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Updated: June 11, 2025
While the king was occupied with the exhibition of the games, and was indulging himself during the days devoted to festivity with more freedom than in time of war, Publius Sulpicius, setting out from Naupactus, brought his fleet to the shore, between Sicyon and Corinth, and devastated without restraint a country of the most renowned fertility.
At daybreak they drew up their ships in four lines, with the coast of Peloponnesus behind them, and with twenty fast-sailing triremes stationed on the right wing, to cut off Phormio's fleet, if, as they anticipated, he advanced to the defence of Naupactus.
Meanwhile the defence of Pylos was not forgotten; the Messenians from Naupactus sent to their old country, to which Pylos formerly belonged, some of the likeliest of their number, and began a series of incursions into Laconia, which their common dialect rendered most destructive.
Hostilities now ceasing, both sides kept quiet, passing the night on guard, while the Corinthian ship stole out to sea upon the victory of the commons, and most of the mercenaries passed over secretly to the continent. The next day the Athenian general, Nicostratus, son of Diitrephes, came up from Naupactus with twelve ships and five hundred Messenian heavy infantry.
Phormio, much against his will, was obliged to leave his station outside the strait, and go to the aid of Naupactus, which had been left undefended. Great was the delight of the Peloponnesian captains when they saw the little Athenian squadron creeping close, in single file, along the northern side of the gulf, for they thought that not one of the twenty would escape them.
While the ships from Corinth, Sicyon, and the neighbourhood were getting ready, and those from Leucas, Anactorium, and Ambracia, which had arrived before, were waiting for them at Leucas, Cnemus and his thousand heavy infantry had run into the gulf, giving the slip to Phormio, the commander of the Athenian squadron stationed off Naupactus, and began at once to prepare for the land expedition.
Meanwhile the eleven ships which had eluded the attack were hotly pursued by the twenty fast-sailing vessels on the Peloponnesian right wing. All but one got through in safety, and took refuge in the harbour of Naupactus, and drawing up in line, with their prows outwards, prepared to defend themselves if the enemy advanced further against them.
The Messenians, as they are now called in Naupactus and from Pylos, then held by the Athenians, were taken with them to the war. There were also a few Megarian exiles, whose fate it was to be now fighting against the Megarian Selinuntines. The engagement of the rest was more of a voluntary nature.
An attempt was made by the commander of the Athenian squadron at Naupactus to act as moderator; the appearance of a Peloponnesian squadron and a confused sea-fight, somewhat in favour of the latter, brought the popular party to the verge of a compromise. But the Peloponnesians retired on the reported approach of a fresh Athenian fleet, and a democratic reign of terror followed.
Such was the plot in contemplation. Hippocrates with a force raised at home awaited the proper moment to take the field against the Boeotians; while he sent on Demosthenes with the forty ships above mentioned to Naupactus, to raise in those parts an army of Acarnanians and of the other allies, and sail and receive Siphae from the conspirators; a day having been agreed on for the simultaneous execution of both these operations.
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