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.
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