Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/81

Rh Greece, and this was now placed within her reach : if, by declin- ing the present offer, she permitted Korkyra to be overcome, that naval force would pass to the side of her enemies : for such were Corinth and the Peloponnesian alliance,—and such they would soon be openly declared. In the existing state of Greece, a collision between that alliance and Athens could not long be postponed : and it was with a view to this contingency that the Corinthians were now seeking to seize Korkyra along with her naval force. The policy of Athens, therefore, imperiously called upon her to frustrate such a design, by now assisting the Korkyraeans. She was permitted to do this by the terms of the thirty years' truce : and although some might contend that, in the present critical conjuncture, acceptance of Korkyra was tantamount to a declaration of war with Corinth, yet the fact would falsify such predictions ; for Athens would so strengthen herself that her enemies would be more than ever unwilling to attack her. She would not only render her naval force irresistibly powerful, but would become mistress of the communication between Sicily and Peloponnesus, and thus prevent the Sicilian Dorians from sending reinforcements to the Peloponnesians.

To these representations on the part of the Korkyraeans, the Corinthian speakers made reply. They denounced the selfish and iniquitous policy pursued by Korkyra, not less in the matter of Epidamnus, than in all former time, —which was the real reason why she had ever been ashamed of honest allies. Above all things, she had always acted undutifully and wickedly towards Corinth, her mother-city, to whom she was bound by those ties of colonial allegiance which Grecian morality recognized, and