rding to their
good judgment. It must be known that at that time most political
functions were discharged by the nine archons. Meanwhile Cylon and
his besieged companions were distressed for want of food and water.
Accordingly Cylon and his brother made their escape; but the rest
being hard pressed, and some even dying of famine, seated themselves as
suppliants at the altar in the Acropolis. The Athenians who were charged
with the duty of keeping guard, when they saw them at the point of death
in the temple, raised them up on the understanding that no harm should
be done to them, led them out, and slew them. Some who as they passed by
took refuge at the altars of the awful goddesses were dispatched on the
spot. From this deed the men who killed them were called accursed and
guilty against the goddess, they and their descendants. Accordingly
these cursed ones were driven out by the Athenians, driven out again by
Cleomenes of Lacedaemon and an Athenian faction; the living were driven
out, and the bones of the dead were taken up; thus they were cast out.
For all that, they came back afterwards, and their descendants are still
in the city.

This, then was the curse that the Lacedaemonians ordered them to drive
out. They were actuated primarily, as they pretended, by a care for the
honour of the gods; but they also know that Pericles, son of Xanthippus,
was connected with the curse on his mother's side, and they thought that
his banishment would materially advance their designs on Athens. Not
that they really hoped to succeed in procuring this; they rather thought
to create a prejudice against him in the eyes of his countrymen from the
feeling that the war would be partly caused by his misfortune. For being
the most powerful man of his time, and the leading Athenian statesman,
he opposed the Lacedaemonians in everything, and would have no
concessions, but ever urged the Athenians on to war.

The Athenians retorted by ordering the Lacedaemonians to drive out the
curse of Taenarus. The Lacedaemonians had once raised up some Helot
suppliants from the temple of Poseidon at Taenarus, led them away and
slain them; for which they believe the great earthquake at Sparta to
have been a retribution. The Athenians also ordered them to drive out
the curse of the goddess of the Brazen House; the history of which is
as follows. After Pausanias the Lacedaemonian had been recalled by the
Spartans from his command in the Hellespont (this is