Herodotus. Book 1, Chapter 62.
62. 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. Meanwhile the army of Pisistratus, which had broken up from Marathon, meeting their adversaries near the temple of the Pallenian Athene, 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:
"Now had the cast been made, the net is outspread in the water,
Through the moonshiny night the tunnies will enter the meshes.
62. 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. Meanwhile the army of Pisistratus, which had broken up from Marathon, meeting their adversaries near the temple of the Pallenian Athene, 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:
"Now had the cast been made, the net is outspread in the water,
Through the moonshiny night the tunnies will enter the meshes.
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Text source: Herodotus. Translated by George Rawlinson, first issued in 1858. Grammar and spelling updated by Michael Presky, 1993.
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