hopeless. The Plataians might insist that their alliance with Athens was the direct result of Spartan advice, that from that time down to the treacherous inroad of the Thebans into their city they had never failed to do Sparta such good service as had been in their power, and that their sacrifices during the struggle with Persia had been followed by zealous aid given to the Spartans during the long Helot war. They might dwell on the iniquity of the Thebans in assailing their city in time not only of truce but of festival. They might invoke the deep religious instinct which still regarded the unbroken worship of ancestors as of primary importance; they might argue that the maintenance of this worship had by the common oath of all the non-Medizing Hellenes been committed as a sacred trust to the Plataians, and that, if these were destroyed, the Spartans would be depriving their own forefathers of the careful reverence which Thebans as the vehement allies of the Persian king could not even dare to offer. They might remind them, further, that they had submitted themselves to the Spartans and to the Spartans alone, and that if they had suspected the least collusion with the Thebans, they would rather have all died by famine than open the gates of their city. They might insist that the Spartans, if they were not prepared to do them justice and to set them free, should allow them to go back within the walls of their town, and there take their chance whether of death by famine or of succour from their allies. All this they might urge; but to each and all of these pleas the Plataians well knew that the Thebans had their answer ready. The very question to which Kleomenes replied by bidding them seek the alliance of Athens was in itself a crime. It was their duty to abide in the confederacy of their countrymen, and they had chosen from the first to assume an attitude of bitter and schismatical opposition. The surprise of a city with which the Thebans were not at war might be wrong: the case was wholly altered when they came at the wish of the first men in the town who desired only to bring back their fellowcitizens to their ancient allegiance. The Plataians had been invited by the Thebans to join the Boiotian confederacy of their own free will. No wrong had been done and the invitation was accepted; but the compact was no sooner made than it was broken, and in breach of a solemn promise all the men who had fallen into their hands were slain. The retort brings us back to the monster evil of this horrible war, the exasperated and vindictive spirit which forgot prudence, reason, and sound policy in the blind longing for revenge. It matters not whether we take the version of the Thebans or that of the Plataians. These by their own mouth stand on this point self-condemned. By their own admission they had promised that the fate of their prisoners should depend on the

result of future negotiation, and the men were killed before a word more could be said on either side. If one crime was to serve as the justification of another, the Thebans had full warrant for demanding the death of the Plataians. But there was no need to urge a request with which the Spartans had already made up their minds to comply. The prisoners were again asked, one by one, the same question to which their speech had evaded a direct answer; and as each man replied in the negative, he was led away and killed. So were slain two hundred Plataians and twenty-five Athenians who had been shut up in the town; and so fell the city of Plataiai in the ninety-third year of its alliance with Athens, to rise again once more and to be once more destroyed. For a year the town was given over by the Thebans to some Megarian exiles and to such Plataians as had preferred Boiotian oligarchy to alliance with the Demos of Athens. But even thus the Thebans could not rest satisfied. The Plataian territory was declared to be public land, and was let out for ten years to Boiotian graziers. The play was played out, as the Thebans would have it. The phrase is strictly justified, for the existence or the fall of Plataiai could have no serious issue or meaning in reference to the war. Thebes would scarcely be a gainer by recovering the little town to the Boiotian confederacy: Athens would be in no way the weaker for losing her ancient and devoted ally. From first to last the Plataians were sacrificed to the vindictive meddlesomeness of the Thebans; and it must be admitted that in some measure they helped to sacrifice themselves. If the prisoners taken on the night of the surprise had been sent, as Perikles would have had them sent, to Athens, the possession of these hostages would have had a sobering effect upon the Thebans and would have extorted a very different verdict from the five commissioners of Sparta.

CHAPTER IV.

THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR FROM THE REVOLUTION IN KORKYRA TO THE CAPTURE OF SPHAKTERIA BY DEMOSTHENES AND KLEON.

State of par. ties in Kor

THE defensive alliance of Korkyra with Athens had been followed, it would seem, by something like peaceful and orderly government in that unhappy island; and things remained comparatively quiet until the Corinthians sent back the prisoners whom they had taken in the battles off the island.' Nominally they were set free under a promise to pay

1 See p 265.
Χ

kyra.

427 B.C.

800 talents as their ransom. Really their freedom was to be earned not by money but by severing the island from all connexion with Athens, in other words by transferring power from the demos to an oligarchy.

Intrigues of the prisoners set free by the Co

rinthians.

1

These men, in fulfilment of their compact, set to work to kindle a flame which was to consume not their enemies only but themselves. The time which followed was marked by a series of frightful crimes, by pitiless massacres, and an iron inhumanity, worthy of the worst days of the first French revolution. In Korkyra, as in France, the end was a thorough confusion of all political and social morality and the substitution of a new standard of right and wrong. The animosity of the contending orders was embittered by resentment for terrible injuries, and all generous impulses were repressed by a blind and furious desire for revenge. The secret destruction of enemies became the great end to be aimed at, and they who were foremost in the race of iniquity won a reputation for pre-eminent wisdom. In this horrible rivalry the interests of faction supplied the one motive for every measure; and the ties of kindred and friendship went for nothing. In short, men on all sides acted solely from an all-absorbing selfishness, and earth for the time became a hell.

of the popu lace and the aristocratic factions.

The first step of the Korkyraians sent back from Corinth was a personal canvassing of the citizens generally for the purpose of Open enmity breaking off the alliance with Athens. It was so far successful that on the arrival of envoys from Athens and Corinth a decree was passed confirming the Athenian alliance but re-establishing the ancient friendship with the Peloponnesians,-an arrangement which defeated itself. Their next act was the accusation of Peithias, a prominent member of the demos, on the general charge of betraying Korkyra to the Athenians. The trial (how carried on, we know not) ended in his acquittal: and Peithias in his turn, picking out five men of the wealthiest families, charged them with cutting stakes for vine props from the Temenos of Zeus and Alkinoös. The men were condemned to pay the fine of a stater, or four drachmas, for each stake cut. The vastness of the amount drove them to take sanctuary and to pray for permission to pay by instalments. But the demon of vindictiveness was busy at work; and Peithias prevailed on the people to let the law take its course. He was about to propose the renewal of an offensive alliance with Athens, when the oligarchic faction resolved to take the matter

1 τὴν εἰωθυῖαν ἀξίωσιν τῶν ὀνομάτων τὰ ἔργα ἀντήλλαξαν τῇ δικαιώσει, uc. iii. 82, 5.

2 πάντων δ' αὐτῶν αἴτιον ἀρχὴ ἡ διὰ πλεονεξίαν καὶ φιλοτιμίαν. Thuc. iii. 82, 15.

2

into their own hands. Breaking suddenly into the council chamber, they slew with their daggers Peithias and sixty of his fellow-senators, and then carried a decree that neither Spartans nor Athenians should be received except with a single ship. Envoys were at the same time sent to Athens to announce this resolution and to warn the Korkyraians who had sought a refuge there against making any attempts to disturb the order of things thus established. These envoys had already succeeded in gaining some of the exiles over to their side,' when they were seized by the Athenians and placed with their converts on the island of Aigina. Meanwhile, at Korkyra the arrival of ambassadors from Sparta and Corinth encouraged the oligarchs to fresh acts of violence. The discomfited demos fled to the Akropolis and occupied the Hyllaic or southern harbour, while their enemies held the Agora and the harbour facing the coast of Epeiros. Both alike now made efforts to enlist the services of the slaves by the promise of freedom. The slaves for the most part joined the people: the oligarchs were strengthened by 800 mercenaries from the mainland. A battle which took place two days later ended in the defeat of the oligarchs, who, caring not at all whether they destroyed their own houses in that quarter, set fire to the Agora. Had the flames been carried by the wind, the whole town must have been burnt. At this moment, when the demos was most fiercely excited, the Athenian fleet of twelve triremes under Nikostratos reached Korkyra. The wish of the Athenian admiral was to effect an offensive alliance between Athens and Korkyra, and, having done this, to pour oil on the troubled waters. This task he thought that he had accomplished when he had persuaded the Korkyraians to content themselves with bringing to trial ten of the most conspicuous and intemperate of the oligarchic party; and he was about to return to Naupaktos when the demos begged him to leave five of his ships and to take in their stead five triremes which they would themselves man. The consent of Nikostratos was followed, as we might expect, by an attempt to man these ships with crews taken from the aristocratic faction. But the going into vessels under the command of an Athenian general was much like going to Athens, and the going to Athens was death. The fear of being thus carried away drove them to take sanctuary in the temple of the Dioskoroi. Nikostratos tried in vain to disabuse them of their terrors; but the people were now in a state of feverish irritation, and construing their reluctance to serve on shipboard as evidence of some hidden plot, they deprived their enemies of their arms, and made fresh attempts to destroy them

1 ὅσους ἔπεισαν. Thuc. iii. 72, 1.

2 See p. 251.

which were again baffled by Nikostratos. Four hundred oligarchs took refuge at the Heraion; and the demos, now seriously alarmed, carried them over to the opposite islet, and sent to them thither their daily supplies of food. While things were in this state, a new turn was given to affairs by the arrival of the Peloponnesian fleet of 53 triremes off Sybota. The tumult in Korkyra was terrible when in the early morning Alkidas, with whom Brasidas was joined as a counsellor, was seen bearing down upon the island. In wild confusion the Korkyraians set to work to man 60 triremes, which they sent out one by one, as they were filled, instead of allowing Nikostratos to follow his plan of keeping Alkidas in check until the Korkyraians could advance in a compact body. There was, in short, no authority and no law. Two Korkyraian ships at once deserted to the enemy, and the scattered groups of the remainder seemed to the Spartans so contemptible that twenty ships only were kept back to oppose them, while the remaining thirty-three prepared to encounter the twelve Athenian triremes. But Nikostratos was a general scarcely less formidable than Phormion. By a successful charge of one of his triremes he sunk one of the Peloponnesian ships, and then, while the Korkyraians were fighting rather among themselves than with their enemies, he so pressed upon the Spartans by sweeping rapidly round them, that the twenty ships reserved to deal with the islanders were drawn off to the aid of Alkidas. In face of this overpowering force Nikostratos was obliged to retreat; but he did so with perfect calmness and with a leisurely movement which might give the Korkyraians ample time to get back to their own harbour. By sailing straight to Korkyra Alkidas might now have carried everything before him; but to the disgust of Brasidas he contented himself with going to Sybota. Still fearing another attack the Korkyraian demos made overtures to the four hundred oligarchs whom they had brought back to Heraion, as well as to others, and prevailed on some of them to aid in manning thirty triremes which were hastily made ready.

The Peloponnesian fleet departed about midday, in all likeli hood because they knew that large reinforcements might soon be Massacres at expected for Nikostratos. Night was closing when Korkyra. fire-signals warned Alkidas that Eurymedon with 60 Athenian triremes was sailing up from Leukas. Escaping under cover of darkness, the Peloponnesians dragged their ships across the Leukadian isthmus, and so avoided an encounter. At Korkyra the approach of Eurymedon gave a vent to the pent-up fury of the demos, who now felt that they might requite their