from the country, and sat down, and laid siege to the citadel. But
as time went on, weary of the labour of blockade, most of them
departed; the responsibility of keeping guard being left to the nine
archons, with plenary powers to arrange everything according to
their good judgment. It must be known that at that time most political
functions were discharged by the nine archons. Meanwhile Cylon and his
besieged companions were distressed for want of food and water.
Accordingly Cylon and his brother made their escape; but the rest
being hard pressed, and some even dying of famine, seated themselves
as suppliants at the altar in the Acropolis. The Athenians who were
charged with the duty of keeping guard, when they saw them at the
point of death in the temple, raised them up on the understanding that
no harm should be done to them, led them out, and slew them. Some
who as they passed by took refuge at the altars of the awful goddesses
were dispatched on the spot. From this deed the men who killed them
were called accursed and guilty against the goddess, they and their
descendants. Accordingly these cursed ones were driven out by the
Athenians, driven out again by Cleomenes of Lacedaemon and an Athenian
faction; the living were driven out, and the bones of the dead were
taken up; thus they were cast out. For all that, they came back
afterwards, and their descendants are still in the city.
This, then was the curse that the Lacedaemonians ordered them to
drive out. They were actuated primarily, as they pretended, by a
care for the honour of the gods; but they also know that Pericles, son
of Xanthippus, was connected with the curse on his mother's side,
and they thought that his banishment would materially advance their
designs on Athens. Not that they really hoped to succeed in
procuring this; they rather thought to create a prejudice against
him in the eyes of his countrymen from the feeling that the war
would be partly caused by his misfortune. For being the most
powerful man of his time, and the leading Athenian statesman, he
opposed the Lacedaemonians in everything, and would have no
concessions, but ever urged the Athenians on to war.
The Athenians retorted by ordering the Lacedaemonians to drive out
the curse of Taenarus. The Lacedaemonians had once raised up some
Helot suppliants from the temple of Poseidon at Taenarus, led them
away and slain them; for which they believe the great earthquake at
Sparta to have been a retribution. The Athenians also ordered them
to drive out the curse of the goddess of the Brazen House; the history
of which is as follows. After Pausanias the Lacedaemonian had been
recalled by the Spartans from his command in the Hellespont (this is
his first recall), and had been tried by them and acquitted, not being
again sent out in a public capacity, he took a galley of Hermione on
his own responsibility, without the authority of the Lacedaemonians,
and arrived as a private person in the Hellespont. He came
ostensibly for the Hellenic war, really to carry on his intrigues with
the King, which he had begun before his recall, being ambitious of
reigning over Hellas. The circumstance which first enabled him to
lay the King under an obligation, and to make a beginning of the whole
design, was this. Some connections and kinsmen of the King had been
taken in Byzantium, on its capture from the Medes, when he was first
there, after the return from Cyprus. These captives he sent off to the
King without the knowledge of the rest of the allies, the account
being that they had escaped from him. He managed this with the help of
Gongylus, an Eretrian, whom he had placed in charge of Byzantium and
the prisoners. He also gave Gongylus a letter for the King, the
contents of which were as follows, as was afterwards discovered:
"Pausanias, the general of Sparta, anxious to do you a favour, sends
you these his prisoners of war. I propose also, with your approval, to
marry your daughter, and to make Sparta and the rest of Hellas subject
to you. I may say that I think I am able to do this, with your
co-operation. Accordingly if any of this please you, send a safe man
to the sea through whom we may in future conduct our correspondence."
This was all that was revealed in the writing, and Xerxes was