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[1]
These Pelasgians dwelt at that time in +Lemnos [25.25,39.916] (island), Lesvos, Aegean Islands, Greece, Europe Lemnos and desired vengeance on the Athenians. Since they well knew the time of the Athenian festivals, they acquired fifty-oared ships and set an ambush for the Athenian women celebrating the festival of Artemis at +Brauron [24.025,37.9167] (Perseus) Brauron. They seized many of the women, then sailed away with them and brought them to +Lemnos [25.25,39.916] (island), Lesvos, Aegean Islands, Greece, Europe Lemnos to be their concubines.
These Pelasgians dwelt at that time in +Lemnos [25.25,39.916] (island), Lesvos, Aegean Islands, Greece, Europe Lemnos and desired vengeance on the Athenians. Since they well knew the time of the Athenian festivals, they acquired fifty-oared ships and set an ambush for the Athenian women celebrating the festival of Artemis at +Brauron [24.025,37.9167] (Perseus) Brauron. They seized many of the women, then sailed away with them and brought them to +Lemnos [25.25,39.916] (island), Lesvos, Aegean Islands, Greece, Europe Lemnos to be their concubines.
[2] These women bore more and more children, and they taught their sons the speech of
Attica [23.5,38.83] (department), Central Greece and Euboea, Greece, Europe Attica and
Athenian manners. These boys would not mix with the sons of the
Pelasgian women; if one of them was beaten by one of the others, they would all run to his aid and help each other; these boys even claimed to rule the others, and were much stronger.
[3] When the
Pelasgians perceived this, they took counsel together; it troubled them much in their deliberations to think what the boys would do when they grew to manhood, if they were resolved to help each other against the sons of the lawful wives and attempted to rule them already.
[4] Thereupon the
Pelasgians resolved to kill the sons of the Attic women; they did this, and then killed the boys' mothers also. From this deed and the earlier one which was done by the women when they killed their own husbands who were
Thoas' companions, a “
Lemnian crime” has been a proverb in
Greece [22,39] (nation), EuropeHellas for any deed of cruelty.
Histories. Herodotus. ed. A.D. Godley. Cambridge. 1920-1925.
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