Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 2.djvu/63

73, 74] REVOLUTION IN MEGARA 55 more willing to encounter a risk which would be divided among the several contingents making up the army now in the field ; and each of these was but a part of their whole force, present and absent. Both armies waited for a time, and, when neither saw the other moving, the Athenians first of the two retired into Nisaea and the Peloponnesians returned to their previous position. Whereupon the party in Megara friendly* to the exiles took courage, opened the gates, and received Brasidas and the generals of the other cities, considering that the Athenians had finally made up their minds not to fight, and that he was the conqueror. They then entered into negotiations with him ; for the other faction which had conspired with the Athenians was now paralysed. After this the allies dispersed to their several cities and 74 Brasidas returned to Corinth, where , , . - , . ,. Meeara tioiv passes he made preparations for his expedi- .„f^ ^,^^ /,^,,^^ ^^ ^;,^ tion into Chalcidice, his original des- oligarchs, who cnully tination. When the Athenians had "'"^ treacherously put . , 1 /- 1 T. T • to death tlmropponents. also gone home, such 01 the Meganans as had been chiefly concerned with them, knowing that they were discovered, at once slipped away. The rest of the citizens, after conferring with the friends of the exiles, recalled them from Pegae% first binding them by the most solemn oaths to consider the interests of the state and to forget old quarrels. But no sooner had they come into office than, taking the opportunity of a review and drawing up the divisions apart from one another, they selected about a hundred of their enemies, and of those who seemed to have been most deeply implicated with the Athenians, and compelled the people to give sentence upon them by an open vote ; having obtained their con- demnation, they put them to death. They then estab- lished in the city an extreme oligarchy. And no govern- ment based on a counter revolution effected by so few ever lasted so long a time. " Cp iv. 66 init. VOL. II. F