301 HISTORY OF GRKKCK. ascending to the Euryalus by a narrow and winding path, was 3<j difficult, that even Demosthenes, naturally sanguine, despaired of being able to force his way up in the daylight, against an enemy seeing the attack. He was therefore constrained to attempt a night-surprise, for which, Nikias and his other colleagues con- senting, he accordingly made preparations on the largest and most effective scale. He took the command himself, along with Menander and Eurymedon (Nikias being left to command within the lines), 1 conducting hoplites and light troops, together with masons and carpenters, and all other matters necessary for estab- lishing a fortified post ; lastly, giving orders that every man should carry with him provisions for five days. Fortune so far favored him, that not only all these preliminary arrangements, but even his march itself, was accomplished with- out any suspicion of the enemy. At the beginning of a moon- light night, he quitted the lines, moved along the low ground on the left bank of the Anapus and parallel to that river for a con- siderable distance, then following various roads to the right, arrived at the Euryalus, or highest pitch of Epipolae, where he found himself in the same track by which the Athenians in coming from Katana a year and a half before and Gylippus in coming from the interior of the island about ten months before had passed, in order to get to the slope of Epipolas above Syracuse. He reached, without being discovered, the extremc Syracusan fort on the high ground, assailed it completely by sur- prise, and captured it after a feeble resistance. Some of the garrison within it were slain ; but the greater part escaped, and ran to give the alarm to the three fortified camps of Syracusans and allies, which were placed one below another behind the long continuous wall, 2 OD the declivity of Epipola;, as well as to a 1 Thucyd. vii, 43. Diodorus tells us tKat Demosthenes took with him ten thousand hoplites, and ten thousand light troops, numbers which aro not at all to be trusted (xiii, 11). Plutarch (Nikias, c. 21) says that Nikias was extremely averse to the attack on Epipolas : Thucydides notices nothing of the kind, and the asser- tion seems improbable.
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