Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/298

 27 G HISTORY OF GREECE. who, seeing that their lot was desperate, preferred dying by then own hands to starvation or the sword of their enemies. Some hung themselves on branches of the trees surrounding the temple, others helped their friends in the work of suicide, and, in one way or another, the entire band thus perished : it was probably a con- solation to them to believe, that this desecration of the precinct would bring down the anger of the gods upon their surviving enemies. Eurymedon remained with his fleet for seven days, during all which time the victorious Xorkyraeans carried on a sanguinary persecution against the party who had been concerned in the late oligarchical revolution. Five hundred of this party contrived to escape by flight to the mainland ; while those who did not, or could not flee, were slain wherever they could be found. Some received their death-wounds even on the altar itself, others shared the same fate, after having been dragged away from it by violence. In one case, a party of murderers having pursued their victims to the temple of Dionysius, refrained from shedding their blood, but built up the doorway and left them to starve ; as the Lacedaemonians had done on a former occasion respecting Pausanias. Such was the ferocity of the time, that in one case a father slew his own son. Nor was it merely the oligarchical party who thus suffered: the floodgates of private feud were also opened, and various individuals, under false charges of hav- ing been concerned in the oligarchical movements, were slain by personal enemies or debtors. This deplorable suspension of legal, as well as moral restraints, continued during the week of Eurymedon's stay, a period long enough to satiate the fierce sentiment out of which it arose ;' yet without any apparent effort on his part to soften the victors or protect the vanquished. We shall see farther reason hereafter to appreciate the baseness and want of humanity in his character: but had Nikostratus re- mained in command, we may fairly presume, j ndging by what he had done in the earlier part of the sedition, with very inferior force, that he would have set much earlier limits to the Kor- 1 Thucyd. iii, 85. Oi fi.lv ovv icard TT)V TTU^IV Kepivpaioi roii.ii rail hpyai c rate Trowrajf if uAP^Aovf t^pfjaavTo, etc.