This is how the campaign in Sicily fell out. As for the Corcyraeans, their answer to the envoys and their acts were as I will show. The men who had gone to Sicily sought their aid too, using the same arguments which they had used with Gelon. The Corcyraeans straightaway promised to send help and protection, declaring that they would not allow Hellas to perish, for if she should fall, the very next day would certainly see them also enslaved. They would accordingly have to help to the best of their ability. Now this answer seemed fair enough, but when the time came for sending help, their minds changed. They manned sixty ships and put out to sea, making for the coast of the Peloponnese. There, however, they anchored off Pylos and Taenarus in the Lacedaemonian territory, waiting like the others to see which way the war should incline. They had no hope that the Greeks would prevail, but thought that the Persian would win a great victory and be lord of all Hellas. Their course of action, therefore, had been planned with a view to being able to say to the Persian, “O king, we whose power is as great as any and who could have furnished as many ships as any state save Athens,—we, when the Greeks attempted to gain our aid in this war, would not resist you nor do anything displeasing to you.” This plea, they hoped, would win them some advantage more than ordinary; and so, I believe, it would have been. They were, however, also ready with an excuse which they could make to the Greeks, and in the end they made it; when the Greeks blamed them for sending no help, they said that they had manned sixty triremes, but that they could not round Malea because of the Etesian winds. It was for this reason, they said, that they could not arrive at Salamis; it was not cowardliness which made them late for the sea-fight. With such a plea they put the Greeks off.