The histories of Herodotus;

364 HERODOTUS—BOOK VI, ERATO [137-139
a desire of the land took possession of them, and so the Athenians
drove them out, without alleging any other pretence
whatever." But, as the Athenians say, they justly expelled
them; for that the Pelasgians, while settled under Mount
Hymettus, made incursions from thence, and committed the
following injuries: For that their daughters and sons used
constantly to go for water to the Nine Springs, because at
that time neither they nor the other Greeks had domestic
servants : and whenever the young women went there, the
Pelasgians used, out of insolence and contempt, to offer violence
to them ; nor were they satisfied with doing this, but at
last they were discovered in the very act of plotting to attack
the city. They add that they themselves showed themselves
so much better men than them in that, when it was in their
power to put the Pelasgians to death, since they had found
them plotting against them, they would not do so, but warned
them to depart the country ; and that they, accordingly, withdrawing,
possessed themselves of other places, and among
them of Lemnos. Hecataeus has given the former account,
and the Athenians give the latter. But these Pelasgians, who
then inhabited Lemnos, and desired to be revenged on the
Athenians, being well acquainted with the festivals of the
Athenians, stationed fifty-oared galleys and laid an ambuscade
for the Athenian women, as they celebrated the festival
of Diana in Brauron, and having carried many of them away
from thence, they sailed off, and taking them to Lemnos, kept
them as concubines. But when these women were fully supplied
with children, they instructed their sons in the Attic
language and the manners of the Athenians ; they, therefore,
would not hold any intercourse with the sons of the Pelasgian
women, but if any one of their number was beaten by one of
them they all immediately assisted, and revenged one another
moreover, these boys thought they had a right to govern the
other boys, and proved far superior to them. But the Pelasgians,
observing this, consulted together, and, on consideration,
considerable alarm came over them as to what these boys
would do when they were grown up, if they already determined
to assist each other against the sons of their lawful
wives, and even now endeavoured to rule over them. There-
upon they resolved to murder the children they had by the
Attic women ; and, accordingly, they did so, and, moreover,
put their mothers to death. From this crime, and that which
the women perpetrated before this, who with the assistance
of Thoas, killed their own husbands, all enormous actions are
wont to be called Lemnian throughout Greece. But when the
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