at the lower point, he passed to the upper; and when driven back from there also by the enemy's attack, he returned to the lower crossing, but only after ordering a part of his soldiers to remain behind and to cross by the upper passage, so soon as the Armenians should return to protect the lower. The Armenians, supposing that all were proceeding to the lower point, overlooked those remaining above, who, crossing the upper ford without molestation, defended their comrades as they also passed over.[1]
When Appius Claudius, consul in the first Punic War, was unable to transport his soldiers from the neighbourhood of Regium to Messina, because the Carthaginians were guarding the Straits, he caused the rumour to be spread that he could not continue a war which had been undertaken without the endorsement of the people, and turning about he pretended to set sail for Italy. Then, when the Carthaginians dispersed, believing he had gone, Appius turned back and landed in Sicily.[2]
When certain Spartan generals had planned to sail to Syracuse, but were afraid of the Carthaginian fleet anchored along the shore, they commanded that ten Carthaginian ships which they had captured should go ahead as though victors, with their own vessels either lashed to their side or towed behind. Having deceived the Carthaginians by these appearances, the Spartans succeeded in passing by.[3]
When Philip was unable to sail through the straits called Stena,[4] because the Athenian fleet kept guard at a strategic point, he wrote to Antipater that Thrace was in revolt, and that the garrisons which he had left there had been cut off, directing Antipater to leave all other matters and follow him.
- ↑ 401 B.C. Cf. Xen. Anab. iv. iii. 20; Polyaen. i. xlix. 4.
- ↑ 264 B.C. Cf. Polyb. i. xi. 9. Zonar. viii. viii. 6 gives a somewhat different account of this crossing.
- ↑ 397 B.C. Cf. Polyaen. ii. xi.
- ↑ i.e., the Hellespont.
