25.
The Epidamnians, now despairing of relief from the Corcyraeans and at a stand how to proceed in their present affairs, sending to Delphi enquired at the oracle whether it were not best to deliver up their city into the hands of the Corinthians as of their founders and make trial what aid they should obtain from thence.
[2]
And when the oracle had answered that they should deliver it and take the Corinthians for their leaders, they went to Corinth and according to the advice of the oracle gave their city to them, and declared how the first founder of it was a Corinthian, and what answer the oracle had given them, entreating their help and that they would not stand by beholding their destruction.
[3]
And the Corinthians undertook their defence not only for the equity of the cause, as thinking them no less their own than the Corcyraeans' colony, but also for hatred of the Corcyraeans, who being their colony yet contemned them and allowed them not their due honour in public meetings nor in the distribution of the sacrifice began at a Corinthian, as was the custom of other colonies;
[4]
but being equal to the richest Grecians of their time for store of money and strongly furnished with ammunition of war, had them in contempt.
Also they sticked not sometimes to boast how much they excelled in shipping, and that Corcyra had been once inhabited by the Phaeaces who flourished in glory of naval affairs, which was also the cause why they the rather provided themselves of a navy.
And they were indeed not without power that way;
for when they began this war, they had one hundred and twenty galleys.
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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