Herodotus. Book 1, Chapter 66.
66. On the death of Lycurgus they built him a temple, and ever since they have worshipped him with the utmost reverence. Their soil being good and the population numerous, they sprang up rapidly to power, and became a flourishing people. In consequence they soon ceased to be satisfied to stay quiet; and, regarding the Athenians as very much their inferiors, they sent to consult the orcale about conquering the whole of Arcadia. The Pythoness thus answered them:
"Crave you Arcady? Bold is your craving. I shall not content it.
Many the men that in Arcady dwell, whose food is the acorn
They will never allow you. It is not that I am niggard.
I will give you to dance in Tegea, with noisty foot-fall,
And with the measuring line mete out the glorious champaign.
When the Lacedaemonians received this reply, leaving the rest of Arcadia untouched, they marched against the Tegeans, carrying with them fetters, so confident had this oracle (which was, in truth, but of base metal) made them that they would enslave the Tegeans. The battle, however, went against them, and many fell into the enemy's hands. Then these persons, wearing the fetters which they had themselves brought, and fastened together in a string, measured the Tegean plain as they executed their labors. The fetters in which they worked were still, in my day, preserved at Tegea where they hung round the walls of the temple of Athene Alea.
66. On the death of Lycurgus they built him a temple, and ever since they have worshipped him with the utmost reverence. Their soil being good and the population numerous, they sprang up rapidly to power, and became a flourishing people. In consequence they soon ceased to be satisfied to stay quiet; and, regarding the Athenians as very much their inferiors, they sent to consult the orcale about conquering the whole of Arcadia. The Pythoness thus answered them:
"Crave you Arcady? Bold is your craving. I shall not content it.
Many the men that in Arcady dwell, whose food is the acorn
They will never allow you. It is not that I am niggard.
I will give you to dance in Tegea, with noisty foot-fall,
And with the measuring line mete out the glorious champaign.
When the Lacedaemonians received this reply, leaving the rest of Arcadia untouched, they marched against the Tegeans, carrying with them fetters, so confident had this oracle (which was, in truth, but of base metal) made them that they would enslave the Tegeans. The battle, however, went against them, and many fell into the enemy's hands. Then these persons, wearing the fetters which they had themselves brought, and fastened together in a string, measured the Tegean plain as they executed their labors. The fetters in which they worked were still, in my day, preserved at Tegea where they hung round the walls of the temple of Athene Alea.
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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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