herodotus

were keeping festival to Artemis in Brauron; and having carried off anumber of them from thence, they departed and sailed away home, andtaking the women to Lemnos they kept them as concubines. Now whenthese women had children gradually more and more, they made it theirpractice to teach their sons both the Attic tongue and the manners ofthe Athenians. And these were not willing to associate with the sonsof the Pelasgian women, and moreover if any of them were struck by anyone of those, they all in a body came to the rescue and helped oneanother. Moreover the boys claimed to have authority over the otherboys and got the better of them easily. Perceiving these things thePelasgians considered the matter; and when they took counsel together,a fear came over them and they thought, if the boys were indeedresolved now to help one another against the sons of the legitimatewives, and were endeavouring already from the first to have authorityover them, what would they do when they were grown up to be men? Thenthey determined to put to death the sons of the Athenian women, andthis they actually did; and in addition to them they slew theirmothers also. From this deed and from that which was done before this,which the women did when they killed Thoas and the rest, who weretheir own husbands, it has become a custom in Hellas that all deeds ofgreat cruelty should be called "Lemnian deeds." 139. After thePelasgians had killed their own sons and wives, the earth did not bearfruit for them, nor did their women or their cattle bring forth youngas they did before; and being hard pressed by famine and bychildlessness, they sent to Delphi to ask for a release from the evilswhich were upon them; and the Pythian prophetess bade them pay suchpenalty to the Athenians as the Athenians themselves should appoint.The Pelasgians came accordingly to Athens and professed that they werewilling to pay the penalty for all the wrong which they had done: andthe Athenians laid a couch in the fairest possible manner in the CityHall, and having set by it a table covered with all good things, theybade the Pelasgians deliver up to them their land in that condition.Then the Pelasgians answered and said: "When with a North Wind in onesingle day a ship shall accomplish the voyage from your land to ours,then we will deliver it up," feeling assured that it was impossiblefor this to happen, since Attica lies far away to the South of Lemnos.140. Such were the events which happened then: and very many yearslater, after the Chersonese which is by the Hellespont had come to beunder the Athenians, Miltiades the son of Kimon, when the EtesianWinds blew steadily, accomplished the voyage in a ship from Elaius inthe Chersonese to Lemnos, and proclaimed to the Pelasgians that theyshould depart out of the island, reminding them of the oracle, whichthe Pelasgians had never expected would be accomplished for them. Themen of Hephaistia accordingly obeyed; but those of Myrina, notadmitting that the Chersonese was Attica, suffered a siege, until atlast these also submitted. Thus it was that the Athenians and