Now the Cylonian pollution had for a long time agitated the city, ever since Megacles the archon had persuaded Cylon and his fellow conspirators, who had taken sanctuary in the temple of Athena, to come down and stand their trial.1 They fastened a braided thread to the image of the goddess and kept hold of it, but when they reached the shrine of the Erinyes on their way down, the thread broke of its own accord, upon which Megacles and his fellow-archons rushed to seize them, on the plea that the goddess refused them the rights of suppliants. Those who were outside of sacred precincts were stoned to death, and those who took refuge at the altars were slaughtered there; only those were spared who made supplication to the wives of the archons.
Edition :
Plutarch Lives I: Theseus and Romulus, Lycurgus and Numa, Solon and Publicola, Ed. Jeffrey Henderson, trans. Bernadotte Perrin (The Loeb Classical Library 46), Harvard University Press: Cambridge/MA - London 1967 (first ed. 1914).
Remark :
date: The Cylonian Conspiracy can possibly be dated to 632 BCE, but the date is contested.
