Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/69

KLEOMENES AND LEOTY CHIDES. 45 CHAPTER XXXIX. PROCEEDINGS IN GREECE FROM THE BATTLE OF MARATHON TO THE TIME OF THE BATTLE OF THERMOPYLiE. Our information respecting the affairs of Greece immediately after the repulse of the Persians from Marathon, is very scanty. Kleomenes and Leotychides, the two kings of Sparta (the former belonging to the elder, or Eurystheneid, the latter to the younger, or the Proklei'd, race), had conspired for the purpose of dethroning the former Prokleid king Demaratus : and Kleom- enes had even gone so far as to tamper with the Delphian priestess for this purpose. His manoeuvre being betrayed shortly afterwards, he was so alarmed at the displeasure of the Spartans, that he retired into Thessaly, and from thence into Arcadia, where he employed the powerful influence of his regal character and heroic Hneage to arm the Arcadian people against his coun- try. The Spartans, alarmed in their turn, voluntarily invited him back with a promise of amnesty. But his renewed lease did not last long : his habitual violence of character became ag- gravated into decided insanity, insomuch that he struck with his stick whomsoever he met ; and his relatives were forced to con- fine him in chains under a Helot sentinel. By severe menaces, he one day constrained this man to give him his sword, with which he mangled himself dreadfully and perished. So shock- ing a death was certain to receive a religious interpretation, but which among the misdeeds of his life had drawn down upon him the divine wrath, was a point difficult to determine. Most of the Greeks imputed it to the sin of his having corrupted the Pythian priestess : 1 but the Athenians and Argeians were each disposed to an hypothesis of their own, — the former believed that the gods had thus punished the Spartan king for having cut timber in the sacred grove of Eleusis, — the latter recognized the avenging hand of the hero Argus, whose grove Kleomenes had burnt, ' Herodot vi, 74, 75.