71.
Whilst the conflict was upon the water, the land men had a conflict and sided with them in their affections, they of the place contending for increase of the honours they had already gotten, and the invaders fearing a worse estate than they were already in.
[2]
For the Athenians, who had their whole fortune at stake in their galleys, were in such a fear of the event as they had never been in the like, and were thereby of necessity to behold the fight upon the water with very different passions.
[3]
For the sight being near, and not looking all of them upon one and the same part, he that saw their own side prevail took heart and fell to calling upon the gods that they would not deprive them of their safety, and they that saw them have the worse not only lamented but shrieked outright, and had their minds more subdued by the sight of what was done than they that were present in the battle itself.
Others that looked on some part where the fight was equal, because the contention continued so as they could make no judgment on it, with gesture of body on every occasion agreeable to their expectation, passed the time in a miserable perplexity.
For they were ever within a little either of escaping or of perishing.
[4]
And one might hear in one and the same army, as long as the fight upon the water was indifferent, at one and the same time lamentations, shouts that they won, that they lost, and whatsoever else a great army in great danger is forced differently to utter.
[5]
They also that were aboard suffered the same, till at last the Syracusians and their confederates, after long resistance on the other side, put them to flight, and manifestly pressing, chased them with great clamour and encouragement of their own to the shore.
[6]
And the sea forces, making to the shore, some one way and some another, except only such as were lost by being far from it, escaped into the harbour.
And the army that was upon the land, no longer now of different passions, with one and the same vehemence, all with shrieks and sighs unable to sustain what befel, ran part to save the galleys, part to the defence of the camp, and the residue, who were far the greatest number, fell presently to consider every one of the best way to save himself.
[7]
And this was the time wherein of all other they stood in greatest fear, and they suffered now the like to what they had made others to suffer before at Pylus.
For the Lacedaemonians then, besides the loss of their fleet, lost the men which they had set over into the island;
and the Athenians now, without some accident not to be expected, were out of all hope to save themselves by land.
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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