Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/275

IX Epidamnus destroyed. A policy so selfish and suicidal in itself was also full of mischief for Greece. Epidamnus called for aid from Corinth, the mother city of Corcyra; this brought Corinth and Corcyra into collision, in accordance with an old and smouldering ill-will; Corcyra left the Peloponnesian league and joined the Athenian, and thus by exaggerating the tension which had long existed between Athens and Sparta, brought about the war in which the best energies of Greece were wasted. Corcyra herself, like Naxos, paid dearly for her folly and selfishness. Five years later she was herself the victim of one of these outbreaks of faction, the direct inheritance of her former misdoings; and this outbreak, to which I shall shortly again refer, was perhaps the most savage and the most paralysing of any of which we have record.

I shall mention one more example of this epidemic disease, not because it was very serious in itself or its consequences, but as a negative instance, showing that where a State had once fairly overcome the difficulties of disunion, any attempt of a weaker party to overthrow a stronger was not likely to'cause permanent ruin or weakness. In 411 B.C. the oligarchical party at Athens, which had always continued to exist, and to carry on a policy of reasonable opposition to the leaders of the democracy, succeeded for a short time in getting the government into its own hands. The story of this singular episode in Athenian history, as told by