History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides. The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Hobbes, Thomas. translator. London: John Bohn, 1843.

They had taken out of the room in this manner and slain to the number of threescore before they that remained knew it, who thought they were but removed and carried to some other place. But when they knew the truth, some or other having told them, they then cried out to the Athenians and said that if they would themselves kill them they should do it, and refused any more to go out of the room;

nor would suffer, they said, as long as they were able, any man to come in. But neither had the Corcyraeans any purpose to force entrance by the door; but getting up to the top of the house, uncovered the roof and threw tiles and shot arrows at them.

They in prison defended themselves as well as they could, but many also slew themselves with the arrows shot by the enemy, by thrusting them into their throats, and strangled themselves with the cords of certain beds that were in the room and with ropes made of their own garments rent in pieces. And having continued most part of the night (for night overtook them in the action) partly strangling themselves by all such means as they found, and partly shot at from above, they [all] perished.

When day came, the Corcyraeans laid them one across another in carts and carried them out of the city.

And of their wives, as many as were taken in the fortification, they made bondwomen. In this manner were the Corcyraeans that kept the hill brought to destruction by the commons. And thus ended this far-spread sedition for so much as concerned this present war; for of other seditions there remained nothing worth the relation.

And the Athenians being arrived in Sicily, whither they were at first bound, prosecuted the war there together with the rest of their confederates of those parts.