Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/82

 60 HISTORY OF GREECE. which the other Corinthian colonies cheerfully obeyed. 1 Epi- damnus was not a Korkyrjean, but a Corinthian colony, and the Korkyraeans, having committed wrong in besieging it, had pro- posed arbitration without being willing to withdraw their troops while arbitration was pending : they now impudently came to ask Athens to become accessory after the fact in such injustice. The provision of the thirty years' truce might seem indeed to allow Athens to receive them as allies : but that provision was not intended to permit the reception of cities already under the tie of colonial allegiance elsewhere, still less the reception of cities engaged in an active and pending quarrel, where any countenance to one party in the quarrel was necessarily a decla ration of war against the opposite. If either party had a right to invoke the aid of Athens on this occasion, Corinth had a better right than Korkyra : for the latter had never had any transactions with the Athenians, while Corinth was not only still under covenant of amity with them, through the thirty years' truce, but had also rendered material service to them by dis- suading the Peloponnesian allies from assisting the revolted Samos. By such dissuasion, the Corinthians had upheld the principle of Grecian international law, that each alliance was entitled to punish its own refractory members : they now called upon Athens to respect this principle, by not interfering between Corinth and her colonial allies, 2 especially as the violation of it would recoil inconveniently upon Athens herself, with her nu merous dependencies. As for the fear of an impending war 1 Thucyd. i, 38. UKOIKOI 6e &vre<; ufaaTuai re 6ia TTOVTUC Kaivvviroifftoi)- ffi, Xf/ovrcf cl>f OVK CTt T$ Katctif Ttdaxeiv tKTTf2deiT}aav. rj/Ltslf Je ov<5' avroi (j>afj.fv irt ~u i"xb TOVTUV vj3pi&o&ai KaroiKiaat, u?.7S fai TU fjyejiovef re elvai KOI TU elxoTa fiavfiufecrdai al yovv U.AAOI urrotKiat Tifj.uatv fjftuf, nal [LokiaTa into UTTOIKUV OTepyofit&a. Th ; s is a remarkable passage in illustration of the position of the metrop- olis in regard to her colony. The relation was such as to be comprised under the general word hegemony : superiority and right to command on tne one side, inferiority with duty of reverence and obedience on the other, limited in point of extent, though we do not know where the limit was placed, and van-ing probably in each individual :asc. The Corinthian* sent annual magistrates to Potidaea, called Epidemiurgi (Thucyd. i, 56).
 * Thucyd. i, 40. ^avfpuf 6e uvre'nrofiiv ro>f