History of the Peloponnesian War

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.