Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:
chapter:
chapter 1chapter 2chapter 3chapter 4chapter 5chapter 6chapter 7chapter 7Achapter 7Bchapter 8chapter 9chapter 10chapter 11chapter 12chapter 13chapter 14chapter 15chapter 16chapter 17chapter 18chapter 19chapter 20chapter 21chapter 22chapter 23chapter 24chapter 25chapter 26chapter 27chapter 28chapter 29chapter 30chapter 31chapter 32chapter 33chapter 34chapter 35chapter 36chapter 37chapter 38chapter 39chapter 40chapter 41chapter 42chapter 43chapter 44chapter 45chapter 46chapter 47chapter 48chapter 49chapter 50chapter 51chapter 52chapter 53chapter 54chapter 55chapter 56chapter 57chapter 58chapter 59chapter 60chapter 61chapter 62chapter 63chapter 64chapter 65chapter 66chapter 67chapter 68chapter 69chapter 70chapter 71chapter 72chapter 73chapter 74chapter 75chapter 76chapter 77chapter 78chapter 79chapter 80chapter 81chapter 82chapter 83chapter 84chapter 85chapter 86chapter 87chapter 88chapter 89chapter 90chapter 91chapter 92chapter 93chapter 94chapter 95chapter 96chapter 97chapter 98chapter 99chapter 100chapter 101chapter 102chapter 103chapter 104chapter 105chapter 106chapter 107chapter 108chapter 109chapter 110chapter 111chapter 112chapter 113chapter 114chapter 115chapter 116chapter 117chapter 118chapter 119chapter 120chapter 121chapter 122
This text is part of:
37.
Mardonius' sacrifices also foretold an unfavorable outcome if he should be zealous to attack first, and good if he should but defend himself. He too used the Greek manner of sacrifice, and Hegesistratus of Elis was his diviner, the most notable of the sons of Tellias. This man had been put in prison and condemned to die by the Spartans for the great harm which he had done them.
[2]
Being in such bad shape inasmuch as he was in peril of his life and was likely to be very grievously maltreated before his death, he did something which was almost beyond belief; made fast in iron-bound stocks, he got an iron weapon which was brought in some way into his prison, and straightway conceived a plan of such courage as we have never known; reckoning how best the rest of it might get free, he cut off his own foot at the instep.
[3]
This done, he tunneled through the wall out of the way of the guards who kept watch over him, and so escaped to Tegea. All night he journeyed, and all day he hid and lay hidden in the woods, till on the third night he came to Tegea, while all the people of Lacedaemon sought him. The latter were greatly amazed when they saw the half of his foot which had been cut off and lying there but not were unable to find the man himself.
[4]
This, then, is the way in which he escaped the Lacedaemonians and took refuge in Tegea, which at that time was unfriendly to Lacedaemon. After he was healed and had made himself a foot of wood, he declared himself an open enemy of the Lacedaemonians. Yet the enmity which he bore them brought him no good at the last, for they caught him at his divinations in Zacynthus and killed him.
Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.
show
Browse Bar
hide
Places (automatically extracted)
View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.
Sort places
alphabetically,
as they appear on the page,
by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Tegea (3)Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Lacedaemon (Greece) (2)
Zacynthus (Greece) (1)
Elis (Greece) (1)
Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.
hide
References (34 total)
- Commentary references to this page (3):
- Cross-references to this page
(6):
- A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), ARTIF´ICES
- A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), DIVINA´TIO
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), TE´GEA
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), ZACYNTHUS
- William Watson Goodwin, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb, Chapter IV
- Smith's Bio, Hegesi'stratus
- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page
(25):
- LSJ, ἀνάρσιος
- LSJ, ξύλον
- LSJ, διορ-ύσσω
- LSJ, ἐπί
- LSJ, ἐπιτήδ-ειος
- LSJ, εἰσφέρω
- LSJ, ἡμί-τομος
- LSJ, καθίστημι
- LSJ, καταδύω
- LSJ, πάσχω
- LSJ, περί
- LSJ, πούς
- LSJ, προσποι-έω
- LSJ, θαῦμα
- LSJ, σι^δήρ-ιον
- LSJ, σι^δηρό-δετος
- LSJ, σταθμ-άω
- LSJ, σταθμόομαι
- LSJ, συγκερ-άννυ_μι
- LSJ, συγκυ^ρ-έω
- LSJ, συμφέρω
- LSJ, ταρσ-ός
- LSJ, τέλος
- LSJ, τρέχω
- LSJ, ψυ_χ-ή
hide
Search
hide
Display Preferences