164 SEA-FIGHT NEAR NAUPACTUS [ll were friendly and had joined him ; to their city therefore he retreated before the Acarnanians Cnetnus withdraws , 1 • /• t^ Jus troops to Ocmadac, had Collected their forces. Y rom whence they are con- Oeniadae all the Peloponnesian troops veyedhowe. returned homc. The Stratians erected a trophy of the battle in which they had defeated the Barbarians. 83 The fleet from Corinth and the other allied cities on the _, „ , , „ , Crisaean Gulf, which was intended to The fleet of the Pelo- ' , ponnesians which was support Cnemus and to prevent the intended to support Acarnanians on the sea-coast from Cnemus is compelled to assisting their friends in the interior of tf'^cse hy Phormio. , • 1 i ^
- * the country, never arrived, but was
compelled, almost on the day of the battle of Stratus, to fight with Phormio and the twenty Athenian ships which were stationed at Naupactus. As they sailed by into the open sea, Phormio was watching them, preferring to make his attack outside the gulf. Now the Corinthians and their allies were not equipped for a naval engagement, but for the conveyance of troops into Acarnania, and they never imagined that the Athenians with twenty ships would venture to engage their own forty-seven. But, as they were coasting along the southern shore, they saw the Athenian fleet following their movements on the northern; they then attempted to cross the sea from Patrae in Achaea to the opposite continent in the direction of Acarnania, when they again observed the enemy bearing down upon them from Chalcis and the mouth of the river Evenus. They had previously endeavoured to anchor under cover of night «, but had been detected. So at last they were compelled to fight in the middle of the channel. The ships were commanded by generals of the cities which had furnished them; the Corinthian squadron by Machaon, Isocrates, and Agatharchidas. The Peloponnesians " Or, reading afopfiiaaufvoi, ' they had weighed anchor before it was hght, but had been detected.'
