But it was soon seen in what form the ransom was really to be paid. The new-comers, probably at first heartily welcomed, after so long a detention, employed all their influence, combined with the most active personal canvass, to bring about a complete rupture of all alliance with Athens. Intimation being sent to Athens of what was going on, an Athenian trireme arrived with envoys to try and defeat these manœuvres; while a Corinthian trireme also brought envoys from Corinth to aid the views of the opposite party. The mere presence of Corinthian envoys indicated a change in the political feeling of the island: but still more conspicuous did this change become, when a formal public assembly, after hearing both envoys, decided,—that Korkyra would maintain her alliance with Athens according to the limited terms of simple mutual defence originally stipulated;[449] but would at the same time be in relations of friendship with the Peloponnesians, as she had been before the Epidamnian quarrel. But the alliance between Athens and Korkyra had since become practically more intimate, and the Korkyræan fleet had aided the Athenians in the invasion of Peloponnesus:[450] accordingly, the resolution, now adopted, abandoned the present to go back to the past,—and to a past which could not be restored. [449] Thucyd. i, 44. [450] Thucyd. ii, 25. Looking to the war then raging between Athens and the Peloponnesians, such a declaration was self-contradictory: nor, indeed, did the oligarchical party intend it as anything else than a step to a more complete revolution, both foreign and domestic. They followed it up by a political prosecution against Peithias, the citizen of greatest personal influence among the people, who acted by his own choice as proxenus to the Athenians. They accused him of practising to bring Korkyra into slavery to Athens. What were the judicial institutions of the island, under which he was tried, we do not know: but he was acquitted of the charge; and he then revenged himself by accusing in his turn five of the richest among his oligarchical prosecutors, of the crime of sacrilege,—as having violated the sanctity of the sacred grove of Zeus and Alkinous, by causing stakes, for their vine-props, to be cut in it.[451] This was an act distinctly forbidden by law, under penalty of a stater or four drachms for every stake so cut: but it is no uncommon phenomenon, even in societies politically better organized than Korkyra, to find laws existing and unrepealed, yet habitually violated, sometimes even by every one, but still oftener by men of wealth and power, whom most people would be afraid to prosecute: moreover, in this case, no individual was injured by the act, and any one who came forward to prosecute would incur the odium of an informer,—which probably Peithias might not have chosen to brave under ordinary circumstances, though he thought himself justified in adopting this mode of retaliation against those who had prosecuted him.