Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/98

 ^2 HISTORY OF GREECE. composed of his friends at home, and took sudden possession of th sacred rock of Athens. But the attempt excited general indigna- tion among the Athenian people, who crowded in from the coun- try to assist the archons and the prytanes of the naukrari in putting it down. Kylon and his companions were blockaded in the acropolis, where they soon found themselves in straits for want of water and provisions ; and though many of the Atheni- ans went back to their homes, a sufficient besieging force was left to reduce the conspirators to the last extremity. After Kylon himself had escaped by stealth, and several of his companions had died of hunger, the remainder, renouncing all hope of de- fence, sat down as suppliants at the altar. The archon Megakles, on regaining the citadel, found these suppliants on the point of expiring with hunger on the sacred ground, and to prevent such a pollution, engaged them to quit the spot by a promise of sparing their lives. No sooner, however, had they been removed into profane ground, than the promise was violated and they were put to death : some even, who, seeing the fate with which they were menaced, contrived to throw themselves upon the altar of the venerable goddesses, or eumenides, near the areopagus, received their death-wounds in spite of that inviolable protection. 1 Though the conspiracy was thus put down, and the govern- ment upheld, the ne deplorable incidents left behind them a long train of calamity. profound religious remorse mingled with ex- asperated politi ,*il antipathies. There still remained, if not a considerable Ky/onian party, at least a large body of persons who resented the way in which the Kylonians had been put to death, and who became in consequence bitter enemies of Megakles the archon, and of the great family of the Alkmaeonidte, to which he belonged. Not only Megakles himself and his personal assistants were denounced as smitten with a curse, but the taint was sup- posed to be transmitted to his descendants, and we shall hereafter find the wound reopened, not only in the second and third genera- tion, but also two centuries after the original event. 2 When we see that the impression left by the proceeding was so very serious, The narrative la given in Thncyd. i, 126 ; Herod, v, 71 ; Plutarch, Ro'oiv
 * Aristophan. Equit. 445, and the Scholia; Ilerodot. v, 70.
 * Aristophan. Equit. 445, and the Scholia; Ilerodot. v, 70.