Histories

partisans of Isagoras. The Senate however making opposition, and not being willing to submit, Cleomenes with Isagoras and his partisans seized the Acropolis. Then the rest of the Athenians joined together by common consent and besieged them for two days; and on the third day so many of them as were Lacedaemonians departed out of the country under a truce. Thus was accomplished for Cleomenes the ominous saying which was uttered to him: for when he had ascended the Acropolis with the design of taking possession of it, he was going to the sanctuary of the goddess, as to address her in prayer; but the priestess stood up from her seat before he had passed through the door, and said, “Lacedaemonian stranger, go back and enter not into the temple, for it is not lawful for Dorians to pass in hither.” He said: “Woman, I am not a Dorian, but an Achaian.” So then, paying no attention to the ominous speech, he made his attempt and then was expelled again with the Lacedaemonians; but the rest of the men the Athenians laid in bonds to be put to death, and among them Timesitheos the Delphian, with regard to whom I might mention very great deeds of strength and courage which he performed. 73. These then having been thus laid in bonds were put to death; and the Athenians after this sent for Cleisthenes to return, and also for the seven hundred families which had been driven out by Cleomenes: and then they sent envoys to Sardis, desiring to make an alliance with the Persians; for they were well assured that the Lacedaemonians and Cleomenes had been utterly made their foes. So when these envoys had arrived at Sardis and were saying that which they had been commanded to say, Artaphrenes the son of Hystaspes, the governor of Sardis, asked what men these were who requested to be allies of the Persians, and where upon the earth they dwelt; and having heard this from the envoys, he summed up his answer to them thus, saying that if the Athenians were willing to give earth and water to Darius, he was willing to make alliance with them, but if not, he bade them begone: and the envoys taking the matter upon themselves said that they were willing to do so, because they desired to make the alliance. 74. These, when they returned to their own land, were highly censured: and Cleomenes meanwhile, conceiving that he had been outrageously dealt with by the Athenians both with words and with deeds, was gathering together an army from the whole of the Peloponnese, not declaring the purpose for which he was gathering it, but desiring to take vengeance on the people of the Athenians, and intending to make Isagoras despot; for he too had come out of the Acropolis together with Cleomenes. Cleomenes then with a large army entered Eleusis, while at the same time the Boeotians by agreement with him captured Oinoe and Hysiai, the demes which lay upon the extreme borders of Attica, and the Chalcidians on the other side invaded and began to ravage various districts of Attica. The Athenians then, though attacked on more sides than one, thought that they would remember the Boeotians and Chalcidians afterwards, and arrayed themselves against the Peloponnesians who were in Eleusis. 75. Then as the armies were just about the join battle, the Corinthians first, considering with themselves that they were not acting rightly, changed their minds and departed; and after that Demaratos the son of Ariston did the same, who was king of the Spartans as well as Cleomenes, though he had joined with him in leading the army out from Lacedaemon and had not been before this at variance with Cleomenes. In consequence of this dissension a law was laid down at Sparta that it should not be permitted, when an army went out, that both the kings should go with it, for up to this time both used to go with it, and that as one of the kings was set free from service, so one of the sons of Tyndareus800 also should be left behind; for before this time both of these two were called upon by them for help and went with the armies. 76. At this time then in Eleusis the rest of the allies, seeing that the kings of the Lacedaemonians did not agree and also that the Corinthians had deserted their place in the ranks, themselves too departed and got them away quickly. And this was the fourth time that the Dorians had come to Attica, twice having invaded it to make war against it, and twice to help the mass of the Athenian people⁠—first when they at the same time colonised Megara (this expedition may rightly be designated as taking place when Codros was king of the Athenians), for the second and third times when they came making expeditions from Sparta to drive out the sons of Peisistratos, and fourthly on this occasion, when Cleomenes at the head of the Peloponnesians invaded Eleusis: thus the Dorians invaded Athens then for the fourth time.

77. This army then having been ingloriously broken up, the Athenians after that, desiring to avenge themselves, made expedition first against the Chalcidians; and the Boeotians came to the Euripos to help the Chalcidians. The Athenians, therefore, seeing those who had come to help,801 resolved first to attack the Boeotians before the Chalcidians. Accordingly they engaged battle with the Boeotians, and had much the better of them, and after having slain very many they took seven hundred of them captive. On this very same day the Athenians passed over into Euboea and engaged battle with the Chalcidians as well; and having conquered these also, they left four thousand holders of allotments in the land belonging to the “Breeders of Horses”:802 now the wealthier of the Chalcidians were called the Breeders