Hellenica

While they were deliberating, however, as to what they should do, the capital fell from a column, although there had been neither earthquake nor wind. Likewise, when they sacrificed, the omens from the victims were such that the seers said it was better to descend from the place. And at first they retired beyond the territory of Corinth with the intention of going into exile; but when their friends and mothers and sisters kept coming to them and trying to dissuade them, and,[*](392 B.C.) further, some of the very men who were in power promised under oath that they should suffer no harm, under these circumstances some of them returned home.

They saw, however, that those who were in power were ruling like tyrants, and perceived that their state was being put out of existence, inasmuch as boundary stones had been removed and their fatherland was called Argos instead of Corinth; and, while they were compelled to share in the rights of citizenship at Argos, for which they had no desire, they had less influence in their state than aliens. Some of them, accordingly, came to the belief that life under such conditions was not endurable; but if they endeavoured to make their fatherland Corinth again, even as it had been from the beginning, and to make it free, and not only pure of the stain of the murderers, but blest with an orderly government, they thought it a worthy deed, if they could accomplish these things, to become saviours of their fatherland, but if they could not do so, to meet a most praiseworthy death in striving after the fairest and greatest blessings.

Accordingly two men, Pasimelus and Alcimenes, undertook by wading through a torrent to effect a meeting with Praxitas, the Lacedaemonian polemarch, who chanced to be on garrison duty with his regiment at Sicyon, and told him that they could give him entrance to the walls which reached down to Lechaeum.[*](The port of Corinth.) And Praxitas, since even before this he had known the two men to be trustworthy, trusted them, and after arranging that the regiment which was about to depart from Sicyon should also remain, made plans for his entrance.