Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/297

 FOURTH YEAR OF THE WAR TROUBLES IN KORKYRA. 27a their masters, and of course the fiercest and most discontented of all the slaves in the island, such a change was but too sure to kindle a thirst for revenge almost ungovernable, as the only com- pensation for foregone terror and suffering. As soon as the Peloponnesian fleet was known to have fled, and that of Eury- medon was seen approaching, the Korkyraean leaders brought into the town the five hundred Messenian hoplites who had hith- erto been encamped without ; thus providing a resource against any last effort of despair on the part of their interior enemies. Next, the thirty ships recently manned, and held ready, in the harbor facing the continent, to go out against the Peloponnesian fleet, but now no longer needed, were ordered to sail round to the other or Hyllaic harbor. Even while they were thus sailing round, some obnoxious men of the defeated party, being seen in public, were slain : but when the ships arrived at the Hyllaic harbor, and the crews were disembarked, a more wholesale mas- sacre was perpetrated, by singling out those individuals of the oligarchical faction who had been persuaded on the day before to go aboard as part of the crews, and putting them to death. 1 Then came the fate of those suppliants, about four hundred in number, who had been brought back from the islet opposite, and were yet under sanctuary in the sacred precinct of the Heraeum. It was proposed to them to quit sanctuary and stand their trial ; and fifty of them having accepted the proposition, were put on their trial, all condemned, and all executed. Their execution took place, as it seems, immediately on the spot, and within actual view of the unhappy men still remaining in the sacred ground ; 2 1 Thucyd. iii, 80, 81. Kal i-K TUV veuv, oaovf eneiaav eajirivai, EKf3i(3a^ovTf ux%upi]ffav. It is certain that the reading uTre^uprjaav here must be wrong : no satisfactory sense can be made out of it. The word substituted by Dr. Arnold is uvexpuvro ; that preferred by Goller is a-rrexpuvro ; others re- commend uTTexpfoavTo ; Hermann adopts uirex&pioav, and Dionysius, in his copy, read avexuprjaav. I follow the meaning of the words proposed by Dr. Arnold and Goller, which appear to be both equivalent to kurelv ov This meaning is at least plausible and consistent ; though I do not feel cer tain that we have the true sense of the passage. 2 Thucyd. iii, 81. ol <5 iro^ol TUV IKCTUV, 5aoi OVK tTreiadqaav, uf lupuv T& yiyvoptva, dieydetpav avrov kv T$ lepy a/Ch.Tj'Xovs, etc. The meagre abridgment of Diodorus (xii, 57 i in reference to these events in Korkyra, is hardly worth notice.