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When Cleomenes had sent for and demanded the banishment of Cleisthenes and the Accursed, Cleisthenes himself secretly departed. Afterwards, however, Cleomenes appeared in Athens [23.7333,37.9667] (Perseus)Athens with no great force. Upon his arrival, he, in order to take away the curse, banished seven hundred Athenian families named for him by Isagoras. Having so done he next attempted to dissolve the Council, 1 entrusting the offices of government to Isagoras' faction.
When Cleomenes had sent for and demanded the banishment of Cleisthenes and the Accursed, Cleisthenes himself secretly departed. Afterwards, however, Cleomenes appeared in Athens [23.7333,37.9667] (Perseus)Athens with no great force. Upon his arrival, he, in order to take away the curse, banished seven hundred Athenian families named for him by Isagoras. Having so done he next attempted to dissolve the Council, 1 entrusting the offices of government to Isagoras' faction.
[2] The Council, however, resisted him, whereupon
Cleomenes and
Isagoras and his partisans seized the acropolis. The rest of the
Athenians united and besieged them for two days. On the third day as many of them as were
Lacedaemonians left the country under truce.
[3] The prophetic voice that
Cleomenes heard accordingly had its fulfillment, for when he went up to the acropolis with the intention of taking possession of it, he approached the shrine of the goddess to address himself to her. The priestess rose up from her seat, and before he had passed through the door-way, she said, “Go back,
Lacedaemonian stranger, and do not enter the holy place since it is not lawful that
Dorians should pass in here. “My lady,” he answered, “I am not a
Dorian, but an
Achaean.”
[4] So without taking heed of the omen, he tried to do as he pleased and was, as I have said, then again cast out together with his
Lacedaemonians. As for the rest, the
Athenians imprisoned them under sentence of death. Among the prisoners was
Timesitheus the
Delphian, whose achievements of strength and courage were quite formidable.
Histories. Herodotus. ed. A.D. Godley. Cambridge. 1920-1925.
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