Laudator Temporis Acti

Kenneth Dover, The Greeks, 3rd ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), pp. 34-35, with note on p. 136:

Thucydides describes this critical battle:

When the Athenians came up against the barrier, with the impetus of that first onslaught they overpowered the ships stationed in front of the barrier and tried to break through what held them in. Thereupon the Syracusans and their allies bore down on them from every quarter; and now the fighting was no longer only at the barrier, but in every part of the harbour.²⁹

I suppose that by now I must have read this part of Thucydides' text more than a hundred times; I have published a commentary on books vi and vii, which involved me in some six thousand hours of work altogether, much of it on the minutiae of chronology, grammar, and textual criticism (for example, I once looked up all six hundred examples of a certain common preposition in the whole of Thucydides in order to elucidate the precise sense of one passage). Yet I still cannot read the words 'thereupon the Syracusans and their allies bore down on them from every quarter' without feeling the hair on the back on my neck stand on end, as when in a war-film a great attacking force suddenly begins to move, full of vengeful confidence. Perhaps that is why I don't mind interrupting Thucydides to talk about prepositions and the like. He is still there when I come back to him.

29. Thucydides vii 70.2 ...

The Greek:

ἐπειδὴ δὲ οἱ ἄλλοι Ἀθηναῖοι προσέμισγον τῷ ζεύγματι, τῇ μὲν πρώτῃ ῥύμῃ ἐπιπλέοντες ἐκράτουν τῶν τεταγμένων νεῶν πρὸς αὐτῷ καὶ ἐπειρῶντο λύειν τὰς κλῄσεις· μετὰ δὲ τοῦτο πανταχόθεν σφίσι τῶν Συρακοσίων καὶ ξυμμάχων ἐπιφερομένων οὐ πρὸς τῷ ζεύγματι ἔτι μόνον ἡ ναυμαχία, ἀλλὰ καὶ κατὰ τὸν λιμένα ἐγίγνετο.