Not many years after this, a war, for some cause or other, broke out between Epidaurus and AEgina. The people of AEgina crossed the water in a fleet of galleys, landed at Epidaurus, and, after committing various ravages, they seized these images, and bore them away in triumph as trophies of their victory. They set them up in a public place in the middle of their own island, and instituted games and spectacles around them, which they celebrated with great festivity and parade. The Epidaurians, having thus lost their statues, ceased to make the annual offering at Athens which they had stipulated for, in return for receiving the wood from which the statues were carved. The Athenians complained. The Epidaurians replied that they had continued to make the offering as long as they had kept the statues; but that now, the statues being in other hands, they were absolved from the obligation. The Athenians next demanded the statues themselves of the people of AEgina. They refused to surrender them. The Athenians then invaded the island, and proceeded to the spot where the statues had been erected. They had been set up on massive and heavy pedestals. The Athenians attempted to get them down, but could not separate them from their fastenings. They then changed their plan, and undertook to move the pedestals too, by dragging them with ropes. They were arrested in this undertaking by an earthquake, accompanied by a solemn and terrible sound of thunder, which warned them that they were provoking the anger of Heaven. The statues, too, miraculously fell on their knees, and remained fixed in that posture! The Athenians, terrified at these portentous signs, abandoned their undertaking and fled toward the shore. They were, however, intercepted by the people of AEgina, and some allies whom they had hastily summoned to their aid, and the whole party was destroyed except one single man. He escaped. This single fugitive, however, met with a worse fate than that of his comrades. He went to Athens, and there the wives and sisters of the men who had been killed thronged around him to hear his story. They were incensed that he alone had escaped, as if his flight had been a sort of betrayal and desertion of his companions. They fell upon him, therefore, with one accord, and pierced and wounded him on all sides with a sort of pin, or clasp, which they used as a fastening for their dress. They finally killed him. The Athenian magistrates were unable to bring any of the perpetrators of this crime to conviction and punishment; but a law was made, in consequence of the occurrence, forbidding the use of that sort of fastening for the dress to all the Athenian women forever after. The people of AEgina, on the other hand, rejoiced and gloried in the deed of the Athenian women, and they made the clasps which were worn upon their island of double size, in honor of it.