taken from their place as suppliants by the presidents of the
naucraries, who then administered affairs at Athens, on the condition
that they should be liable to any penalty short of death; and the
Alcmaionidai are accused of having put them to death. This had
occurred before the time of Peisistratos. 72. Now when Cleomenes sent
demanding the expulsion of Cleisthenes and of those under the curse,
Cleisthenes himself retired secretly; but after that nevertheless
Cleomenes appeared in Athens with no very large force, and having
arrived he proceeded to expel as accursed seven hundred Athenian
families, of which Isagoras had suggested to him the names. Having
done this he next endeavoured to dissolve the Senate, and he put the
offices of the State into the hands of three hundred, who were the
partisans of Isagoras. The Senate however making opposition, and not
being willing to submit, Cleomenes with Isagoras and his partisans
seized the Acropolis. Then the rest of the Athenians joined together
by common consent and besieged them for two days; and on the third day
so many of them as were Lacedemonians departed out of the country
under a truce. Thus was accomplished for Cleomenes the ominous saying
which was uttered to him: for when he had ascended the Acropolis with
the design of taking possession of it, he was going to the sanctuary
of the goddess, as to address her in prayer; but the priestess stood
up from her seat before he had passed through the door, and said,
"Lacedemonian stranger, go back and enter not into the temple, for it
is not lawful for Dorians to pass in hither." He said: "Woman, I am
not a Dorian, but an Achaian." So then, paying no attention to the
ominous speech, he made his attempt and then was expelled again with
the Lacedemonians; but the rest of the men the Athenians laid in bonds
to be put to death, and among them Timesitheos the Delphian, with
regard to whom I might mention very great deeds of strength and
courage which he performed. 73. These then having been thus laid in