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So they sent to Delphi and inquired of the God whether they should deliver their city to the Corinthians and endeavour to obtain some assistance from their founders. The answer he gave them was to deliver the city and place themselves under Corinthian protection. So the Epidamnians went to Corinth and delivered over the colony in obedience to the commands of the oracle.
At the time of which we speak, the Epidamnians, being hard pressed by the Illyrians, led by some oligarchical exiles of their own city, applied to Corcyra for assistance, which the Corcyraeans, being connected with the Epidamnian oligarchy, refused. The Epidamnians then sought help from the Corinthians, who undertook to assist them.
The ambassadors seated themselves in the temple of Hera as suppliants, and made the above requests to the Corcyraeans. But the Corcyraeans refused to accept their supplication, and they were dismissed without having effected anything. When the Epidamnians found that no help could be expected from Corcyra, they were in a strait what to do next.
They marched by land to Apollonia, a Corinthian colony, the route by sea being avoided from fear of Corcyraean interruption. When the Corcyraeans heard of the arrival of the settlers and troops in Epidamnus, and the surrender of the colony to Corinth, they took fire. But to all this the Epidamnians turned a deaf ear.
Great was the indignation at Corcyra when the news arrived that her colony had been surrendered to Corinth, and a force of forty ships was sent off in haste, bearing a peremptory demand to the Epidamnians that they should receive back their exiles and send away the new colonists.
Four years before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, the nobles of Epidamnus, who had been expelled in the last revolution, made an alliance with the native tribes of Illyria, and by constant plundering raids reduced the Epidamnians to such straits that they were compelled to apply to Corcyra for help.
The exiled party joined the barbarians, and proceeded to plunder those in the city by sea and land; and the Epidamnians, finding themselves hard pressed, sent ambassadors to Corcyra beseeching their mother country not to allow them to perish, but to make up matters between them and the exiles, and to rid them of the war with the barbarians.
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