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When the Lacedaemonians heard how Cleomenes was engaged, they were
afraid, and agreed with him that he should come back to Sparta and be
king as before. So Cleomenes came back; but had no sooner returned
than he, who had never been altogether of sound mind, was smitten with
downright madness. This he showed by striking every Spartan he met
upon the face with his sceptre. On his behaving thus, and showing
that he was gone quite out of his mind, his kindred imprisoned him,
and even put his feet in the stocks. While so bound, finding himself
left alone with a single keeper, he asked the man for a knife. The
keeper at first refused, whereupon Cleomenes began to threaten him,
until at last he was afraid, being only a helot, and gave him what he
required. Cleomenes had no sooner got the steel than, beginning at
his legs, he horribly disfigured himself, cutting gashes in his
flesh, along his legs, thighs, hips, and loins, until at last he
reached his belly, which he likewise began to gash, whereupon in a
little time he died. The Greeks generally think that this fate came
upon him because he induced the Pythoness to pronounce against
Demaratus; the Athenians differ from all others in saying that it was
because he cut down the sacred grove of the goddesses when he made his
invasion by Eleusis; while the Argives ascribe it to his having taken
from their refuge and cut to pieces certain argives who had fled from
battle into a precinct sacred to Argus, where Cleomenes slew them,
burning likewise at the same time, through irreverence, the grove itself.
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