the insolence of Corcyra. These preparations caused no small anxiety
to the Corcyraeans. Hitherto they had stood apart, and refused to take
any share in the complicated game of Greek politics. The course of
affairs during the last forty years had tended more and more to divide
the Greek world into two opposite camps, arrayed under the banners of
Athens and Sparta. As Dorians, the Corcyraeans would naturally have
enrolled themselves among the allies of Sparta,--as islanders and
seamen, they might have leaned to the side of Athens: but confident in
their remote situation, and in the power of their fleet, they had
chosen to remain neutral. But finding themselves threatened with
destruction, they now resolved to abandon their policy of selfish
isolation, and sue for admission into the Athenian alliance.
Ambassadors were sent to Athens to urge their plea; and the
Corinthians, hearing of their intention, sent representatives of their
own to oppose the application.

The Athenians were fully alive to the gravity of the question which
they were called upon to decide, and after listening to the arguments
of the Corcyraean and Corinthian orators, they adjourned the debate
until the next day. To Corinth they were bound by old ties of
obligation; for on three distinct occasions the Corinthians had done
them signal service. More than seventy years before the date which we
have reached, the Spartans summoned their allies to consider whether
it was expedient to compel the Athenians to receive back the banished
tyrant Hippias; and it was chiefly by the eloquence of the Corinthian
speaker Sosicles, who drew a vivid picture of the miseries of
despotical government, that they were shamed out of their purpose. A
few years later, when the Athenians were at war with Aegina, they were
aided by twenty Corinthian ships. And quite recently, in the great
peril which menaced Athens at the revolt of Samos, Corinth had once