at you have decided upon?"

XXVIII. Thus it came to pass that the Athenians received into their
city a Macedonian garrison, whose commander was Menyllus, an amiable
man and a friend of Phokion himself. It was thought that the sending
of the garrison was a mere piece of arrogance on Antipater's part, and
to be more due to an insolent desire to show the extent of his power
than to any real necessity. The time, too, at which it was sent,
rendered its arrival especially galling to the Athenians: for it was
during the celebration of the mysteries, on the twentieth day of the
month Boedromion, that the garrison entered the city. On that day,
Iacchus used to be carried in procession from Athens to Eleusis, but
now the whole ritual was marred, and the Athenians sadly contrasted
this celebration of the mysteries with those of former years. In
earlier times,[646] when the city was powerful and flourishing, the
splendid spectacle of the celebration of the mysteries used to strike
awe and terror into the hearts of the enemies of Athens, but now at
these same rites the gods seemed to look on unmoved at the disasters
of Greece, while the most sacred season was desecrated, and that which
had been the pleasantest time of the year now served merely to remind
them of their greatest misfortunes. A few years before this, the
priestesses of Dodona had sent an oracular warning to Athens, bidding
the Athenians guard the extremities of Artemis. In those days the
fillets which are wound round the couches of the gods which are
carried in the mysteries were dyed of a yellow instead of a crimson
colour, and presented a corpse-like appearance, and, what was more
remarkable, the fillets dyed by private persons at the same time, all
were of the same colour. One of the initiated also, while washing a
little pig in the harbour of Kantharus,[647] was seized by a shark,
who swallowed all the lower part of his body. By this portent, Heaven
clearly intimated to the Athenians that they were to lose the lower
part of their city, and their command of the sea, but to keep the
upper part. As for the Macedonian garrison, Menyllus took care that
the Athenians suffered no inconvenience from it; but more than twelve
thousand of the citizens were disfranchised under the new
constitution, on account of their poverty. Of these men, those who
remained in Athens were thought to have been shamefully ill treated,
while those who left the city in consequence of this measur