[451] Thucyd. iii, 70. φάσκων τέμνειν χάρακας ἐκ τοῦ τε Διὸς τεμένους καὶ τοῦ Ἀλκίνου· ζημία δὲ καθ᾽ ἑκάστην χάρακα ἐπέκειτο στατήρ.
The present tense τέμνειν seems to indicate that they were going on habitually making use of the trees in the grove for this purpose. Probably it is this cutting and fixing of stakes to support the vines, which is meant by the word χαρακισμὸς in Pherekratês. Pers. ap. Athenæum, vi, p. 269.
The Oration of Lysias (Or. vii), against Nikomachus, ὑπὲρ τοῦ σηκοῦ ἀπολογία, will illustrate this charge made by Peithias at Korkyra. There were certain ancient olive-trees near Athens, consecrated and protected by law, so that the proprietors of the ground on which they stood were forbidden to grub them up, or to dig so near as to injure the roots. The speaker in that oration defends himself against a charge of having grubbed up one of these and sold the wood. It appears that there were public visitors whose duty it was to watch over these old trees: see the note of Markland on that oration, p. 270.
Pressed by the ruinous fine upon the five persons condemned, as well as by the fear that Peithias might carry his point and thus completely defeat their project of Corinthian alliance, the oligarchical party resolved to carry their point by violence and murder. They collected a party armed with daggers, burst suddenly into the senate-house during full sitting, and there slew Peithias with sixty other persons, partly senators, partly private individuals: some others of his friends escaped the same fate by getting aboard the Attic trireme which had brought the envoys, and which was still in the harbor, but now departed forthwith to Athens. These assassins, under the fresh terror arising from their recent act, convoked an assembly, affirmed that what they had done was unavoidable to guard Korkyra against being made the slave of Athens, and proposed a resolution of full neutrality, both towards Athens and towards the Peloponnesians,—to receive no visit from either of the belligerents, except of a pacific character, and with one single ship at a time. And this resolution the assembly was constrained to pass,—it probably was not very numerous, and the oligarchical partisans were at hand in arms.[452] At the same time they sent envoys to Athens, to communicate the recent events with such coloring as suited their views, and to dissuade the fugitive partisans of Peithias from provoking any armed Athenian intervention, such as might occasion a counter-revolution in the island.[453] With some of the fugitives, representations of this sort, or perhaps the fear of compromising their own families, left behind, prevailed: but most of them, and the Athenians along with them, appreciated better both what had been done, and what was likely to follow. The oligarchical envoys, together with such of the fugitives as had been induced to adopt their views, were seized by the Athenians as conspirators, and placed in detention at Ægina; while a fleet of sixty Athenian triremes, under Eurymedon, was immediately fitted out to sail for Korkyra,—for which there was the greater necessity, as the Lacedæmonian fleet, under Alkidas, lately mustered at Kyllênê after its return from Ionia, was understood to be on the point of sailing thither.[454]