Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/133

 22 -24] CAUSES OF THE WAR 1 7 others by Hellenes themselves fighting against one another; and several of them after their capture were repeopled by strangers. Never were exile and slaughter more frequent, whether in the war or brought about by civil strife. And traditions which had often been current before, but rarely verified by fact, were now no longer doubted. For there were earthquakes unparalleled in their extent and fury, and eclipses of the sun more numerous than are recorded to have happened in any former age ; there were also in some places great droughts causing famines, and lastly the plague which did immense harm and destroyed numbers of the people. All these calamities fell upon Hellas simultaneously with the war, which began when. the Athenians and Peloponnesians violated the thirty - years' truce concluded by them after the recapture of Euboea*. Why they broke it and what were the grounds of quarrel I will first set forth, that in time to come no / man may be at a loss to know what was the origin of this "~X great war. The_r^al though unavowed cause I believe to have been the growth of the Athenian power, which /?.-  terrified the Lacedaemonians and forced them into war; but / the reasons publicly alleged on either side were as follows. y The city of Epidamnus is situated on the right hand as 24 you sail up the Ionian Gulf. The ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^ ^^.^, ^ neighbouring inhabitants are the Tau- damnus. Civil strife lantians, a barbarian tribe of the Illyrian «'"^ «'«>' ""'^^ ^^e bar- race. The place was colonised by the Corcyraeans, but under the leadership of a Corinthian, Phallus, son of Eratocleides, who was of the lineage of Heracles; he was invited, according to ancient custom, from the mother city, and Corinthians and other Dorians joined in the colony. In process of time Epidamnus became great and populous, but there followed a long period of civil commotion, and the city is said to have been brought low in a war against the neighbouring » Cp. i. 115, 146. VOL. I. c