I have before protested against corrections of the text of ancient authors grounded upon the reason which all these critics think so obvious and so convincing; and I must again renew the protest here. It shows how little the principles of historical evidence have been reflected upon, when critics can thus concur in forcing dissentient witnesses into harmony, and in substituting a true statement of their own in place of an erroneous statement which one of these witnesses gives them. And in the present instance, the principle adopted by these critics is the less defensible, because the Pseudo-Demosthenês introduces a great many other errors and inaccuracies respecting Platæa, besides his mistake about the duration of the siege. The ten years’ siege of Troy was constantly present to the imaginations of these literary Greeks. [444] Thucyd. iii, 59. [445] Thucyd. iii, 69. σχεδὸν δέ τι καὶ τὸ ξύμπαν περὶ Πλαταιῶν οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι οὕτως ἀποτετραμμένοι ἐγένοντο Θηβαίων ἕνεκα, νομίζοντες ἐς τὸν πόλεμον αὐτοὺς ἄρτι τότε καθιστάμενον ὠφελίμους εἶναι. We have now gone through the circumstances, painfully illustrating the manners of the age, which followed on the surrender of Mitylênê and Platæa. We next pass to the west of Greece,—the island of Korkyra,—where we shall find scenes not less bloody, and even more revolting. It has been already mentioned,[446] that in the naval combats between the Corinthians and Korkyræans during the year before the Peloponnesian war, the former had captured two hundred and fifty Korkyræan prisoners, men of the first rank and consequence in the island. Instead of following the impulse of blind hatred in slaughtering their prisoners, the Corinthians displayed, if not greater humanity, at least a more long-sighted calculation: they had treated the prisoners well, and made every effort to gain them over, with a view of employing them on the first opportunity to effect a revolution in the island,—to bring it into alliance with Corinth,[447] and disconnect it from Athens. Such an opportunity appears first to have occurred during the winter or spring of the present year, while both Mitylênê and Platæa were under blockade; probably about the time when Alkidas departed for Ionia, and when it was hoped that not only Mitylênê would be relieved, but the neighboring dependencies of Athens excited to revolt, and her whole attention thus occupied in that quarter. Accordingly, the Korkyræan prisoners were then sent home from Corinth, nominally under a heavy ransom of eight hundred talents, for which those Korkyræan citizens who acted as proxeni to Corinth made themselves responsible:[448] the proxeni, lending themselves thus to the deception, were doubtless participant in the entire design. [446] See above, chap. xlvii. [447] Thucyd. i, 55. [448] Thucyd. iii, 70: compare Diodor. xii, 57.