The Lacedæmonians forthwith resolved to send an auxiliary force to Syracuse. But as this could not be done before the spring, they nominated Gylippus commander, directing him to proceed thither without delay, and to take counsel with the Corinthians for operations as speedily as the case admitted.[363] We do not know that Gylippus had as yet given any positive evidence of that consummate skill and activity which we shall presently be called upon to describe. He was probably chosen on account of his superior acquaintance with the circumstances of the Italian and Sicilian Greeks; since his father Kleandridas, after having been banished from Sparta fourteen years before the Peloponnesian war for taking Athenian bribes, had been domiciliated as a citizen at Thurii.[364] Gylippus desired the Corinthians to send immediately two triremes for him to Asinê, in the Messenian gulf, and to prepare as many others as their docks could furnish.