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In the eleventh year of their exile the family of Pisistratus set sail
from Eretria on their return home. They made the coast of Attica,
near Marathon, where they encamped, and were joined by their
partisans from the capital and by numbers from the country districts,
who loved tyranny better than freedom. At Athens, while Pisistratus
was obtaining funds, and even after he landed at Marathon, no one
paid any attention to his proceedings. When, however, it became
known that he had left Marathon, and was marching upon the city,
preparations were made for resistance, the whole force of the state was
levied, and led against the returning exiles. Meantime the army of
Pisistratus, which had broken up from Marathon, meeting their
adversaries near the temple of the Pallenian Minerva, pitched their
camp opposite them. Here a certain soothsayer, Amphilytus by name,
an Acarnanian, moved by a divine impulse, came into the presence of
Pisistratus, and approaching him uttered this prophecy in the
hexameter measure:
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Now has the cast been made, the net is out-spread in the water,
Through the moonshiny night the tunnies will enter the meshes.
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