Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/201

 137, 128] THE CURSE OF TAENARUS 85 refuge. The murderers and their descendants are held to be accursed, and offenders agauist the Goddess, These accursed persons were banished by the Athenians; and Cleomenes, the Lacedaemonian king, again banished them from Athens in a time of civil strife by the help of the opposite faction, expelling the living and disinterring and casting forth the bones of the dead*. Nevertheless they afterwards returned, and to this day their race still survives in the city. The Lacedaemonians desired the Athenians to dnve~5|27 away this curse, as if the honour of the This curse attached Gods were their first object, but in '^ Pemles. reality because they knew that the curse attached to (Pericles,' the son of Xanthippus, by his mother's side, and they thought that if he were banished they would find the Athenians more manageable. They did not really expect that he would be driven into exile, but they hoped to discredit him with the citizens and make them believe that his misfortune was to a certain extent the cause of the war. For he was the leader of the state and the most powerful man of his day, and his policy was utterly opposed to the Lacedaemonians. He would not suffer the Athenians to give way, but was always urging upon them the necessity of war. The Athenians retaliated by demanding that the Lace- 128 daemonians should drive away the TheAtheniansretali- curse of Taenarus. They referred to ate by desiring the Lace- the murder of certain Helots who had daemonians to purge, ,. • ,1 , 1 r -n • I away other curses. The taken reluge in the temple of Poseidon ^^J^^f^;,^ Goddess ex- at Taenarus; these the Lacedae- p/ained to be the murder monians, having first raised by the 0/ certain suppliant He- ,, , , , , , II- lots; the curse 0/ Athene hand, had then led away and slain. ^^ ^/^^ ^,.^,^,, ^^,,^^ The Lacedaemonians themselves be- was caused by the death lieve this act of theirs to have been the ofPausaniasin thepre- ., , , . , cincts of her temple. cause ot the great earthquake which visited Sparta *'. The Athenians also bade them drive out. " Cp. Herod, v. 70, 7a. ^ Cp. i. loi, loa.