Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/341

 SACRILEGE COMMITTED tit KLEOMEXES. 323 Having offered sacrifice, Kleomenes returned with his remaining force to Sparta. 1 But the army whom he had sent home returned with a full persuasion that Argos might easily have been taken, that the king alone was to blame for having missed the opportunity. As soon as he himself returned, his enemies perhaps his colleague Demaratus brought him to trial before the ephors, on a charge of having been bribed, against which he defended himself as fol- lows : He had invaded the hostile territory on the faith of an assurance from the oracle that he should take Argos ; but so soon as he had burnt down the sacred grove of the hero Argus, without knowing to whom it belonged, he became at once sen- sible that this was all that the god meant by taking Argos, and therefore that the divine promise had been fully realized. ACT cordingly, he did not think himself at liberty to commence any fresh attack, until he had ascertained whether the gods would ap- prove it and would grant him success. It was with this view that he sacrificed in the Heraeum. But though his sacrifice was favorable, he observed that the flame kindled on the altar flashed back from the bosom of the statue of Here, and not from her head. Jf the flame had flashed from her head, he would have known at once that the gods intended him to take the city by storm ; 2 but the flash from her bosom plainly indicated that the 1 Herodot. vi, 80, 81 : compare v, 72. alpieiv uv tear 1 uKpr/f TTJV Tro/Uv en riJi> cTrjdtuv Se %u/nj>as-oe, -n'uv oi ireTtoitiaVai oaov 6 i?eof 7?$eAe. For the expression aipieiv KOT' uicprje, compare Herodot. vi, 21, and Damm. Lex. Homer, v, . Bat in the story recounted by KleomenSs, the words KCIT* a/cpw come back to their primitive meaning, and serve as the foundation for his religiom inference, from type to thing typified: if the light had shone from the kead or top of the statue, this would have intimated that the gods meant him to take the city " from top to bottom. 1 ' 1 In regard to this very illustrative story, which there seems no reason Tor mistrusting, the contrast between the point of vievr of Herodotus and that of the Spartan ephors deserves notice. The former, while he affirnu
 * Herodot. vi, 82. el fiev yap in -f/f lie^aTijjf TOV uyuuaTO{ i^e^,a/iif>t,