History of the Peloponnesian War

while the Rhodians, who were Argives by race, were compelled to wage war against the Syracusans, who were Dorians, and the Geloans, who were even their own colonists, serving with the Syracusans. Of the islanders around the Peloponnese, the Cephallenians and Zacynthians followed, indeed, as independent allies, but still, on account of their insular position, rather by constraint, because the Athenians commanded the sea.

The Corcyraeans, though not only Dorians but even Corinthians, followed openly against the Corinthians and Syracusans, though colonists of the one and kinsmen of the other; by compulsion, according to their specious profession, but rather with good will, for the hatred they bore the Corinthians. The Messenians, too, as they are now called, at Naupactus, and also from Pylus, which was then held by the Athenians, were taken to the war. Moreover, some few Megarean exiles, owing to their misfortune, were fighting against the Selinuntines, who were Megareans.

Of the rest the service was now more of a voluntary nature. For it was not so much on account of their alliance, as out of hatred for the Lacedaemonians, and for their own individual advantage at the moment, that the Argives followed in company of the Ionian Athenians to fight as Dorians against Dorians.