The Histories by Herodotus & Carolyn Dewald & Robin Waterfield

Author:Herodotus & Carolyn Dewald & Robin Waterfield
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780199535668
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2008-05-14T23:00:00+00:00

It was the conjunction of all these events that made the Argives afraid. Under these circumstances they decided to make use of the enemy’s crier—that is, to copy the Lacedaemonians every time the Spartiate crier issued an order.

[78] When Cleomenes noticed that the Argives were following every command the Spartiate crier was issuing, he told his men that the next time the crier announced that it was time for them to eat, they should pick up their weapons and attack the Argives. And that is exactly what the Lacedaemonians did. The Argives had followed the crier’s command and were busy with their meal when the Lacedaemonians attacked them. Argive losses were heavy, but far more of their troops took refuge in the grove of Argus, where the Lacedaemonians surrounded them and waited.

[79] Cleomenes next questioned the Argive deserters he had among his troops. As a result of what he learnt, he sent a herald calling on the Argives who were shut up in the grounds of the sanctuary to leave; he called them personally by name, and told them that their ransoms had been paid. (The Peloponnesians have a fixed rate for ransoming a prisoner of war, of two minas per man.) About fifty of the Argives responded one by one to Cleomenes’ summons by coming out—and Cleomenes had them killed. Now, for a while the ones who remained in the precinct were unaware of the situation because there were too many trees for those inside the grove to see what was happening to those outside it, but at last someone climbed a tree and saw what was going on. Consequently, of course, they stopped coming out of the grove when their names were called.

[80] Cleomenes then got every single one of his helots to pile up wood around the grove, and once they had carried out his order he set the place alight. The flames had just caught hold when he asked one of the deserters which god the grove belonged to; ‘Argus’, came the reply. When Cleomenes heard this he gave a great groan and said, ‘Apollo, god of prophecy, you seriously misled me when you foretold that I would capture Argos; I think your prediction has now come true.’

[81] Cleomenes next dismissed most of his troops and sent them back to Sparta, while he himself went with a thousand elite soldiers to the temple of Hera, with the intention of offering a sacrifice at her altar. But the priest forbade him from doing so, citing the rule that it is sacrilege for foreigners to perform sacrifices there. So Cleomenes ordered his helots to remove the priest from the altar and whip him, and he carried out the ritual by himself. Then he returned to Sparta.

[82] Back in Sparta, his enemies brought him before the ephors on the charge of having accepted a bribe not to take Argos, which, they claimed, he could easily have taken. I do not know for sure whether or not he was telling

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