Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/77

 ATHENS BEFORE THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR. 55 ila *ut quo on both sides, until the arbiters should have de- cided. 1 Although the Korkyncans had been unwarrantably harsh in rejecting the first supplication from Epidaranus, yet in their propositions made at Corinth, right and equity were on their side. But the Corinthians had gone too far, and assumed an attitude too decidedly aggressive, to admit of listening to arbitra- tion, and accordingly, so soon as their armament was equipped, they set sail for Epidamnus, despatching a herald to declare war formally against the Korkyraeans. As soon as the armament, consisting of seventy triremes, under Aristeus, Kallikrates, and Timanor, with two thousand five hundred hoplites, under Arche- tirnus and Isarchidas, had reached Cape Aktium, at the mouth of the Ambrakian gulf, it was met by a Korkyramn herald in a little boat forbidding all farther advance, a summons of course unavailing, and quickly followed by the appearance of the Kor- kyrajan fleet. Out of the one hundred and twenty triremes which constituted the naval establishment of the island, forty were engaged in the siege of Epidamnus, but all the remaining eighty were now brought into service; the older ships being specially repaired for the occasion. In the action which ensued, they gained a complete victory, destroying fifteen Corinthian Bhips, and taking a considerable number of prisoners. And on the very day of the victory, Epidamnus surrendered to their besieging fleet, under covenant that the Corinthians within it should be held as prisoners, and that the other new-comers should be sold as slaves. The Corinthians and their allies did not long keep the sea after their defeat, but retired home, while the Korkyraeans remained undisputed masters of the neighboring sea. Having erected a trophy on Leukimme, the adjoining promontory of their island, they proceeded, according to the melancholy practice of Grecian warfare, to kill all their pris- oners, except the Corinthians, who were carried home and detained as prizes of great value for purposes of negotiation. They next began to take vengeance on those allies of Corinth, who had lent assistance to the recent expedition : they ravaged Ihe territory of Leukas, burned Kyllene, the seaport of Elis, 1 Thucyd. i, 28.