w, and also learning that Peithias had the intention, while
still a member of the senate, to persuade the people to conclude a
defensive and offensive alliance with Athens, banded together armed with
daggers, and suddenly bursting into the senate killed Peithias and sixty
others, senators and private persons; some few only of the party
of Peithias taking refuge in the Athenian galley, which had not yet
departed.

After this outrage, the conspirators summoned the Corcyraeans to an
assembly, and said that this would turn out for the best, and would
save them from being enslaved by Athens: for the future, they moved
to receive neither party unless they came peacefully in a single ship,
treating any larger number as enemies. This motion made, they compelled
it to be adopted, and instantly sent off envoys to Athens to justify
what had been done and to dissuade the refugees there from any hostile
proceedings which might lead to a reaction.

Upon the arrival of the embassy, the Athenians arrested the envoys and
all who listened to them, as revolutionists, and lodged them in Aegina.
Meanwhile a Corinthian galley arriving in the island with Lacedaemonian
envoys, the dominant Corcyraean party attacked the commons and defeated
them in battle. Night coming on, the commons took refuge in the
Acropolis and the higher parts of the city, and concentrated themselves
there, having also possession of the Hyllaic harbour; their adversaries
occupying the market-place, where most of them lived, and the harbour
adjoining, looking towards the mainland.

The next day passed in skirmishes of little importance, each party
sending into the country to offer freedom to the slaves and to invite
them to join them. The mass of the slaves answered the appeal of the
commons; their antagonists being reinforced by eight hundred mercenaries
from the continent.

After a day's interval hostilities recommenced, victory remaining with
the commons, who had the advantage in numbers and position, the women
also valiantly assisting them, pelting with tiles from the houses, and
supporting the melee with a fortitude beyond their sex. Towards dusk,
the oligarchs in full rout, fearing that the victorious commons might
assault and carry the arsenal and put them to the sword, fired the
houses round the marketplace and the lodging-houses, in order to bar
their advance; sparing neither their own, nor those of their neighbours;
by which much stuff of the merchants was c