A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War

by Victor Davis Hanson

the one asset that the Athenians were woefully short of on Sicily. Either out of fear of the great seas between western Greece and southern Italy, or perhaps realizing the need to keep a cavalry patrol to guard the Attic countryside should the Spartans return in their absence, the Athenians had initially brought along only a single horse transport and 30 riders. Perhaps that was understandable for anyone who has made the voyage from western Greece to Sicily in moderately heavy seas: imagine an armada of 10 or so horse transports—300 ponies on converted triremes with decks a mere few feet above the water—riding the waves that often sicken contemporary tourists on mammoth modern ships. Athens was not likely to risk its entire fleet of horse-transport ships and almost a third of its vital mounted defense force of Attica on the open seas.