Summer 427–26

As for the forty Peloponnesian ships that had gone to help the Lesbians, 69
they had been fleeing across the open sea with the Athenians in pursuit.1
They were then caught in rough weather off Crete and consequently
straggled back to the Peloponnese, where at Cyllene they met up with
thirteen Leucadian and Ambraciot triremes and with Brasidas son of
Tellis, who had arrived there as an adviser to Alcidas. After their failure [2]
at Lesbos, the Spartans wanted to enlarge their fleet and sail to Corcyra,
which was in the throes of civil strife. The Athenians only had twelve
ships at Naupactus and the Spartans wanted to reach Corcyra before
reinforcements could arrive from Athens. So Brasidas and Alcidas started
making preparations to this end.
The Corcyraeans had been in this state of conflict ever since the home- 70
coming of the prisoners of war who had been taken at the time of the
sea battles off Epidamnus and had been subsequently released by the
Corinthians. Officially they were let out on bail of 800 talents2 pledged
by their friends in Corinth, but in fact they had been persuaded to try
and bring Corcyra over to the Corinthians. These men went to work,
approaching each citizen individually to try and make the city defect
from the Athenians. A ship then arrived from Attica and another from [2]
Corinth, each bringing envoys; and after discussions with them the Cor-
cyraeans voted to continue as Athenian allies, according to their agreement
with them, but also to be friends of the Peloponnesians just as they had
formerly been.
Now there was a certain Peithias, who was a self-appointed friend of [3]
the Athenians and a leading figure on the people’s side. The returning
prisoners brought him to trial, saying that he was enslaving Corcyra to
the Athenians. He was acquitted and retaliated with lawsuits against their [4]
five wealthiest men, alleging that they were cutting vine-poles from the
sanctuaries of Zeus and Alcinous, an offence for which the penalty was
one stater per vine-pole. They were convicted and because of the size of [5]
the fine they took refuge as suppliants in the temples, asking to have the
payments reassessed. But Peithias, who happened also to be a member
of the council, persuaded it to enforce the law. With this legal avenue [6]
blocked they learned at the same time that Peithias intended, while he
was still on the council, to try and prevail on the people to enter into a full

1
This picks up the story from III 33.
2
A huge figure if correct (see Gomme II, pp. 359–60).

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 Mt Istone
Corcyra
Sybota
Cape
Leucimme
Isthmus
of Leucas

Leucas
Naupactus
Cephallenia
Modern
coastline
ACHAEA Athens
N Cyllene

Zacynthus

0 50 100 150 km

0 25 50 75 miles

Ptychia

Island opposite
Temple of Hera

Temple
of Hera Hyllaic
Harbour
High ground
Acropolis
Corcyra Agora
Agora
Harbour

0 1 2 km
Possible locations within
city of Corcyra 0 ½ 1 mile

Map 14. Corcyra – the region and town1

1
On this reconstruction of the possible topography in the city itself, see Gomme II,
pp. 370–2 (and the plan facing p. 372) and Hornblower I, p. 471.

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 Summer 427–26

alliance with the Athenians.1 So they banded together, seized daggers

and burst into the council, where they killed Peithias along with sixty or
so others, including both council members and private citizens. A few
who were of the same mind as Peithias did, however, escape to the Attic
trireme that was still there.
After the conspirators had committed this act they called the Cor- 71
cyraeans together and told them that this was all for the best and that
they were now much less likely to be enslaved by the Athenians; for
the future, they said, they should welcome in neither side unless they
came in peace in a single ship – any more than that would be inter-
preted as a hostile act. As soon as they had spoken they forced the
Corcyraeans to ratify this policy. They also sent a delegation immedi- [2]
ately to Athens in order to explain what they had done, presenting it
in the best light, and to dissuade the refugees there from undertaking
any prejudicial action that might provoke counter-measures. On their 72
arrival, the Athenians immediately arrested the envoys as troublemakers,
together with such fugitives as they had won over, and deposited them on
Aegina.
Meanwhile, those in charge of affairs at Corcyra, after the arrival of [2]
a trireme from Corinth with Spartan envoys, launched an attack on the
popular forces2 and defeated them in a battle. Come nightfall the latter [3]
retreated to the acropolis and the high parts of the city, where they
gathered and established themselves, also keeping control of the Hyllaic
harbour. Their opponents seized the market-area, where most of them
lived, and the harbour facing the mainland.
The next day the two sides skirmished a little and each sent word to 73
the fields to try and rally the slaves to their cause, promising them their
freedom. Most of the domestic slaves sided with the people, while 800
mercenaries from the mainland supported their opponents.
A day passed, then there was fighting again; and this time the people 74
won, thanks to their stronger positions and superior numbers. Their
womenfolk also boldly joined in the fighting, hurling pots and tiles from
their houses and braving the turmoil with a courage that belied their
gender. By late afternoon it was a rout, and the oligarchic party was afraid [2]
the people would overwhelm the arsenal at a single push and kill them all.
They therefore set fire to the houses surrounding the market-place and
1
Literally, ‘to have the same friends and enemies’, the usual formula for an offensive and
defensive alliance, that is, ‘a full alliance’.
2
The demos, that is ‘the people’ as opposed to ‘the few’: see glossary.

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 III 74–6

to the tenement blocks in order to halt the advance, sparing neither their
own houses nor other people’s, so that a great deal of merchandise caught
fire and the whole city was in danger of being completely destroyed had
a wind sprung up to carry the flames in that direction.
Both sides then stopped fighting and stayed quiet during the night with
sentries in place. Following the people’s victory, the Corinthian ship stole
out of harbour and most of the mercenaries made their way back to the
mainland unobserved.
The next day Nicostratus son of Diitrephes, an Athenian general, 75
came to help from Naupactus, bringing with him twelve ships and 500
Messenian1 hoplites. He tried to negotiate a settlement, and persuaded
them to accept a mutual agreement whereby they put on trial the ten
men chiefly responsible (who had already left); the rest should make
peace with each other and live together, and should also enter into a full
alliance with Athens. After arranging this he was preparing to sail away, [2]
but the leaders of the popular party persuaded him to leave behind with
them five of his ships to make it less likely that their opponents would
make any kind of move, while they would man the same number of ships
and send those with him. He agreed to that and they selected their own [3]
opponents as the ones to go in the ships. But the latter feared that they
might be sent off to Athens and sat down as suppliants in the temple of
the Dioscuri. Nicostratus tried to persuade them to leave and reassure [4]
them; but he had no effect, and the populace used this as a pretext to
arm themselves, interpreting their opponents’ distrust about sailing with
Nicostratus as a symptom of trouble. They seized arms from the houses of
the men and would have killed any they encountered had not Nicostratus
intervened to stop them. The rest of them, seeing what was going on, [5]
retreated as suppliants to the temple of Hera, no fewer than 400 of them
in total. Whereupon the populace, fearing that they might cause trouble,
persuaded them to get up and leave and conveyed them to the island in
front of the temple of Hera, where they sent out provisions for them.
At this stage in the unrest, four or five days after the men were trans- 76
ported to the island, the Peloponnesian ships arrived from Cyllene, where
they had been anchored after their crossing from Ionia. There were fifty-
five of them, under the command of Alcidas as before, with Brasidas on

1
These were the Messenians resettled at Naupactus after the uprising of 457–56 at Ithome
(I 103).

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 Summer 427–26

board as his adviser. They anchored at the harbour of Sybota on the

mainland, and then sailed at dawn for Corcyra.
The Corcyraeans, in great confusion and frightened both by events in 77
the city and by the onset of the enemy fleet, worked on making ready sixty
ships all at the same time and sent them out against the enemy as fast as
they were manned, although the Athenians were recommending that they
should be allowed to sail out first and that the Corcyraeans should follow
later with all their ships in one group. As the Corcyraean ships approached [2]
the enemy in this scattered fashion, two of them deserted immediately,
while in the rest the crews were fighting amongst themselves, and there
was no sort of order in anything they did. When the Peloponnesians saw [3]
the confusion they were in they arrayed twenty of their ships against the
Corcyraeans but all the rest against the twelve ships of the Athenians, two
of which were the Salaminia and Paralus.
The Corcyraeans, who were engaging the enemy ineffectively and 78
with few ships at a time, were suffering in their area of the battle. The
Athenians for their part were nervous of the enemies’ superior numbers
and the risk of encirclement; so instead of attacking the main body or
the middle section of the ships arrayed against them they charged the
wing and sank one ship. When the enemy reacted by forming a circle
they sailed round them and tried to throw them into confusion. The [2]
Peloponnesian ships facing the Corcyraeans observed this and, fearing a
repetition of the events at Naupactus,1 went to their help, and the whole
of the Peloponnesian fleet now combined in an attack on the Athenians.
The Athenians started retreating and backed water, wanting to give the [3]
Corcyraeans as much time as possible to escape back into harbour, while
they themselves slowly made their retreat keeping the enemy engaged
in formation against them. Such was the sea battle, which lasted until [4]
sunset.2
The Corcyraeans now feared that their enemies might follow up their 79
victory by sailing up to attack them in the city and might either take on
board the men in the island or start some other initiative. They therefore
brought back the men on the island to the temple of Hera and set guards
over the city. The Peloponnesians, however, although victorious in the [2]
sea battle, did not have the confidence to attack the city by sea but sailed
away to the mainland from where they had set out, taking with them
1
See II 83–84.
2
The Corcyraean performance here is rather at odds with their claims at I 32–36 about their
importance as a naval power.

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 III 79–81

thirteen Corcyraean ships they had captured. They made no more effort [3]
to attack the city the next day either, although people there were in a state
of disorder and panic and Brasidas is said to have recommended this to
Alcidas (but he did not have an equal voice). Instead, they landed on the
promontory of Leucimme and plundered the fields there.
Meanwhile, the populace in Corcyra, petrified lest the ships should 80
come and attack them, entered into discussions with the suppliants and
the others about how the city was to be saved. They even persuaded some
of them to board the ships and succeeded in manning thirty of them
in anticipation of the attack. The Peloponnesians, however, continued [2]
wasting the land until midday and then sailed away; and towards nightfall
the news was flashed1 to them that sixty Athenian ships were heading
in their direction from Leucas. These were ships the Athenians had
decided to dispatch, under the command of Eurymedon son of Thoucles,
when they learned about the civil unrest in the city and the impending
attack on Corcyra by Alcidas and his ships.
The Peloponnesians, therefore, set off home following the coastline – 81
that night, at once and at speed.2 They carried their ships over the
Leucadian isthmus, to avoid being seen if they sailed round it, and so got
away. The Corcyraeans for their part, when they realised that the Attic [2]
ships were sailing towards them and the enemy ships were departing, took
the Messenians who had previously been outside the city and brought
them in. They then ordered the ships they had manned to sail around into
the Hyllaic harbour, and while the ships were on their way round they
killed any of their enemies they caught. They also put ashore all of the
men they had persuaded to go on to the ships and did away with them too,
then went to the temple of Hera, persuaded about fifty of the supplicants
there to stand trial and condemned them all to death. The majority of [3]
the suppliants, however, whom they had failed to persuade, when they
saw what was happening set about putting an end to each other’s lives
right there in the temple precincts; and some hanged themselves from
trees, while others took their own lives any way they could. For the seven [4]
days that Eurymedon stayed there after arriving with his sixty ships, the

1
We do not know quite how these fire-signals worked or how much detailed information
they could transmit, but Polybius X 43–7, commenting on Aeneas Tacticus’ fourth-century
manual on siege-craft (VII 4), suggests that the devices were very ingenious. See also II
94.1, III 22.7–8, IV 42.4 and index (signals).
2
A powerful short sentence, indicating a humiliating over-reaction and retreat, which puts
the Peloponnesians in not much better a light as a naval power than the Corcyraeans.

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 Summer 427–26

Corcyraeans went on slaughtering those they took to be their enemies:

some they charged with overthrowing the people, but some were in fact
killed because of personal feuds, and others at the hands of those who
owed them money they had lent them. Death came in every shape and [5]
form, and everything that is liable to happen in such a situation did take
place – and worse besides. Father killed son, men were dragged from
temples and killed right beside them, and some were even walled up in
the temple of Dionysus and died there.
Such was the savage progress of the civil strife,1 and it seemed all the 82
worse because it was the first of its kind, though later practically the whole
Greek world was in turmoil as everywhere there were rival efforts by the
leaders of the populace to bring in the Athenians and by the oligarchs
to bring in the Spartans. In time of peace they would have had neither
pretext nor inclination to ask for help; but when these states were at
war any faction seeking radical change readily found allies who could
be brought in both to help damage their opponents and to bolster their
own position. Civil strife inflicted many a terrible blow on the cities, as [2]
always does and always will happen while human nature remains what it is,
though the degree and kind of the damage may vary in each case according
to the particular circumstances. In times of peace and prosperity cities
and individuals alike show better judgement because they do not fall prey
to forces beyond their control. But war is a violent master: it robs us of
the means of providing easily for our daily life and needs, and it usually
generates passions2 to match our circumstances.
Civil strife therefore became a fact of political life, and those cities [3]
affected later rather than sooner, hearing what had happened elsewhere,
went to ever greater extremes in inventing ingenious forms of attack
and outlandish reprisals. Men assumed the right to reverse the usual [4]
values in the application of words to actions. Reckless audacity came to
be thought of as comradely courage, while far-sighted hesitation became
well-disguised cowardice; moderation was a front for unmanliness; and
to understand everything was to accomplish nothing. Wild aggression
was a mark of manhood, while careful planning for one’s future security
was a glib excuse for evasion. The troublemaker was always to be trusted, [5]
the one who opposed him was to be suspected. The man who devised a
1
The usual translation of stasis as ‘civil war’ seems anachronistic and inappropriate to the
scale of these conflicts. Corcyra was quite small (see Hornblower I, pp. 472–3 on the
probable numbers of combatants). See further glossary.
2
Orgas (passions), to be contrasted with gnomas (judgement) above.

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 III 82

successful plot was intelligent, the one who detected it still cleverer; but
the man who thought ahead to try and find some different option was a
threat to party1 loyalty and must have been intimidated by his opponents.
In short, the way to be praised was to be first in planning an outrage and
the cheerleader for others who had never considered it.
Indeed, the ties of family became less close than those of party since [6]
party members had no inhibitions about any venture. Their associations
did not exist to promote welfare in accordance with established laws but
to subvert the law for selfish advantage. The strength of their pledges
of loyalty to each other depended less on the sanction of divine law
than on their partnership in crime. If opponents made attractive pro- [7]
posals they responded, when in a position of strength, with defensive
counter-measures rather than with generous acceptance. To get revenge
on someone mattered more than not being hurt in the first place oneself.
And if oaths of reconciliation were ever exchanged they were binding
just for the time being, since each side only made them when they had
no other options and no other source of power; but when the opportu-
nity arose, the one who got in first with his attack, if he saw the other
off-guard, enjoyed a vengeance all the sweeter because it was a breach of
trust and not done openly; this gave him a margin of safety, but he further
calculated that by using deception to get the upper hand he also took the
prize for intelligence. As a rule, people are more readily called ‘clever’
when wicked than ‘good’ when stupid,2 and they take pride in the first
name but are ashamed of the second.
At the root of all this was the desire for power, based on personal greed [8]
and ambition, and the consequent fanaticism of those competing for con-
trol. The leaders in the various cities would each of them adopt specious
slogans professing the cause either of ‘political equality for the masses’
or ‘aristocracy – the government of moderation’; they pretended in their
speeches to be competing for the public good, but in fact in their struggle
to dominate each other by any available means they brazenly commit-
ted all manner of atrocities and perpetrated even worse acts of revenge,
with no regard for the constraints of justice and the public interest; each

1
Hetaireiai (or hetairiai) were party associations or clubs with both a political and a social
function (see glossary and Hornblower I, p. 484). At III 82.6 below I use the more neutral
‘associations’ to translate sunodoi (which does not here mean much more than ‘gatherings’).
2
This contrast has been variously understood. See Gomme II, pp. 378–9 and Macleod,
Collected Essays, pp. 128 and 138. Textual changes might support the more obvious sense
‘most men would prefer to be thought clever criminals than simple saints’.

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 Summer 427–26

recognised only the limitations set by their immediate appetites, and each
stood ready to indulge to the full the animosities of the moment, either by
passing unjust votes of condemnation or seizing control by brute force.
As a result, neither side behaved with any higher scruples,1 but those
who found a good-sounding explanation for their dreadful deeds enjoyed
the better reputation. And the citizens who were in the middle fell prey
to both parties, either because they would not take sides or because their
very survival was resented.
So it was that every kind of wickedness took root in Greece as a result 83
of these civil conflicts. Simplicity of spirit, which is such an important
part of true nobility,2 was laughed to scorn and vanished, while people
were largely divided into opposite and mutually suspicious camps. No [2]
words were binding enough, no oath terrible enough, to reconcile them;
all those who were sufficiently strong calculated that it was hopeless to
expect any security and preferred to protect themselves against injury
rather than rely on trust. And the less intelligent were the ones who [3]
most often came out on top. They were afraid that because of their own
shortcomings and their opponents’ cleverness they might be defeated in
any battle of words and be caught unawares by plots devised by their
quick-witted opponents. They therefore committed themselves boldly to
action. Those, on the other hand, who disdainfully assumed that they [4]
would foresee things well in advance and that there was no need to secure
by action what would come to them by power of intellect – they were
instead taken off-guard and perished.
[It was in Corcyra, then, that most of these outrages were first perpe- 84
trated.3 There were all the acts of retaliation you might expect men to
1
‘With eusebeia’, literally ‘with (religious) piety’. An interesting expression here since though
Thucydides regularly refers to religious behaviour and belief he does not generally seem
to endorse them himself.
2
Literally, ‘Simplicity (to euethes), in which a noble nature (to gennaion) most partakes’.
Gomme (II, pp. 380–1) interprets this the opposite way, to mean that nobility is a large
part of simplicity, but that would be confusing in context; see further Martha C. Nuss-
baum, Fragility and Goodness: luck and ethics in Greek tragedy and philosophy (Cambridge
University Press, 1986), pp. 507–8 n24.
3
Chapter 84 is thought by most scholars not to be by Thucydides, mainly for the external
reason that it was either not known or thought to be spurious in the ancient world. On the
other hand, it is unclear who else could have written it and for what purpose. The syntax is
certainly up to the usual standard of complexity (especially in the opening sentence, which
in the Greek runs right down to ‘ . . . frenzy of passion’) and it is hard to imagine even a
clever imitation being as stylistically rough as this. Could the chapter be some sort of draft
by Thucydides that he later discarded or failed to integrate properly with the rest of the
text?

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 III 84–6

commit when they see an opportunity for revenge on rulers who have
shown them more arrogance than moderation. There were the deliberate
crimes of those who were prepared to break the law to escape their
familiar treadmill of poverty and who as a result of their hardships cast
especially covetous eyes on their neighbours’ property. And there were
acts of savage and pitiless aggression by people who were not in this case
motivated by personal gain but who turned particularly on their equals1
in a frenzy of uncontrollable passion. At this crisis in the breakdown of [2]
civic life human nature, which is in any case conditioned to defy the laws
in doing wrong, now triumphed over them and revelled in showing itself
powerless against passion, too strong for justice and hostile to anything
superior. No one would otherwise have put revenge before reverence and
profit before the avoidance of wrongdoing, but for the pernicious power
of envy. As for the common laws about such things, from which everyone [3]
derives hopes of their own salvation when facing disaster, men see fit
to abolish them in advance when they are inflicting revenge on others,
instead of leaving them in place against some time of danger when they
might need their protection.]
These, then, were the outbreaks of violent passion – the first of their 85
kind – that the Corcyraeans in the city unleashed on each other, and
Eurymedon and the Athenian ships sailed away. Later on, the Corcyraeans [2]
who escaped (about 500 of them managed to save themselves) seized the
fortifications on the mainland, and so took control of the Corcyraean
territory across from the city and used that as a base for raids on those in
the island; they did a great deal of damage and there was a serious famine
in the city. They also sent envoys to Sparta and Corinth to negotiate [3]
their return to Corcyra; but since nothing came of those discussions they
later procured boats and mercenaries, and about six hundred of them in
all crossed over to the island. There they burned their boats, to leave
themselves no option but winning control of the land, then went up to
Mount Istone, built a fort there and started destroying the people in the
city and taking control of the countryside.
Towards the end of the same summer the Athenians dispatched twenty 86
ships to Sicily under the command of Laches son of Melanopus and

1
Literally, ‘attacking from equal’. The contrast presumably is between attacks on those
better off (who are therefore envied) and attacks on one’s equals (who may provoke
more gratuitous aggression). Alternatively, the phrase apo [tou] isou might possibly carry
some sense of ‘out of a desire for equality’, that is, to drag the other person down. For the
same phrase see also III 37.4n and glossary.

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 Winter 427–26

Charoeades son of Euphiletus. War had broken out there between the [2]
Syracusans and the Leontines. The Syracusans had as allies all the Dorian
cities except Camarina – the same ones that had enrolled in the Spartan
alliance from the very start of the war but had not yet joined in the actual
fighting; while the Leontines had on their side the Chalcidian cities1 and
Camarina. In Italy the Locrians sided with the Syracusans, while the
Rhegians sided with their kinsmen, the Leontines. The Leontine alliance [3]
accordingly sent for help to Athens, appealing both to an ancient alliance
and to the fact that the Athenians were Ionians, and persuaded them to
send them ships, blockaded as they were by the Syracusans both by land
and sea. The Athenians did send the ships, ostensibly on the grounds [4]
of their kinship, but also because they wanted to prevent grain from
being imported into the Peloponnese from that area and to test out the
possibility of bringing affairs in Sicily under their control. They therefore [5]
established themselves at Rhegium in Italy and went to war together with
their allies.
And so the summer ended.

Winter [III 87–88]

The following winter the plague struck the Athenians for a second time – 87
not that it had ever left them entirely, though there had at least been some
respite.2 This second outbreak lasted a year or more, the first having [2]
been for two full years, and no greater calamity was ever inflicted on the
Athenians or so weakened their power.3 No fewer than 4,400 from the [3]
hoplite ranks died and 300 cavalrymen,4 and an untold number from the
population at large. There were also many earthquakes throughout the [4]
land at this time: in Athens, in Euboea and Boeotia, and especially at
Orchomenus in Boeotia.
During the same winter the Athenians in Sicily and the Rhegians sent a 88
force of thirty ships against the Aeolian Islands, as they are called, which
are invulnerable to attack in the summer because of the lack of water

1
That is, Naxos, Leontini and Rhegium, founded by Chachis from Euboea (see VI 3.1 and
4.5).
2
For the first outbreak, see II 47–55.
3
A striking judgement, and one wonders whether or not this was written before the final
defeat in Sicily in 413.
4
That is, about 4,400 from about 13,000 from the hoplite class and 300 from the 1,200
cavalrymen (see II 13.6).

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