History of the Peloponnesian War

and having for many years together been annoyed with sedition, was by a war, as is reported, made upon them by the confining barbarians brought low and deprived of the greatest part of their power.

But that which was the last accident before this war was that the nobility, forced by the commons to fly the city, went and joined with the barbarians and both by land and sea robbed those that remained within.

The Epidamnians that were in the town, oppressed in this manner, sent their ambassadors to Corcyra, as being their mother city, praying the Corcyraeans not to see them perish but to reconcile unto them those whom they had driven forth and to put an end to the barbarian war.

And this they entreated in the form of suppliants, sitting down in the temple of Juno. But the Corcyraeans, not admitting their supplication, sent them away again without effect.

The Epidamnians, now despairing of relief from the Corcyraeans and at a stand how to proceed in their present affairs, sending to Delphi enquired at the oracle whether it were not best to deliver up their city into the hands of the Corinthians as of their founders and make trial what aid they should obtain from thence.