The Athenians, on hearing the response, forestalled the time specified by the oracle by erecting at once a temple to Aeacus in their forum.

After-circumstances did not allow them to delay to the end of thirty years the prosecution of the war.

Meanwhile the unsleeping wrath of their old enemy, Cleomenes, demanded their full attention.

In the character of that fierce and restless Spartan, we recognise from the commencement of his career the taint of that insanity to which he subsequently fell a victim [258].
In his earlier life, in a war with the Argives, he had burnt five thousand fugitives by setting fire to the grove whither they had fled -- an act of flagrant impiety, no less than of ferocious cruelty, according to the tender superstition of the Greeks.

During his occupation of Eleusis, he wantonly violated the mysterious sanctuary of Orgas--the place above all others most consecrated to the Eleusinian gods.