for whom they also
built a stone chapel of a hundred feet square. The land they confiscated
and let out on a ten years' lease to Theban occupiers. The adverse
attitude of the Lacedaemonians in the whole Plataean affair was mainly
adopted to please the Thebans, who were thought to be useful in the war
at that moment raging. Such was the end of Plataea, in the ninety-third
year after she became the ally of Athens.

Meanwhile, the forty ships of the Peloponnesians that had gone to the
relief of the Lesbians, and which we left flying across the open
sea, pursued by the Athenians, were caught in a storm off Crete, and
scattering from thence made their way to Peloponnese, where they found
at Cyllene thirteen Leucadian and Ambraciot galleys, with Brasidas, son
of Tellis, lately arrived as counsellor to Alcidas; the Lacedaemonians,
upon the failure of the Lesbian expedition, having resolved to
strengthen their fleet and sail to Corcyra, where a revolution had
broken out, so as to arrive there before the twelve Athenian ships at
Naupactus could be reinforced from Athens. Brasidas and Alcidas began to
prepare accordingly.

The Corcyraean revolution began with the return of the prisoners taken
in the sea-fights off Epidamnus. These the Corinthians had released,
nominally upon the security of eight hundred talents given by their
proxeni, but in reality upon their engagement to bring over Corcyra to
Corinth. These men proceeded to canvass each of the citizens, and to
intrigue with the view of detaching the city from Athens. Upon the
arrival of an Athenian and a Corinthian vessel, with envoys on board, a
conference was held in which the Corcyraeans voted to remain allies of
the Athenians according to their agreement, but to be friends of the
Peloponnesians as they had been formerly. Meanwhile, the returned
prisoners brought Peithias, a volunteer proxenus of the Athenians and
leader of the commons, to trial, upon the charge of enslaving Corcyra to
Athens. He, being acquitted, retorted by accusing five of the richest
of their number of cutting stakes in the ground sacred to Zeus and
Alcinous; the legal penalty being a stater for each stake. Upon their
conviction, the amount of the penalty being very large, they seated
themselves as suppliants in the temples to be allowed to pay it by
instalments; but Peithias, who was one of the senate, prevailed upon
that body to enforce the law; upon which the accused, rendered desperate
by the la