Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/393

 STATE OF MEGAKA. 37] of Nisaea dosely blocked up. Under such hard conditions the Megarians found much difficulty in supplying even the primary wants of life. 1 But their case had now, within the last few months, become still more intolerable by an intestine commotion in the city, ending in the expulsion of a powerful body of exiles, who seized and held possession of Pegae, the Megarian port in the gulf of Corinth. Probably imports from Pegae had been their chief previous resource against the destruction which came on them from the side of Athens ; so that it became scarcely possible to sustain themselves, when the exiles in Pegas not only deprived them of this resource, but took positive part in harass- ing them. These exiles were oligarchical, and the government in Megara had now become more or less democratical : but the privations in the city presently reached such a height, that several citizens began to labor for a compromise, whereby the exiles in Pegas might be readmitted. It was evident to the leaders in Megara that the bulk of the citizens could not long sustain the pressure of enemies from both sides, but it was also their feeling that the exiles in Pegae, their bitter political rivals, were worse enemies than the Athenians, and that the return of these exiles would be a sentence of death to them- selves. To prevent this counter-revolution, they opened a secret correspondence with Hippokrates and Demosthenes, engaging to betray both Megara and Nisaea to the Athenians ; though Nisaea, the harbor of Megara, about one mile from the city, was a sep- arate fortress occupied by a Peloponnesian garrison, and by them exclusively, as well as the Long Walls, for the purpose of holding Megara fast to the Lacedaemonian confederacy. 2 The scheme for surprise was concerted, and what is more remarkable, in the extreme publicity of all Athenian affairs, and in a matter to which many persons must have been privy, was kept secret, until the instant of execution. A large Athenian 1 The picture drawn by Aristophanes (Acharn. 760) is a caricature, but of suffering probably but too real. tance between Megara and Nisaea ; Thucydides only eight. There appears sufficient reason to prefer the latter, see Keinganum, Das alte Megaris, pp. 121-180.
 * Thucyd. iv, 66. Strabo (ix, p. 391) gives eighteen stadia as the dis-