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122 HISTORY OF GREECE. we can conjecture, about a year or two after the death o! Hipparchus, 512 B.C., more than thirty years after the con- fiagration. To the Delphians, especially, the rebuilding of their temple on EO superior a scale was the most essential of all services, and their gratitude towards the Alkmaeonids was proportionally great. Partly through such a feeling, partly through pecuniary presents, Kleisthenes was thus enabled to work the oracle for political purposes, and to call forth the powerful arm of Sparta against Hippias. Whenever any Spartan presented himself to consult the oracle, either on private or public business, the answer of the priestess was always in one strain, " Athens must be liber- ated." The constant repetition of this mandate at length extorted from the piety of the Lacedaemonians a reluctant compliance. Reverence for the god overcame their strong feeling of friendship towards the Peisistratids, and Anchimolius son of Aster was despatched by sea to Athens, at the head of a Spartan force to expel them. On landing at Phalerum, however, he found them already forewarned and prepared, as well as farther strengthened by one thousand horse specially demanded from their allies in Thessaly. Upon the plain of Phalerum, this latter force was found peculiarly effective, so that the division of Anchimolius was driven back to their ships with great loss and he himself slain. 1 The defeated armament had probably been small, and iti repulse only provoked the Lacedaemonians to send a larger, under the command of their king Kleomenes in person, who on this oc- casion marched into Attica by land. On reaching the plain of Athens, he was assailed by the Thessalian horse, but repelled them in so gallant a style, that they at once rode off and returned to their native country ; abandoning their allies with a faithless- ness not unfrequent in the Thessalian character. Kleomenes inarched on to Athens without farther resistance, and found Liraself, together with ths Alkmaeonids and the malcontent At!;e- niani generally, in possession of the town. At that time there was no fortification except around the acropolis, into vhich Hip- pias retired with his mercenaries and the citizens most faithful to him ; having taken care to provision it well beforehand, so that it 1 ITcrodot v, 62. 6;3.