History of the Peloponnesian War

In the confusion into which life was now thrown in the cities, human nature, always rebelling against the law and now its master, gladly showed itself ungoverned in passion, above respect for justice, and the enemy of all superiority; since revenge would not have been set above religion, and gain above justice, had it not been for the fatal power of envy.

Indeed men too often take upon themselves in the prosecution of their revenge to set the example of doing away with those general laws to which all alike can look for salvation in adversity, instead of allowing them to subsist against the day of danger when their aid may be required.

While the revolutionary passions thus for the first time displayed themselves in the factions of Corcyra, Eurymedon and the Athenian fleet sailed away;

after which some five hundred Corcyrean exiles who had succeeded in escaping, took some forts on the mainland, and becoming masters of the Corcyrean territory over the water, made this their base to plunder their countrymen in the island, and did so much damage as to cause a severe famine in the town.