History of the Peloponnesian War

going, as they now were, to change their mode of life, and [*]( Literally, doing nothing else but leaving, etc. Compare III. 39. 2. τί ἄλλο οὗτοι, ἢ ἐπεβούλευσαν; and IV. 14. 3. οὐδεν ἢ ἐκ γῆς ἐναυμάχουν. See Jelf's Gr. Gr. 895. c.) each of them doing what was equivalent to leaving his native city.

When they came into the city, some few indeed had residences, and a place of refuge with some of their friends or relations; but the great bulk of them dwelt in the unoccupied parts of the city, and in all the temples and hero-chapels, except the Acropolis, and the temple of the Eleusinian Ceres, and any other that was kept constantly locked up. The Pelasgium also, as it is called, under the Acropolis, which it was even forbidden by a curse to inhabit, and prohibited by the end of a Pythian oracle, to this effect,

the Pelasgium is better unoccupied,

For it was not, I think, because of their unlawfully inhabiting this spot, that such misfortunes befell the city; but it was owing to the war that the necessity of inhabiting it arose; which war though the god did not mention, he foreknew that [owing to it] the Pelasgium would hereafter be inhabited for no good.