99.
The next day the Athenians fell to work upon their wall to the north side of their circular wall, some building and some fetching stone and timber, which they still laid down toward the place called Trogilus, in the way by which the wall should come with the shortest compass from the great haven to the other sea.
[2]
The Syracusians, by the persuasion of their generals, and principally of Hermocrates, intended not to hazard battle with their whole power against the Athenians any more, but thought fit rather, in the way where the Athenians were to bring their wall, to raise a counterwall;
which, if they could but do before the wall of the Athenians came on, it would exclude their further building;
and if the Athenians should set upon them as they were doing it, they might send part of the army to defend it, and pre-occupy the accesses to it with a pallisado;
[3]
and if they would come with their whole army to hinder them, then must they also be forced to let their own work stand still.
Therefore they came out, and beginning at their own city, drew a cross-wall beneath the circular fortifications of the Athenians, and set wooden turrets upon it, made of the olive trees which they felled in the ground belonging to the temple.
[4]
The Athenian navy was not yet come about into the great haven from Thapsus, but the Syracusians were masters of the places near the sea;
and the Athenians brought their provision to the army from Thapsus by land.
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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