As all this was happening at one and the same time, the dismay created by the particular events of every day rendered people incapable of that general and careful reflection, which would have made them foresee that they all with their wives and children were clearly on the road to ruin.
So, as if carried away and swept down by the force a fierce torrent, they resigned themselves to the demented and perverse guidance of their leader.
The people of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Elis&groupId=560&placeId=1048">Elis</a> and Messene indeed remained at home in expectation of an attack by the fleet, but they would have profited nothing by the circumstances if that cloud had appeared on their horizon as was originally contemplated.
The people of Patrae and those who contributed assistance together with them had a short time previously met with disaster in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Phocis&groupId=892&placeId=1606">Phocis</a>, and their case was much more lamentable than that of their allies in the <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Peloponnese&groupId=861&placeId=1552">Peloponnese</a>;
for some of them in strange desperation had put an end to their lives, and others were flying from the cities across country, directing their flight to no particular place, but terror-stricken by what was taking place in the towns.
Some arrested others to surrender them to the enemy as having been guilt of opposition to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a>, and others informed against their friends and accused them, although no such service was demanded of them at present. Others again presented themselves as suppliants, confessing their treachery and asking what their punishment should be, in spite of the fact that no one as yet demanded any explanation of their conduct in this respect.
The whole country in fact was visited by an unparalleled attack of mental disturbance, people throwing themselves into wells and down precipices, so that, as the proverb says, the calamity of Greece would even arouse the pity of an enemy, had he witnessed it.
In former times indeed they had erred gravely and sometimes entirely come to grief, quarrelling now about questions of state and now betrayed by despots, but at the time I speak of they met with what all acknowledge to be a real calamity owing to the folly of their leaders and their own errors.
The Thebans even abandoned their city in a body and left it entirely desert: among them was Pytheas, who fled to the <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Peloponnese&groupId=861&placeId=1552">Peloponnese</a> with his wife and children and was wandering about the country.
The enemies' answer seemed surprising to Diaeus; but I think that as the proverb says, "Empty heads have empty notions." So that naturally such people think that what is obvious is surprising.
he (Diaeus) began to think about the best way of getting home, acting just like a man who cannot swim but is about to throw himself into the sea, and never hesitates in making the plunge, but having made it begins to think how he can swim to shore.
Walbank Commentary