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This conduct on the part of the Spartans caused the anger of
Talthybius to cease for a while, notwithstanding that Sperthias and
Bulis returned home alive. But many years afterwards it awoke once
more, as the Lacedaemonians themselves declare, during the war
between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians.
In my judgment this was a case wherein the hand of Heaven was most
plainly manifest. That the wrath of Talthybius should have fallen
upon ambassadors and not slacked till it had full vent, so much justice
required; but that it should have come upon the sons of the very men
who were sent up to the Persian king on its account - upon Nicolaus,
the son of Bulis, and Aneristus, the son of Sperthias (the same
who carried off fishermen from Tiryns, when cruising in a well-manned
merchant-ship) - this does seem to me to be plainly a supernatural
circumstance. Yet certain it is that these two men, having been sent
to Asia as ambassadors by the Lacedaemonians, were betrayed by
Sitalces, the son of Teres, king of Thrace, and Nymphodorus, the
son of Pythes, a native of Abdera, and being made prisoners at
Bisanthe, upon the Hellespont, were conveyed to Attica, and there
put to death by the Athenians, at the same time as Aristeas, the son
of Adeimantus, the Corinthian. All this happened, however, very
many years after the expedition of Xerxes.
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