History of the Peloponnesian War

And for seven days together that Eurymedon stayed there with his sixty galleys, the Corcyraeans did nothing but kill such of their city as they took to be their enemies, laying to their charge a practice to have everted the popular government. Amongst whom some were slain upon private hatred and some by their debtors for the money which they had lent them. All forms of death were then seen;

and (as in such cases it usually falls out) whatsoever had happened at any time happened also then, and more. For the father slew his son; men were dragged out of the temples and then slain hard by; and some immured in the temple of Bacchus died within it. So cruel was this sedition and seemed so the more because it was of these the first.

For afterwards all Greece, as a man may say, was in commotion; and quarrels arose everywhere between the patrons of the commons, that sought to bring in the Athenians, and the few, that desired to bring in the Lacedaemonians. Now in time of peace they could have had no pretence nor would have been so forward to call them in; but being war and confederates to be had for either party, both to hurt their enemies and strengthen themselves, such as desired alteration easily got them to come in.

And many and heinous things happened in the cities through this sedition, which though they have been before and shall be ever as long as human nature is the same, yet they are more calm and of different kinds according to the several conjunctures. For in peace and prosperity as well cities as private men are better minded because they be not plunged into necessity of doing anything against their will. But war, taking away the affluence of daily necessaries, is a most violent master and conformeth most men's passions to the present occasion. The cities therefore being now in sedition and those that fell into it later having heard what had been done in the former, they far exceeded the same in newness of conceit, both for the art of assailing and for the strangeness of their revenges.

The received value of names imposed for signification of things was changed into arbitrary. For inconsiderate boldness was counted true-hearted manliness; provident deliberation, a handsome fear; modesty, the cloak of cowardice; to be wise in everything, to be lazy in everything.