Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and RomansPlutarch
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
Plutarch
Greece -- Biography -- Early works to 1800; Rome -- Biography -- Early works to 1800
After this was over, the Peloponnesian war beginning to break out in
full tide, he advised the people to send help to the Corcyrseans, who
were attacked by the Corinthians, and to secure to themselves an island
possessed of great naval resources, since the Peloponnesians were
already all but in actual hostilities against them. The people readily
consenting to the motion, and voting an aid and succor for them, he
dispatched Lacedaemonius, Cimon's son, having only ten ships with him,
as it were out of a design to affront him; for there was a great
kindness and friendship betwixt Cimon's family and the Lacedaemonians;
so, in order that Lacedaemonius might lie the more open to a charge, or
suspicion at least, of favoring the Lacedaemonians and playing false, if
he performed no considerable exploit in this service, he allowed him a
small number of ships, and sent him out against his will; and indeed he
made it somewhat his business to hinder Cimon's sons from rising in the
state, professing that by their very names they were not to be looked
upon as native and true Athenians, but foreigners and strangers, one
being called Lacedaemonius, another Thessalus, and the third Eleus; and
they were all three of them, it was thought, born of an Arcadian woman.
Being, however, ill spoken of on account of these ten galleys, as having
afforded but a small supply to the people that were in need, and yet
given a great advantage to those who might complain of the act of
intervention, Pericles sent out a larger force afterward to Corcyra,
which arrived after the fight was over. And when now the Corinthians,
angry and indignant with the Athenians, accused them publicly at
Lacedaemon, the Megarians joined with them, complaining that they were,
contrary to common right and the articles of peace sworn to among the
Greeks, kept out and driven away from every market and from all ports
under the control of the Athenians. The Aeginetans, also, professing to
be ill-used and treated with violence, made supplications in private to
the Lacedaemonians for redress, though not daring openly to call the
Athenians in question. In the meantime, also, the city Potidaea, under
the dominion of the Athenians, but a colony formerly of the Corinthians,
had revolted, and was beset with a formal siege, and was a further
occasion of precipitating the war.
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