Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/354

332 HISTORY OF GREECE. had been completely successful in overawing their party in the city, and depriving them of all means of communicating with the Lacedaemonians at Sikyon. Feeling unable to maintain them- selves, they were besides frightened by menacing omens, when they came to offer sacrifice, in order that they might learn whether the gods encouraged them to fight or not. The victims were found so alarming, as to drive them to evacuate the post and pre- pare for voluntary exile. Many of them (according to Diodorus five hundred) 1 actually went into exile ; while others, and among them Pasimelus himself, were restrained by the entreaties of their friends and relatives, combined with solemn assurances of peace and security from the government ; who now, probably, felt them- selves victorious, and were anxious to mitigate the antipathies which then* recent violence had inspired. These pacific assur- ances were faithfully kept, and no farther mischief was done to any citizen. But the political condition of Corinth was materially altered, by an extreme intimacy of alliance and communion now formed with Argos; perhaps combined with reciprocal rights of inter- marriage, and of purchase and sale. The boundary pillars or hedges which separated the two territories, were pulled up, and the city was entitled Argos instead of Corinth (says Xenophon) ; such was probably the invidious phrase in which the opposition party described the very close political union now formed between the two cities ; upheld by a strong Argeian force in the city and acropolis, together with some Athenian mercenaries under Iphi- krates, and some Boeotians as a garrison in the port of Lechaeum. Most probably the government remained still Corinthian, and still oligarchical, as before. But it now rested upon Argeian aid, and was therefore dependent chiefly upon Argos, though partly also upon the other two allies. To Pasimelus and his friends such a state of things was intol- appeal to ; their only available weapon was armed violence, or treacherous correspondence with a foreign enemy. On the part of the Corinthi in gov- ernment, superior or more skilfully used force, or superior alliance abroad, was the only weapon of defence, in like manner. I shall return to this subject in a future chapter, where I enter more at large into the character of the Athenians. 1 Diodor. xiv. 86 ; Xen. Hellen. iv, 4, 5.