with them alienated sentiments, wrathful and vindictive instead of tutelary and sympathizing. It was on the protection of the gods, that all their political constitution as well as the blessings of civil life depended; insomuch that the curses of the gods were habitually invoked as sanction and punishment for grave offences, political as well as others:[248] an extension and generalization of the feeling still attached to the judicial oath. This was, in the minds of the people of Athens, a sincere and literal conviction, not simply a form of speech to be pronounced in prayers and public harangues, without being ever construed as a reality in calculating consequences and determining practical measures. Accordingly, they drew from the mutilation of the Hermæ the inference, not less natural than terrifying, that heavy public misfortune was impending over the city, and that the political constitution to which they were attached was in imminent danger of being subverted.[249] [245] It is truly astonishing to read the account given of this mutilation of the Hermæ, and its consequences, by Wachsmuth, Hellen. Alterthümer, vol. ii, sect. 65, pp. 191-196. While he denounces the Athenian people, for their conduct during the subsequent inquiry, in the most unmeasured language, you would suppose that the incident which plunged them into this mental distraction, at a moment of overflowing hope and confidence, was a mere trifle: so briefly does he pass it over, without taking the smallest pains to show in what way it profoundly wounded the religious feeling of Athens. Büttner (Geschichte der politischen Hetærieen zu Athen. p. 65), though very brief, takes a fairer view than Wachsmuth. [246] Pausanias, i, 17, 1; i, 24, 3; Harpokration v, Ἑρμαῖ. See Sluiter, Lectiones Andocideæ, cap. 2. Especially the ἀγυιατίδες θεραπεῖαι (Eurip. Ion. 187) were noted at Athens: ceremonial attentions towards the divine persons who protected the public streets, a function performed by Apollo Aguieus, as well as by Hermes. [247] Herodot. viii, 144; Æschylus, Pers. 810; Æschyl. Agam. 339. The wrath for any indignity offered to the statue of a god or goddess, and impatience to punish it capitally, is manifested as far back as the ancient epic poem of Arktinus: see the argument of the Ἰλίου Πέρσις in Proclus, and Welcker, Griechische Tragödien, _Sophoklês_, sect. 21, vol. i, p. 162. Herodotus cannot explain the indignities offered by Kambyses to the Egyptian statues and holy customs upon any other supposition than that of stark madness, ἐμάνη μεγάλως; Herod. iii, 37-38. Timæus the Sicilian historian (writing about 320-290 B.C.) represented the subsequent defeat of the Athenians as a divine punishment for the desecration of the Hermæ, inflicted chiefly by the Syracusan Hermokratês, son of Hermon and descendant of the god Hermes (Timæi Fragm. 103-104, ed. Didot; Longinus, de Sublim. iv, 3).