onsumed and the city risked
total destruction, if a wind had come to help the flame by blowing on
it. Hostilities now ceasing, both sides kept quiet, passing the night
on guard, while the Corinthian ship stole out to sea upon the victory
of the commons, and most of the mercenaries passed over secretly to the
continent.

The next day the Athenian general, Nicostratus, son of Diitrephes, came
up from Naupactus with twelve ships and five hundred Messenian heavy
infantry. He at once endeavoured to bring about a settlement, and
persuaded the two parties to agree together to bring to trial ten of the
ringleaders, who presently fled, while the rest were to live in
peace, making terms with each other, and entering into a defensive and
offensive alliance with the Athenians. This arranged, he was about to
sail away, when the leaders of the commons induced him to leave them
five of his ships to make their adversaries less disposed to move, while
they manned and sent with him an equal number of their own. He had no
sooner consented, than they began to enroll their enemies for the
ships; and these, fearing that they might be sent off to Athens, seated
themselves as suppliants in the temple of the Dioscuri. An attempt on
the part of Nicostratus to reassure them and to persuade them to rise
proving unsuccessful, the commons armed upon this pretext, alleging
the refusal of their adversaries to sail with them as a proof of the
hollowness of their intentions, and took their arms out of their houses,
and would have dispatched some whom they fell in with, if Nicostratus
had not prevented it. The rest of the party, seeing what was going on,
seated themselves as suppliants in the temple of Hera, being not less
than four hundred in number; until the commons, fearing that they might
adopt some desperate resolution, induced them to rise, and conveyed them
over to the island in front of the temple, where provisions were sent
across to them.

At this stage in the revolution, on the fourth or fifth day after the
removal of the men to the island, the Peloponnesian ships arrived from
Cyllene where they had been stationed since their return from Ionia,
fifty-three in number, still under the command of Alcidas, but with
Brasidas also on board as his adviser; and dropping anchor at Sybota, a
harbour on the mainland, at daybreak made sail for Corcyra.

The Corcyraeans in great confusion and alarm at the state of things in
the city and at the approach