History of the Peloponnesian War

For they charged him with having, in concert with Aristocles, his brother, prevailed on the prophetess at Delphi to give the following charge to such Lacedaemonians as went, during a long period, to consult the oracle;

that they should bring back the seed of the demigod son of Jupiter from a foreign land to his own; else they would [*]( i.e. that owing to the scarcity of provisions, they would have to buy them as dearly as though the implements used in raising them had been made of silver.) plough with a silver share.

And so they said that in the course of time, when he had gone as an exile to Lycaeum, (in consequence of his former return from Attica, which was thought to have been effected by bribery,) and had then, through fear of the Lacedaemonians, half his house within the sanctuary of Jupiter, he induced them, in the nineteenth year of his exile, to restore him with the same dances and sacrifices as when they appointed their kings on first settling in Lacedaemonian.