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81. The Peloponnesians set out that very night on their way home, keeping close to the land, and1 transporting the ships over the Leucadian isthmus, that they might not be seen sailing round2. [2] When the Corcyraeans perceived that the Athenian fleet was approaching, while that of the enemy had disappeared, they took the Messenian troops, who had hitherto been outside the walls, into the city, and ordered the ships which they had manned to sail round into the Hyllaic harbour. These proceeded on their way. Meanwhile they killed any of their enemies whom they caught in the city. On the arrival of the ships they disembarked those whom they had induced to go on board, and despatched them3; they also went to the temple of Herè, and persuading about fifty of the suppliants to stand their trial condemned them all to death. [3] The majority would not come out, and, when they saw what was going on, destroyed one another in the enclosure of the temple where they were, except a few who hung themselves on trees, or put an end to their own lives in any other way which they could. [4] And, during the seven days which Eurymedon after his arrival remained with his sixty ships, the Corcyraeans continued slaughtering those of their fellow-citizens whom they deemed their enemies; they professed to punish them for their designs against the democracy, but in fact some were killed from motives of personal enmity, and some because money was owing to them, by the hands of their debtors. Every form of death was to be seen; [5] and everything, and more than everything, that commonly happens in revolutions, happened then. The father slew the son, and the suppliants were torn from the temples and slain near them; some of them were even walled up in the temple of Dionysus, and there perished. To such extremes of cruelty did revolution go; and this seemed to be the worst of revolutions, because it was the first.

1 Massacre of the oligarchs.

2 Cp. 4.8 init.

3 Reading with a few MSS.ἀπεχρῶντο, (which is quoted from Thucydides by the Lexicographers,) instead of ἁνεχώρησαν, which gives no sense.

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  • Commentary references to this page (26):
    • W. W. How, J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus, 7.24
    • Charles F. Smith, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 3, 3.112
    • Charles F. Smith, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 3, 3.15
    • Charles F. Smith, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 3, 3.17
    • Charles F. Smith, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 3, 3.39
    • Charles F. Smith, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 3, 3.43
    • Charles F. Smith, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 3, 3.53
    • Charles F. Smith, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 3, 3.70
    • Charles F. Smith, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 3, 3.74
    • Charles F. Smith, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 3, 3.80
    • Charles F. Smith, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 3, 3.83
    • Charles F. Smith, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 3, 3.85
    • Charles F. Smith, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 3, 3.87
    • Charles F. Smith, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 3, 3.94
    • Charles F. Smith, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 3, 3.98
    • T. G. Tucker, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 8, 8.64
    • C.E. Graves, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 4, CHAPTER VIII
    • C.E. Graves, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 5, 5.28
    • C.E. Graves, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 5, 5.39
    • C.E. Graves, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 5, 5.76
    • Harold North Fowler, Commentary on Thucydides Book 5, 5.17
    • Harold North Fowler, Commentary on Thucydides Book 5, 5.76
    • Charles D. Morris, Commentary on Thucydides Book 1, 1.107
    • Charles D. Morris, Commentary on Thucydides Book 1, 1.109
    • Charles F. Smith, Commentary on Thucydides Book 7, 7.26
    • Charles F. Smith, Commentary on Thucydides Book 7, 7.29
  • Cross-references to this page (10):
    • Herbert Weir Smyth, A Greek Grammar for Colleges, ADJECTIVES
    • Herbert Weir Smyth, A Greek Grammar for Colleges, THE CASES
    • Raphael Kühner, Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, KG 1.3.1
    • Raphael Kühner, Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, KG 1.3.2
    • Raphael Kühner, Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, KG 1.4.1
    • Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), CORCY´RA
    • Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), LEUCAS
    • Basil L. Gildersleeve, Syntax of Classical Greek, Tenses
    • Basil L. Gildersleeve, Syntax of Classical Greek, Forms of the verbal predicate
    • Smith's Bio, Eury'medon
  • Cross-references in notes to this page (2):
    • Raphael Kühner, Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, KG 3.6.1
    • Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Thuc. 4.8
  • Cross-references in notes from this page (1):
    • Thucydides, Histories, 4.8
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (15):
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