This the Greeks remembered when the Peloponnesians came to Athens, in the reign of Codrus the son of Melanthus. All the rest of the Peloponnesian army retired from Attica, when they heard of the death of Codrus and the circumstances attending it. For they did not any longer expect victory, as Codrus had devoted himself in accordance with the oracle at Delphi. But some of the Lacedæmonians got stealthily into the city by night, and at daybreak perceived that their friends had retired, and, as the Athenians began to muster against them, fled for safety to the Areopagus and to the altars of the goddesses called the August.[14] And the Athenians allowed the suppliants to depart scot-free on this occasion, but some years later the authorities destroyed the suppliants of Athene, those of Cylo’s party who had occupied the Acropolis, and both the murderers and their children were considered accursed by the goddess. Upon the Lacedæmonians too who had killed some suppliants in the temple of Poseidon at Tænarum came an earthquake so long-continued and violent, that no house in Lacedæmon could stand against it. And the destruction of Helice happened when Asteus was Archon at Athens, in the 4th year of the 101st Olympiad, in which Damon of Thuria was victor. And as there were none left remaining at Helice the people of Ægium occupied their territory. And next to Helice, as you turn from the sea to the right, you will come to the town of Cerynea, built on a hill above the high-road. It got its name either from some local ruler or from the river Cerynites, which rises in Arcadia in the Mountain Cerynea, and flows through the district of those Achæans, who came from Argolis and dwelt there through the following mischance. The fort of Mycenæ could not be captured by the Argives owing to its strength, (for it had been built by the Cyclopes as the wall at Tiryns also), but the people of Mycenæ were obliged to evacuate their city because their supplies failed, and some of them went to Cleonæ, but more than half took refuge with Alexander in Macedonia, who had sent Mardonius the son of Gobryas on a mission to the Athenians, and the rest went to Cerynea, and Cerynea became more powerful through this influx of population, and more notable in after times through this coming into the town of the people of Mycenæ. And at Cerynea is a temple of the Eumenides, built they say by Orestes. Whatever wretch, stained with blood or any other defilement, comes into this temple to look round, he is forthwith driven frantic by his fears. And for this reason people are not admitted into this temple indiscriminately. The statues of the goddesses in the temple are of wood and not very large: but the statues of some women in the vestibule are of stone and artistically carved: the natives say that they are some priestesses of the Eumenides.