History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides. The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Hobbes, Thomas. translator. London: John Bohn, 1843.

Now the ephori, when they had distinctly heard him, for that time went their way, and knowing now the certain truth intended to apprehend him in the city. It is said that when he was to be apprehended in the street, he perceived by the countenance of one of the ephori coming towards him what they came for; and when another of them had by a secret beck signified the matter for good will, he ran into the close of the temple of Pallas Chalcioeca and got in before they overtook him (now the temple itself was hard by) and, entering into a house belonging to the temple to avoid the injury of the open air, there stayed.

They that pursued him could not then overtake him; but afterwards they took off the roof and the doors of the house and, watching a time when he was within, beset the house and mured him up and, leaving a guard there, famished him.

When they perceived him about to give up the ghost, they carried him, as he was, out of the house, yet breathing; and being out he died immediately.

After he was dead, they were about to throw him into the Caeada where they use to cast in malefactors; yet afterwards they thought good to bury him in some place thereabouts. But the oracle of Delphi commanded the Lacedaemonians afterward both to remove the sepulchre from the place where he died (so that he lies now in the entry of the temple, as is evident by the inscription of the pillar) and also (as having been a pollution of the sanctuary) to render two bodies to the goddess of Chalcioeca for that one. Whereupon they set up two brazen statues and dedicated the same unto her for Pausanias.