Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/199

Rh was actually passed for the execution of all the inhabitants of Mitylene. Next day, indeed, the people repented, and the decree was reversed, in spite of the strenuous opposition of Cleon, a demagogue who had risen into power since the death of Pericles. Still, about a thousand of the men who had been ringleaders in the revolt were executed, and their lands divided among Athenian cleruchs.

Freed from this danger, the Athenian fleets were again employed in the west to support the democrats of Corcyra, who, after violent civil wars and terrible massacres, had expelled the aristocrats. Here, as at Lesbos, the dilatoriness or cowardice of the Spartan commander gave the Athenians the advantage. But though the aristocrats were compelled to leave the island, some of them shortly afterwards returned, and the civil disorders thus renewed prevented Corcyra from counting for anything henceforth in the war. The Athenians, however, still had their eyes directed westward, and this year saw the first of these interferences in the affairs of Sicily, which were several times repeated with the vain hope of establishing an Athenian supremacy there, and gaining a new vantage-ground for attacks upon the Peloponnese. The Greek cities in Sicily, like those in other parts, were perpetually at feud, Ionian against Dorian, and there would seldom be wanting some pretext for Athenian intervention.

But it was necessary first to secure Western Greece, and in B.C. 426 Demosthenes led an army into Ætolia. But the Ætolians, though living in