Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/473

 HEILEUM AT ARGOS BURNT. 451 being discovered. The sentinel carrying and ringing the bell had just passed by on the wall, leaving for a short interval an unguarded space (the practice apparently being, to pass this bell round along the walls from one sentinel to another throughout the night), when some of the soldiers of Brasidas took advantage of the moment to try and mount. But before they could reach the top of the wall, the sentinel came back, alarm was given, and the assailants were compelled to retreat. 1 In the absence of actual war between the ascendent powers in and near Peloponnesus, during the course of this summer, Thu- cydides mentions to us some incidents which perhaps he would have omitted had there been great warlike operations to describe. The great temple of Here, between Mykenoe and Argos (nearer to the former, and in early times more intimately connected with it, but now an appendage of the latter, Mykense itself having been subjected and almost depopulated by the Argeians), enjoyed an ancient Pan-Hellenic reputation ; the catalogue of its priest- esses, seemingly with a statue or bust of each, was preserved or imagined through centuries of past time, real and mythical, be- ginning with the goddess herself or her immediate nominees. Chrysis, an old woman, who had been priestess there for fifty-six years, happened to fall asleep in the temple with a burning lamp near to her head: the fillet encircling her head took fire, and though she herself escaped unhurt, the temple itself, very ancient, and perhaps built of wood, was consumed. From fear of the wrath of the Argeians, Chrysis fled to Phlius, and subsequently thought it necessary to seek protection as a suppliant in the tem- ple of Athene Alea, at Tegea : Phaeinis was appointed priestess m her place. 2 The temple was rebuilt on an adjoining spot by ' Thucyd. ir, 135. 2 Thucyd. ii, 5; iv, 133; Pausan. ii, 17, 7; iii, 5, 6. Hellanikus (a con- temporary of Thucydides, but somewhat older, coming in point of age between him and Herodotus) had framed a chronological series of these priestesses of Here, with a history of past events belonging to the supposed times of each. And such was the Pan-Hellenic importance of the temple at this time, that Thucydides, when he describes accurately the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, tells us, as one of his indications of time, that Chrysis had then been forty-eight years priestess at the Hcrseum. To