About this time Menetheus, the son of Peteus, grandson of Orneus, and
great-grandson to Erechtheus, the first man that is recorded to have
affected popularity and ingratiated himself with the multitude, stirred
up and exasperated the most eminent men of the city, who had long borne
a secret grudge to Theseus, conceiving that he had robbed them of their
several little kingdoms and lordships, and, having pent them all up in
one city, was using them as his subjects and slaves. He put also the
meaner people into commotion, telling them, that, deluded with a mere
dream of liberty, though indeed they were deprived both of that and
their proper homes and religious usages, instead of many good and
gracious kings of their own, they had given themselves up to be
lorded over by a newcomer and a stranger. Whilst he was thus busied
in infecting the minds of the citizens, the war that Castor and Pollux
brought against Athens came very opportunity to farther the sedition he
had been promoting, and some say that he by his persuasions was wholly
the cause of their invading the city. At their first approach they
committed no acts of hostility, but peaceably demanded their sister
Helen; but the Athenians returning answer that they neither had her nor
knew where she was disposed of, they prepared to assault the city, when
Academus, having, by whatever means, found it out, disclosed to them
that she was secretly kept at Aphidnea. For which reason he was
both highly honored during his life by Castor and Pollux, and the
Lacedaemonians, when often in after times they made excursions into
Attica, and destroyed all the country round about, spared the Academy
for the sake of Academus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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