Polycritos and Casambos the son of
Aristocrates, who had the greatest power among them; and having taken
these away to the land of Attica, they deposited them as a charge with
the Athenians, who were the bitterest enemies of the Eginetans.
74. After this Cleomenes, since it had become known that he had devised
evil against Demaratos, was seized by fear of the Spartans and retired
to Thessaly. Thence he came to Arcadia, and began to make mischief 62
and to combine the Arcadians against Sparta; and besides other oaths
with which he caused them to swear that they would assuredly follow him
whithersoever he should lead them, he was very desirous also to bring
the chiefs of the Arcadians to the city of Nonacris and cause them
to swear by the water of Styx; for near this city it is said by the
Arcadians 63 that there is the water of Styx, and there is in fact
something of this kind: a small stream of water is seen to trickle down
from a rock into a hollow ravine, and round the ravine runs a wall
of rough stones. Now Nonacris, where it happens that this spring is
situated, is a city of Arcadia near Pheneos..
75. The Lacedemonians, hearing that Cleomenes was acting thus, were
afraid, and proceeded to bring him back to Sparta to rule on the same
terms as before: but when he had come back, forthwith a disease of
madness seized him (who had been even before this somewhat insane 64),
and whenever he met any of the Spartans, he dashed his staff against the
man's face. And as he continued to do this and had gone quite out of his
senses, his kinsmen bound him in stocks. Then being so bound, and seeing
his warder left alone by the rest, he asked him for a knife; and the
warder not being at first willing to give it, he threatened him with
that which he would do to him afterwards if he did not; until at last
the warder fearing the threats, for he was one of the Helots, gave him a
knife. Then Cleomenes, when he had received the steel, began to
maltreat himself from the legs upwards: for he went on cutting his flesh
lengthways from the legs to the thighs and from the thighs to the loins
and flanks, until at last he came to the belly; and cutting this
into strips he died in that manner. And this happened, as most of the
Hellenes report, because he persuaded the Pythian prophetess to advise
that which was done about Demaratos; but as the Athenians alone
report, it was because when he invaded Eleusis he laid waste the sacred
enclosure of
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