History of the Peloponnesian War

During this time they were sending ambassadors to the Athenians with complaints, in order that they might have as good a pretext as possible for the war, in case they should not listen to them.

In the first place the Lacedaemonians sent ambassadors, and ordered the Athenians to drive out the pollution of the goddess; which pollution was of the following nature.

There was one Cylon, a man who had conquered at the Olympic games, an Athenian of the olden time, both noble and powerful; he had married a daughter of Theagenes, a Megarean, who at that time was tyrant of Megara.

Now when Cylon was consulting the oracle at Delphi, the god told him to seize on the Acropolis of the Athenians during the greatest feast of Jupiter.

So having received a force from Theagenes, and persuaded his friends to it, when the Olympic festival in the Peloponnese came on, he seized the Acropolis with a view to establishing a tyranny;

thinking that that was the greatest festival of Jupiter, and that it was a very proper time for him, as he had conquered at the Olympic games. But whether it was the greatest festival in Attica, or elsewhere, that had been alluded to, lie neither stopped to consider, nor did the oracle express. For the Athenians also have a Diasian festival, which is called the greatest festival of Jupiter Milichius, held outside the city, in which all the people offer [something, though] many of them not victims, but country-offerings. [*]( i. e. little figures of dough or paste made into the shape of the swine, or other animals, which they were too poor to offer.)

Thinking, however, that he understood it rightly, he took the business in hand.

The Athenians, on perceiving it, ran in a body from the fields to resist them, and sitting down before the place besieged them. But as time went on, being tired out by the blockade, most of them went away, having commissioned the nine Archons to keep guard, and to arrange every thing with full powers, as they should consider best:

for at that time the nine Archons transacted most of the state affairs.

Now those who were besieged with Cylon were in a wretched condition for want of food and water. Cylon therefore and his brother made their escape, but when the rest were pressed hard, and some were even dying of famine, they seated themselves as suppliants on the altar of the Acropolis.

And those of the Athenians who had been commissioned to keep guard, when they saw them dying in the temple, raised them up on condition of doing them no harm, and led them away and killed them; while some who were seated before the Awful Goddesses [*]( A title of the Furies peculiarly given to them at Athens, according to Pausanias as that of εὐμένιδες was at Sicyon—each 'per euphemismum.') they despatched on the altars at the side entrance. And from this both they and their descendants after them were called accursed of, and offenders against, the goddess.

The Athenians therefore expelled these accursed ones, and Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian also expelled them subsequently, in conjunction with some Athenian partisans, both driving out the living, and taking up and casting out the bones of the dead. They returned, however, afterwards, and their descendants are still in the city.