II. Tit for tat

In 6.133, Herodotus reports that the siege did not start well, and that the Parians were resolved to withstand it. He then relates the Parian version of events (134–35):

When Miltiades returned to Athens, he was accused of deceiving the people and was unable to defend himself because his thigh became infected (ἦν γὰρ ἀδύνατος ὥστϵ σηπομένου τοῦ μηροῦ, 136.2). He died of gangrene shortly afterwards (Μιλτιάδης μὲν μϵτὰ ταῦτα σϕακϵλίσαντός τϵ τοῦ μηροῦ καὶ σαπέντος τϵλϵυτᾷ, 136.3).

Taking their cue from the verdict of the Delphic oracle, most scholars agree that Herodotus represents Timo as an instrument of the gods.Footnote ⁷ The question then arises whether Timo was a voluntary or involuntary instrument. In our view, Herodotus’ narrative is one of entrapment: Timo intentionally aided Miltiades’ sacrilege in full awareness of the consequences. She did not simply lead Miltiades to the sanctuary, she led him on. Herodotus’ audience, we think, would have picked this up from the cue provided by the proverbial (as we will see) phrase (μὴ) κινϵῖν ἀκίνητα. Furthermore, instances of significant repetition in the passage (in bold in our text) alert the audience to the salient elements of the narrative:Footnote ⁸ the name Τιμώ, repeated three times and juxtaposed with τιμωρήσασθαι, implies vengeance, τιμωρία.Footnote ⁹ Her role as Miltiades’ leader is first narrated, and then stressed by repetitions: κατηγήσατο … ἐξηγησαμένην … κατηγϵμόνα. Miltiades’ jump is also repeated three times, ὑπϵρθορϵῖν … ὑπϵρθορόντα … καταθρῴσκοντα, leading the audience to infer that a wound to the leg, whether thigh or knee, is the sort of poetic and overdetermined punishment that is naturally ascribed to divine agency.Footnote ¹⁰ By this point, Herodotus’ readers have already encountered the story of the death of Cambyses through a gangrenous leg wound (3.64.3, 3.66), the classic example of lex talionis at work in Herodotus.Footnote ¹¹ Preceding the story of Miltiades, at 6.75, Herodotus offers a triple religious explanation for Cleomenes’ horrible death: he cut his own flesh either because he cut down the trees while invading Eleusis (Athenian version), because he treacherously killed the suppliants at Argos and burned the sacred grove (Argive version) or because he bribed the Pythia (the version of many Greeks, including Herodotus himself, cf. 6.84.3).Footnote ¹² Katharina Wesselmann and Debbie Felton have pointed out the structural motif of lex talionis in Herodotus’ stories about the deaths of the sacrilegious characters Cambyses, Cleomenes and Miltiades.Footnote ¹³ The punishment for Miltiades’ transgressive jumping initially targets his leg but eventually deprives him of life.

That Miltiades was determined to do something outstandingly nefarious would have been clear to Herodotus’ audience already from the description of his initial leap over the wall. ἕρκος Θϵσμοϕόρου Δήμητρος ὑπϵρθορϵῖν evokes Solon’s famed portrayal of the common evil, Lawlessness (Δυσνομίη), that leaps over tall walls and enters every house (West, IEG 4.28 ὑψηλὸν δ᾽ ὑπὲρ ἕρκος ὑπέρθορϵν). Miltiades’ action resembles Solon’s depiction of Lawlessness, with one notable difference: whereas in Solon, Lawlessness leaps over the courtyard fence and enters a house, the megaron of Demeter the Lawgiver (for that was the common interpretation of ‘Thesmophoros’)Footnote ¹⁴ repels the lawless Miltiades.Footnote ¹⁵ Instead of κινϵῖν ἀκίνητα, Miltiades becomes incapacitated, deprived of the use of his leg and ultimately ἀκίνητος himself.

Herodotus portrays Miltiades’ plan as follows: ἰέναι ἐπὶ τὸ μέγαρον ὅ τι δὴ ποιήσοντα ἐντός, ϵἴτϵ κινήσοντά τι τῶν ἀκινήτων ϵἴτϵ ὅ τι δή κοτϵ πρήξοντα. Once in the precinct, he heads for the megaron (either a shrine or, as Eva Stehle argues, the pit of Demeter Thesmophoros crowned by a superstructure with a door).Footnote ¹⁶ By representing Miltiades’ intentions as a set of alternatives introduced by ϵἴτϵ … ϵἴτϵ, Herodotus signals his lack of absolute certainty regarding the character’s inner motivation, while strongly indicating in the rest of the episode that ἀκίνητα κινϵῖν was the more probable purpose.Footnote ¹⁷ The former alternative is also, unlike ϵἴτϵ ὅ τι δή κοτϵ πρήξοντα (perform a particular rite? destroy something?),Footnote ¹⁸ highly determined. Both κινϵῖν and ἀκίνητα have meanings related to the sacred sphere; when combined, they constitute a proverbial expression clearly denoting a specific type of sacrilege.

The basic meaning of the verbal adjective ἀκίνητος is ‘immobile’ or ‘unmoved’. In religious contexts, the predominating sense is not ‘what cannot be moved’ but ‘what should not be moved’, amounting to ‘inviolable, sacrosanct’. Common ‘taboo’ words, such as ἄβατος, ἄρρητος, ἄδυτος, ἀκίνητος, are all derived from verbal adjectives construed with the suffix -τος and alpha privativum. When applied to secular matters, they express the lack of possibility; when applied to the sacred sphere, they denote a lack of possibility, not necessarily in absolute terms, but due to a prohibition. While ἀκίνητος has a wide range of applications in Greek, the substantivized neuter plural ἀκίνητα denotes sacred objects. The word is first attested in Hesiod’s Works and Days (750–52 ed. West):

Scholars agree that ἀκίνητα here denotes a specific class of sacred objects: tombs, altars or boundary stones.Footnote ¹⁹ Herodotus, too, uses the adjective ἀκίνητος to refer to the sanctity of the tomb of Nitocris which was violated by Darius.Footnote ²⁰ The verb κινϵῖν also has a specialized meaning in the context of religion, where it refers to sacrilegious change or removal.Footnote ²¹ Herodotus uses it six times to designate the disturbance of an item under divine protection, be it a physical one such as a dedication or an abstract one such as ancestral custom.Footnote ²²

The phrase κινϵῖν ἀκίνητα refers to a specific type of religious transgression, an unauthorized intervention in the realm of the sacred, often the disturbance of sacred objects. We find an allusion to the phrase in Sophocles’ characterization of Creon as a religious transgressor who ‘moves what ought not be moved’ (Ant. 1060–61):

While Teiresias describes his foreknowledge of Creon’s fixed destiny as something that ought not be moved, Creon snaps at him to move what ought not and divulge it anyway. Similarly, in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris, Thoas expresses his bafflement and indignation at Iphigenia’s removal of the sacred image of Artemis from the temple by referring to the statue’s base as ‘immovable’.Footnote ²³

Plato quotes the phrase as a well-established proverb several times.Footnote ²⁴ The following passage from the Laws is worth considering in full (842e7–843a8):

Plato clearly argues that boundary stones, too, are sacred objects under direct divine supervision.Footnote ²⁶ His combination of a blessing for the law-abiding citizen and a curse for the transgressor has a direct parallel in lived Greek religion: many objects that belong to the category of ἀκίνητα were protected by a curse triggered in the case of unauthorized tampering (often expressed with the verb κινϵῖν and its compounds), as we will see below.

In another passage from the Laws, Plato again refers to the curses for ‘movers of immovables’. In this instance the proverb is applied to those who attempt to redistribute land (that is, move boundary stones) and abolish debts, thus disturbing the existing laws (684d8–e1):

Plato quotes the proverb for the third time in the same book at 913b8–9, where he advises against tampering (κινϵῖν) with buried treasure, should one accidentally discover some:

The proverb had a long life in Greek literature, well into the Byzantine period, and often designated a religious transgression or a transgressor.Footnote ²⁷ It was also preserved in the compendia of Greek proverbial wisdom:

As is evident from these glosses, the religious sphere is the chief domain of the proverb (altars, graves, hērōa and occasionally boundary stones), even if it could also be applied to extreme measures in general. By employing the proverb to cast light on Miltiades’ motivation, Herodotus portrays him as a man with sacrilegious intentions.Footnote ²⁸

Two episodes in Herodotus show that only the gods have the power to move their immovables (or to authorize their priests to do so): when the Persian invasion was imminent, Delphic Apollo forbade his priests to evacuate the objects from his sanctuary (ὁ δὲ θϵός σϕϵας οὐκ ἔα κινέϵιν, 8.36.1). The god said that he would take care of his sanctuary himself. The sacred arms, which no human being was allowed to touch without committing sacrilege, appeared in front of the temple, miraculously removed from the inner shrine.Footnote ²⁹ The second episode involves another τέρας (‘marvel’) of Apollo: immediately after Datis’ departure, there was an earthquake on Delos which was interpreted as a sign of impending catastrophe (καὶ τοῦτο μέν κου τέρας ἀνθρώποισι τῶν μϵλλόντων ἔσϵσθαι κακῶν ἔϕηνϵ ὁ θϵός, 6.98.1). The Delians claimed that the earthquake was a unique event in the island’s history, and Herodotus comments (6.98.3):

This passage has caused considerable controversy because Thucydides writes in very similar terms about an earthquake on Delos as a unique event, but dates it to 431 BC.Footnote ³⁰ In addition, both Thucydides and Herodotus employ the verb κινϵῖν, which is not typically used to designate an earthquake, and both gloss it with the usual verb for an earthquake, σϵίϵιν. The controversy was resolved by Jeffrey Rusten, who demonstrated that Delos was not subject to significant earthquakes at all, which means that both Herodotus and Thucydides relied on Delian reports which either significantly exaggerated a mild tremor or invented it wholesale. The hexametric oracle must have been in circulation for a while, giving rise to a story about an event presaging imminent danger. Rusten then wonders why Herodotus, who knows the proverb and uses the phrase ἀκίνητα κινϵῖν in the sense ‘to commit sacrilege’ in the Miltiades episode, does not consider its meaning in the Delos episode and thinks that it means ‘earthquake’.Footnote ³¹ In our view, Herodotus was well aware of the phrase’s meaning in the Delos episode: the paradox at the root of ἀκίνητα κινϵῖν is that when gods do it, it is a τέρας, but when humans do it without divine authorization, it is sacrilege. An earthquake on an island that was divine property is a marvel but not a sacrilege, for precisely the same reason that the moving of sacred arms at Delphi was not a sacrilege but a τέρας: when the god moves his own property, he is well within his rights to do so. In addition, the fact that the Delphic priests consult the oracle about the evacuation of the sacred arms illustrates that only the god can authorize the moving of his belongings.

Our analysis thus far suggests that Herodotus’ adaptation of the proverb ἀκίνητα κινϵῖν renders Miltiades an illicit intruder into the sacred space, one who intended to tamper with divine property without authorization. His hopes of turning his fortunes around were kindled by Timo, who, as we saw, was mentioned by name three times. She is also mentioned three times as Miltiades’ guide. Thrice, too, does Herodotus mention her title ὑποζάκορος (‘assistant warden’),Footnote ³² which highlights her religious expertise. Taken together, the relation of Timo’s name to vengeance, her role as a guide and her religious service imply that Timo is using her expertise to punish Miltiades by luring him into a trap. By creating a scenario in which Miltiades offends Demeter, Timo invokes divine punishment upon the Athenian general. Demeter, incidentally, is a particularly vengeful divinity in Herodotus.Footnote ³³

Since she was a temple attendant of Demeter, Timo was arguably acquainted with the mechanics of cursing, including, we suppose, the way that curses protecting divine property worked. Priestly expertise in punitive cursing is well attested from Chryses’ prayer to Apollo in Iliad 1.37–42 onwards. A famous historical case was the curse on Alcibiades performed by Athenian priests after his desecration of the mysteries.Footnote ³⁴ But there were also preventive curses, known in scholarly shorthand as ‘contingent’ or ‘conditional’ curses, which came into effect following a specific transgression.Footnote ³⁵ We now turn to contingent curses and argue that Miltiades’ intention to meddle with the sacred objects was sufficient to trigger the curse protecting them.Footnote ³⁶

ΙIΙ. Curses protecting τὰ ἀκίνητα

We have seen above that Plato mentions cursing as a means of protection for ἀκίνητα in two passages. How widespread was the practice of relying on curses to protect property? As soon as the Greeks adopt the alphabet, they employ it for contingent curses protecting private property from theft.Footnote ³⁷ The importance of protecting divine property from theft was even greater, since everything in a sanctuary nominally belonged to the divinity, and the community was expected to safeguard it.Footnote ³⁸ Theft of sacred objects (hierosulia) was a crime of such magnitude that even the death penalty was perceived as too slight a punishment, so the perpetrators were generally denied burial by being thrown into the sea or off a cliff.Footnote ³⁹ The harsh legal penalties were not the sole deterrent: the gods themselves might also be invoked to protect their own possessions through contingent curses.Footnote ⁴⁰

The tradition of relying on orally delivered contingent curses to ensure cooperation in a polis and curb various instances of anti-social behaviour more broadly is very old. For instance, the curses of the Athenian genos Bouzygai were famous (and proverbial),Footnote ⁴¹ while the Teian curses (ca. 480–450 BC) were both inscribed and orally delivered three times a year in a sacred context, during a festival.Footnote ⁴² Also of great antiquity must be the elaborate curse of the Delphic Amphictyons protecting the sacred plain of Cirrha.Footnote ⁴³ A third-century Delian inscription attests to the existence of traditional oral curses performed by the priests against those who led slaves out from the sacred precinct or violated the ancestral customs of the Delians in any other way (IG XI 4 1296. A.1, ll. 1–13):

The fact that the priests and priestesses are cursing κατὰ τὰ πάτρια implies the antiquity of their cursing practices. It is difficult to assess the frequency of such orally publicized curses against tampering with sacred property, but judging by the ubiquity of curses in the Archaic and Classical periods, and the seriousness with which hierosulia was prosecuted, they must have been common.Footnote ⁴⁵ Indeed, as Lene Rubinstein convincingly demonstrates, publicly pronounced arai protecting rituals, sacred property and precincts are of very ancient pedigree and remain well attested throughout the Classical and Hellenistic periods.Footnote ⁴⁶ A particularly vivid illustration of the lex talionis underpinning a curse protecting divine property is found in an inscription of the first century BC from Smyrna:

Taking objects from the sanctuary is a clear instance of hierosulia, but damaging the sacred equipment and ‘wronging’ the sacred fish represent broader acts of sacrilege. All such acts of unauthorized removal or disturbance of sacred property fall under the broad rubric of κινϵῖν ἀκίνητα.

Even objects outside of sanctuaries can become ἀκίνητα if they are dedicated to the gods or if gods are invoked to protect them. We have already seen that this was the case with boundary stones. Another early example is an imprecation from Rhodes, tentatively dated to 600–575 BC (CEG 459):

The precise nature of the sēma Idameneus made and placed under Zeus’ protection is disputed,Footnote ⁴⁸ but unequivocally we are dealing with an early contingent curse protecting an object.

The practice of placing graves under the protection of divinities to safeguard them with written curses is not attested in the Greek mainland in the Archaic and Classical periods. It is first recorded in the early Hellenistic period in Asia Minor and becomes a widespread custom only in the Imperial period.Footnote ⁴⁹ Despite the late appearance of written Greek grave curses, graves appear in every list of ἀκίνητα provided by lexicographers and paroemiographers. Herodotus, as we saw, also refers to a grave as ἀκίνητος (1.187.3). The Hellenistic scholia on Hesiod explain ἀκίνητα at Op. 750 as graves (or altars). At the beginning of the Sepulchrum Simonidis, Callimachus refers to the curse in store for anyone who disrupts (κινϵῖν) a tomb.Footnote ⁵⁰ The practice of inscribing curses on grave monuments may be late, but the notion of graves belonging to the category of sacred objects whose disturbance may be punished by divinities seems to have existed from early times. The absence of an unambiguous early written record for funeral curses on the Greek mainland might stem from the strength of, and widespread familiarity with, the taboo.Footnote ⁵¹

Finally, we note the exploitation of the sacrosanct quality of ἀκίνητα in the domain of private curses: an ingenious strategy for invoking divine wrath on a thief was to dedicate a stolen object to a god.Footnote ⁵² The practice attests to the belief that gods monitor their possessions and punish thieves. Arai, as we can see from this overview, are well-attested instruments for the protection of divine property. In the final section, we examine the corollaries of the observations of sections II and III and then move to a more speculative part of this paper.

IV. What was the nature of Miltiades’ sacrilege?

How exactly did Miltiades trigger the curse? Was merely entering the Parian Thesmophorion a sacrilegious act?Footnote ⁵³ While some festivals of Demeter such as the Thesmophoria were restricted to women, a male presence is attested in the sanctuaries of Thesmophoros at other times.Footnote ⁵⁴ The archaeological record confirms this: as Susan Guettel Cole points out, ‘from votive dedications it is obvious that some precincts of Demeter, even some specifically labelled “Thesmophorion,” could sometimes be open to men’.Footnote ⁵⁵ Herodotus (6.91) also attests as much: in his narrative of the Aeginetan stasis, the male suppliant who found refuge by the vestibule of the sanctuary of Demeter Thesmophoros is accepted by the goddess, and her implacable agos befalls those who violated asulia, not the suppliant.Footnote ⁵⁶ At Syracuse, the citizens swore their ‘great oath’ in the sanctuary of Demeter Thesmophoros.Footnote ⁵⁷ Furthermore, a dedicatory inscription from Paros, difficult to date, mentions two men as dedicants in the cult of Kore and Demeter, likely Thesmophoros.Footnote ⁵⁸ Male priests called κάβαρνοι were associated with the sanctuary of Demeter Thesmophoros at Paros.Footnote ⁵⁹

Therefore, the mere presence of a man in the Parian Thesmophorion need not represent a transgression. It is significant that Miltiades is gripped by a ϕρίκη at the entrance to the megaron and not as he was entering the precinct.Footnote ⁶⁰ His goal is the megaron: ‘he went towards the megaron in order to do something inside’. It follows then that Timo revealed to Miltiades both the nature of an object that could help him seize Paros, and the object’s exact location. This accords with the accusations raised by the Parians against her (‘she had guided the enemies in capturing her fatherland and had revealed (ἐκϕήνασαν) to Miltiades the sacred things not to be spoken to any male (τὰ ἐς ἔρσϵνα γόνον ἄρρητα ἱρά)’). As often in Herodotus, here too ἐκϕαίνω refers to telling rather than showing, and ἄρρητα points in the same direction. If any part of the Parian Thesmophorion was supposed to be inaccessible to males, it was the megaron with its objects. This is the reason why divine intervention in the form of ϕρίκη takes place at its entrance. Miltiades did not lay his hands on the objects deposited in the megaron, and quite likely he did not even see them. His malicious intention and motion towards them were enough.Footnote ⁶¹

But what were ἀκίνητα and ἄρρητα ἱρά? Most scholars adduce a talisman such as a palladion.Footnote ⁶² A talismanic object is perhaps as far as we can reasonably go, albeit with two caveats: first, based on what we know about megara, an object such as a cult statue would seem to be out of place there; and, second, the Greek suggests that we are dealing with several objects in the megaron. Irrespective of the exact nature of these objects, another episode from Herodotus demonstrates that the ἱρά of Demeter and Persephone could be weaponized in the political arena in a situation of crisis. In book 7, Herodotus explains how the family of Telines at Gela acquired the priesthood of Demeter and Kore (ἱροϕάνται τῶν χθονίων θϵῶν, 7.153.2.2) in the early seventh century (7.153.2–4):

The objects of Telines belong to the same divinities as the Parian ones and, what is more, they are handled by a man. If Miltiades knew the story (or was informed of it by Timo), an object conferring immense power on a single person would have been very attractive for a man in his position. The episode at Gela also provides a structural parallel to the Parian narrative. Both at Gela and on Paros a conflict results in a standstill, with the ousted faction entrenched in Maktorion and the Parians besieged in their city. To break the tie and end the conflict, weak Telines relied on the power of numinous objects that he probably displayed to both parties. But here is where the similarities end, since Telines used the power of the objects for civic reconciliation,Footnote ⁶³ whereas Miltiades attempted to gain them by force and harm the community that considered them sacred. The Parian objects were also protected by an additional taboo: they were ‘not to be spoken of to any male’ (τὰ ἐς ἔρσϵνα γόνον ἄρρητα ἱρά). This detail, however, is disclosed only in the context of the charges against Timo.

Herodotus is so vague about the details of Timo’s conversation with Miltiades and about the latter’s intended actions in the megaron that it is not even clear at the outset whether Miltiades was aware that the objects were intended strictly for female use. If Timo’s plan was to simply lure Miltiades into a trap to trigger a curse protecting the sacred objects, she could have told him all kinds of stories about their powers, hoping that his intrusion into the megaron would trigger a curse. This interpretation accords with the fact that the Parians felt the need to consult Delphi about Timo’s punishment. Something about her defence must have been persuasive enough for them to hesitate about executing her summarily, for why else would the Parians be so lenient towards a minor cult official accused of high treason?

Miltiades’ breach of the norms of piety leads first to ϕρίκη, an indication that the curse Herodotus intimated with κινήσοντά τι τῶν ἀκινήτων has been triggered. ϕρίκη is a numinous shudder experienced both in the anticipation of divine punishment and as an integral part of that punishment.Footnote ⁶⁴ In the extant epigraphic evidence, we find ϕρίκη as the consequence of curses triggered by religious offence, particularly in cases of tampering with ἀκίνητα.Footnote ⁶⁵ We posit that at the doors of the megaron Miltiades becomes ἐναγής (‘accursed, doomed’), and in the grip of the perilous power of Demeter. The leg injury he sustains in his attempt to run away is poetic justice of the kind frequently attested in cursing: an impious fish eater from Smyrna is doomed to become fish food, and Miltiades’ leap leaves him lame. A puzzling detail in Herodotus’ description of Miltiades’ fall sheds more light on the remarkable appropriateness of divine vengeance. Referring to Miltiades’ final leap, Herodotus uses the phrase καταθρῴσκοντα δὲ τὴν αἱμασιήν, switching from ἕρκος, the initial generic word he used for the barricade, to the more specific αἱμασιή, a wall of dry stones. This is all the more significant because Miltiades runs back the same way and jumps over the same wall that was earlier referred to as ἕρκος. The walls of the sanctuaries of Demeter Thesmophoros tended to be quite high, so as to shield from view the exclusively female festivals that took place within.Footnote ⁶⁶ As we noted earlier, thieves of sacred property were hurled into the sea or off a cliff, and the latter (κατακρημνίζϵιν) was the standard punishment for hierosulia at Delphi.Footnote ⁶⁷ In light of this fact, Herodotus’ decision to employ καταθρῴσκοντα and αἱμασιήν seems to be an allusion to the punishment of hierosuloi.

When describing the consequences of the wounding, Herodotus twice uses the verb σήπϵιν (6.136.2, 3), a common term for putrefaction and rotting,Footnote ⁶⁸ but also remarkably fitting in the context of someone trying to gain access to the megaron of Demeter. According to our best source for the ritual actions at the Thesmophoria festival, the aition of the ritual was the fall of the swineherd Eubuleus together with his swine into the chasm along with Kore. The ritual actions consisted of throwing piglets into the pits (megara) where they would rot (σήπϵιν) and retrieving their rotten remains to be used as a kind of compost.Footnote ⁶⁹ Miltiades experiences what it was really like to enter the megaron of Demeter in the most horrifying and ultimately lethal way.

Another remarkably fitting aspect of Miltiades’ punishment is related to the specific taboo regarding the Parian sacred objects, the prohibition on speaking (τὰ ἐς ἔρσϵνα γόνον ἄρρητα ἱρά). Herodotus emphasizes with fine irony the fact that upon his return to Athens, Miltiades was much ‘spoken of’ (Ἀθηναῖοι δὲ ἐκ Πάρου Μιλτιάδϵα ἀπονοστήσαντα ϵἶχον ἐν στόμασι, 6.136.1), obviously in a bad way, leading to the indictment and trial. When he was put on trial, Miltiades was so ill that he was unable to speak. Even the monetary fine the Athenians imposed on the dying Miltiades as a punishment (6.136.3) finds parallels in Greek inscriptional arai where a combination of (enormous) monetary fines and divine punishment is a well-attested deterrent.Footnote ⁷⁰

The peripeteia of Miltiades is even more impactful if we consider his previous boldness. After all, this was the man who led the army at Marathon, where the Greeks not only charged running towards the Persians, but, as Herodotus says, they were the first to ‘endure the sight of Median clothing and men dressed in this clothing’ where previously ‘even to hear the name “Medes” was terrifying to the Greeks’ (6.112.3). That a man who displayed such heroism would run away from the sanctuary in utter terror indicates that powerful and awesome gods were at work.

Curses protecting τὰ ἀκίνητα are regularly accompanied by blessings for those who display proper religious respect for the gods and their property. So, in a final twist, when she is put on trial, Timo’s life is saved by the Delphic god while Miltiades is first deprived of his mobility, then tongue-tied and unable to defend himself in court, financially ruined and finally deprived of his life: as Herodotus said, he ended his life μὴ ϵὖ, or as a curse might have it, κακὸς ὢν κακῇ ἐξωλϵίᾳ ἀπώλϵσϵ.