Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/357

 80-82] THE CORCYRAEAN SEDITION o^j they killed any of their enemies whom they caught in the city. On the arrival of the ships they disembarked those whom they had induced to go on board, and despatched them''; they also went to the temple of Here, and per- suading about fifty of the suppliants to stand their trial condemned them all to death. The majority would not come out, and, when they saw what was going on, de- stroyed one another in the enclosure of the temple where they were, except a few who hung themselves on trees, or put an end to their own lives in any other way which they could. And, during the seven days which Eurymedon after his arrival remained with his sixty ships, the Corcyr- aeans continued slaughtering those of their fellow-citizens whom they deemed their enemies; they professed to punish them for their designs against the democracy, but in fact some were killed from motives of personal enmity, and some because money was owing to them, by the hands of their debtors. Every form of death was to be seen ; and everything, and more than everything, that commonly happens in revolutions, happened then. The father slew the son, and the suppliants were torn from the temples and slain near them ; some of them were even walled up in the temple of Dionysus, and there perished. To such extremes of cruelty did revolution go ; and this seemed to be the worst of revolutions, because it was the first. For not long afterwards nearly the whole Hellenic world 82 was in commotion; in every city the The conflict 0/ da.w- chiefs of the democracy and of the olig- cmcy and oligarchy, archy were struggling, the one to bring ^'icotnagcd as a is by .,. , ., , , T , ^ the hope of Athenian m the Athenians, the other the Lacedae- oiLacaiacniaman help, monians. Now in time of peace, men mins states ami dis- would have had no excuse for intro- organises society. ducing either, and no desire to do so ; but, when they were " Reading with a few MSS. d-n(xpwvro, (which is quoted from Thucydides by the Lexicographers,) instead of avixojprjaav, which gives no sense. VOL. I. R