History of the Peloponnesian War

for at that time[*](i.e. before the legislation of Solon; from that time the power of the Archons decreased, and was restricted chiefly to judicial functions.) the nine Arclons transacted most of the public business.

But Cylon and those who were being besieged with him were in hard straits through lack of food and water. So Cylon and his brother escaped; but the rest, when they were in great distress and some of them were even dying of hunger, sat down as suppliants at the altar[*](Of Athena Polias.) on the Acropolis.

And the Athenians who had been charged with guarding them, when they saw them dying in the temple, caused them to arise on promise of doing them no harm, and leading them away put them to death; and some who in passing by took refuge at the altar of the Awful Goddesses[*](The sanctuary of the Eumenides, which lay between the Acropolis and the Areopagus.) they dispatched even there. For this act both they and their descendants[*](Chiefly the Alcmaeonidae, whose head was Megacles, Archon at the time of Cylon's attempt.) were called accursed and sinners against the Goddess.

Accordingly the accursed persons were driven out not only by the Athenians but also at a later time by Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian, with the help of a faction of the Athenians, during a civil strife, when they drove out the living and disinterred and cast out the bones of the dead. Afterwards, however, they were restored, and their descendants are still in the city.

It was this "curse " that the Lacedaemonians now bade the Athenians drive out, principally, as they pretended, to avenge the honour of the gods, but in fact because they knew that Pericles son of Xanthippus was implicated in the curse on his mother's side,[*](Pericles was a descendant in the sixth generation from Megacles, his mother Agariste being niece of the Alcmaeonid Cleisthenes (Hdt 6.131.).) and thinking that, if he were banished, they would find it easier to get from the Athenians the concessions they hoped for.

They did not, however, so much expect that he would suffer banishment, as that they would discredit him with his fellow-citizens, who would feel that to some extent his misfortune[*](As belonging to the accursed family.) would be the cause of the war.

For being the most powerful man of his time and the leader of the state, he was opposed to the Lacedaemonians in all things, and would not let the Athenians make concessions, but kept urging them on to the war.