proved no ineffectual weapon in political warfare, and twice furnished Sparta with the means of embarrassing her enemy by requiring the expulsion of some of the leading citizens of the state. The demand was aptly met by recalling to mind two similar transactions in which the principal families of Sparta had been engaged, and bidding them set the example of expiation.[151] It appears, however, from Aristophanes (unless the passage is merely a squib against the Lacedæmonians) that the charge of being “one of the polluted” had not, even after the lapse of one hundred and sixty years, or more, lost all its influence.[152] We have already mentioned that it was the insult offered to the gods, rather than the crime against man, which produced so deep a sensation. That the perpetrators of a cruel and treacherous action should be regarded with abhorrence, will not indeed surprise us: but the lasting ban entailed upon their posterity is connected with some remarkable tenets, and deserves a few words in explanation. The Greeks were firm believers in the doctrines of fatalism. Man, it was held, struggled in vain to escape from the vortex of destiny; however repugnant to his wishes, or abhorrent to his principles, he was borne on to do or suffer that which was decreed, by an irresistible force, against which even the immortal gods contended in vain. A very curious passage to this effect occurs in Herodotus. Crœsus, after his defeat and captivity, sent messengers to reproach the Delphian oracle with misleading to ruin, by its false predictions, one who had merited the favour of the god by the magnificence of his offerings. The answer ran thus:—“It is impossible even for a god to escape from fate. Crœsus but expiates the sin of his fifth ancestor,[153] who, being in the guard of the descendants of Hercules, in subservience to a woman’s treachery, slew his master, and seized upon a kingdom which belonged not to him. Fain would Apollo have deferred the fall of Sardis until the time of the sons of Crœsus; but he could not turn aside the Fates.”[154] Here, coupled with the assertion of an immutable destiny, we find the not unnatural deduction that the crime of an ancestor entailed misfortune on his posterity: but this doctrine was extended much farther, and it was taught that deeds of extraordinary blackness introduced a malignant demon into the family of the offender, which empoisoned its prosperity, and hurried generations yet unborn to inevitable guilt and ruin. The office of inflicting this retribution was assigned with some degree of confusion and uncertainty to the Fates, “who follow up the transgressions of gods and men,”[155] to the Erinnyes, or Furies, or to Nemesis, the personification of divine displeasure. But when once these fearful visitants were established in a house, that house was marked out for misery and ruin. Such was the fate of the descendants of Pelops and Labdacus, the royal families of Argos and of Thebes,