disease made doubly agreeable was at this time for other reasons yet stronger. From the first a party in Syracuse had been at work to make him master of the city; and later in the siege these partisans induced him to linger on when retreat had become a matter of urgent need. By these men he was now told that the dejection of the Syracusans foreboded their immediate surrender; and the near prospect of this unconditional submission probably made him turn a deaf ear to the proposals which were actually made to him for a settlement of the quarrel.

Three or four months at least had passed away since the synod at Sparta in which Alkibiades propounded his infamous treachery, before Gylippos found himself able to advance beyond Leukas. At length he crossed over to Taras. But far from giving him the help which he expected, the men of Thourioi sent to Nikias a message telling him that a Spartan general was making his way to Sicily more in the guise of a pirate or a privateer than as the leader of a force which should command respect. The contempt implied in the phrase soothed. the vanity of Nikias, who showed his sense of his own superiority by failing to send, until it was too late, so much as a single

ship to watch the movements of his enemy and to prevent his landing in Sicily. But even when Gylippos had begun his land march, Nikias had only to block the roads by which he had himself seized Epipolai, and Gylippos must have fallen back to devise some other means for succouring Syracuse. Even in this he failed.

An assembly had already been summoned in Syracuse to discuss definitely the terms for capitulation, when the Corinthian Gongylos in a single ship made his way into the city and told them that the aid of which they had despaired was almost at their doors. All thoughts of submission were at once cast to the winds, and they made ready forthwith to march out with all their forces to bring Gylippos into the town. Nikias was doing all that he could to make his way smooth before him. His workmen were busy on the few furlongs which still remained unfinished at the end of the southern wall, where for the present there was no danger whatever, when Gylippos entered Syracuse almost as a conqueror. The Athenians were at once made to feel that the parts of the actors had been changed. The Spartan general offered them a truce for five days, if they would spend this time in leaving not merely Syracuse but Sicily. The next day was marked by the loss of the fortress of Labdalon. At the same time a third Syracusan counterwork was steadily advancing which would cut the northern blockading. wall at a point about 500 yards to the east of the central fort; and the passing of this spot would render the whole work spent on the blockading walls mere labour lost. So far as Nikias could judge, the contest must be decided in the great harbour, and he resolved, while there was yet time, to fortify the promontory of Plemmyrion, which with Ortygia, from which it is one mile distant, formed the entrance to the port. As a post commanding the access to the harbour, it had great advantages; but it had no water, and the Syracusan horsemen harassed or destroyed the foraging parties, which were compelled to seek supplies from long distances. More fatal than all was the admission, implied by this change of position, that the Athenians were rather defending themselves than attacking. Henceforth their seeming victories were to do them no good; their slightest failures or blunders were to do them infinite harm, and the former were indeed few and far between. The Syracusans were successful in carrying their third counterwork across the enemy's