History of the Peloponnesian War

During this interval they kept sending embassies to the Athenians and making complaints, that they might have as good a pretext as possible for making war, in case the Athenians should refuse to consider them.

And first the Lacedaemonian envoys bade the Athenians drive out the "curse of the goddess." The curse was as follows:

There was an Athenian in days of old named Cylon, a victor at Olympia, of noble birth and powerful; and he had married a daughter of Theagenes, a Megarian, who was at that time tyrant of Megara.

Now Cylon consulted the oracle at Delphi, and the god in answer told him to seize the Acropolis of Athens "at the greatest festival of Zeus."

So he obtained a force from Theagenes and, persuading his friends to help, when the Olympic festival in the Peloponnesus came on he seized the Acropolis with a view to making himself tyrant; for he thought that the Olympic festival was not only the greatest festival of Zeus, but also in a manner was connected with him as having won an Olympic victory.[*](On this first attempt to establish a tyranny in Athens, see also Hdt. 5.71; Plut. Sol. 12. It was not a rising of the people against the nobles, but the attempt of an ambitious man who aspired to royal power, supported only by a few friends and a body of Megarian soldiers. To the mass of the people it seemed to portend subjection to Megara, so they flocked in to crush the movement, not, as Cylon hoped, to support it.)

But whether the oracle meant the greatest festival in Attica or somewhere else he did not go on to consider, and the oracle did not make it clear. For, in fact, the Athenians also have a festival in honour of Zeus Meilichius, the Diasia, as it is called, a very great festival celebrated outside the city, whereat all the people offer sacrifices, many making offerings[*](A scholiast suggests cakes (πέμματα) made in the forms of animals.) peculiar to the country instead of victims. But Cylon, thinking that he was right in his opinion, made his attempt.

And the Athenians, when they were aware of it, came in a body from the fields against them and sitting down before the Acropolis laid siege to it.

But as time passed the Athenians grew weary of the siege and most of them went away, committing the task of guarding to the nine Archons, to whom they also gave full power to settle the whole matter as they might determine to be best;

for at that time[*](i.e. before the legislation of Solon; from that time the power of the Archons decreased, and was restricted chiefly to judicial functions.) the nine Arclons transacted most of the public business.

But Cylon and those who were being besieged with him were in hard straits through lack of food and water. So Cylon and his brother escaped; but the rest, when they were in great distress and some of them were even dying of hunger, sat down as suppliants at the altar[*](Of Athena Polias.) on the Acropolis.

And the Athenians who had been charged with guarding them, when they saw them dying in the temple, caused them to arise on promise of doing them no harm, and leading them away put them to death; and some who in passing by took refuge at the altar of the Awful Goddesses[*](The sanctuary of the Eumenides, which lay between the Acropolis and the Areopagus.) they dispatched even there. For this act both they and their descendants[*](Chiefly the Alcmaeonidae, whose head was Megacles, Archon at the time of Cylon's attempt.) were called accursed and sinners against the Goddess.

Accordingly the accursed persons were driven out not only by the Athenians but also at a later time by Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian, with the help of a faction of the Athenians, during a civil strife, when they drove out the living and disinterred and cast out the bones of the dead. Afterwards, however, they were restored, and their descendants are still in the city.