Yet throughout the war it was the Peloponnesians, not the Athenian masters of the sea, who showed themselves most adept at adopting new tactics and modifying their ships to nullify traditional Athenian superior seamanship. The Athenian tragedy in the Great Harbor at Syracuse was the story of complacence and even arrogance. The scrappy Syracusans and their Peloponnesian allies fitted out new rams to hit their more nimble enemies head-on in confined waters, as well as driving stakes into the harbor bed, chaining off the harbor entrance, and deploying stone throwers from the decks. Only at the
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