History of the Peloponnesian War

with an understanding that if any one were caught running away, the treaty would be void in the case of all.

But the leaders of the popular party at Corcyra, fearing. that the Athenians might not put to death those that were sent to them, contrive the following stratagem.

They persuade some few of the men in the island, by secretly sending friends to them, and instructing them to say, as though with a kind motive, that it was best for them to make their escape as quickly as possible, and that they would themselves get a vessel ready, for that the Athenian generals intended to give them up to the Corcyraean populace.