| #### CHAPTER 168 |

| #### #### As for the Corcyraeans, whom the envoys that visited Sicily took in their way, and to whom they delivered the same message as to Gelo - their answers and actions were the following. With great readiness they promised to come and give their help to the Greeks; declaring that "the ruin of Greece was a thing which they could not tamely stand by to see; for should she fall, they must the very next day submit to slavery; so that they were bound to assist her to the very uttermost of their power." But notwithstanding that they answered so smoothly, yet when the time came for the succours to be sent, they were of quite a different mind; and though they manned sixty ships, it was long ere they put to sea with them; and when they had so done, they went no further than the Peloponnese, where they lay to with their fleet, off the Lacedaemonian coast, about Pylos and Taenarum - like Gelo, watching to see what turn the war would take. For they despaired altogether of the Greeks gaining the day, and expected that the Persian would win a great battle, and then be master of the whole of Greece. They therefore acted as I have said, in order that they might be able to address Xerxes in words like these: "O king! though the Greeks sought to obtain our aid in their war with thee, and though we had a force of no small size, and could have furnished a greater number of ships than any Greek state except Athens, yet we refused, since we would not fight against thee, nor do aught to cause thee annoyance." The Corcyraeans hoped that a speech like this would gain them better treatment from the Persians than the rest of the Greeks; and it would have done so, in my judgment. At the same time, they had an excuse ready to give their countrymen, which they used when the time came. Reproached by them for sending no succours, they replied "that they had fitted out a fleet of sixty triremes, but that the Etesian winds did not allow them to double Cape Malea, and this hindered them from reaching Salamis - it was not from any bad motive that they had missed the sea-fight." In this way the Corcyraeans eluded the reproaches of the Greeks. ####  |