6.138.1
These Pelasgians dwelt at that time in Lemnos and desired vengeance on the Athenians. Since they well knew the time of the Athenian festivals, they acquired fifty-oared ships and set an ambush for the Athenian women celebrating the festival of Artemis at Brauron. They seized many of the women, then sailed away with them and brought them to Lemnos to be their concubines.
6.138.2
These women bore more and more children, and they taught their sons the speech of Attica and Athenian manners. These boys would not mix with the sons of the Pelasgian women; if one of them was beaten by one of the others, they would all run to his aid and help each other; these boys even claimed to rule the others, and were much stronger.
6.138.3
When the Pelasgians perceived this, they took counsel together; it troubled them much in their deliberations to think what the boys would do when they grew to manhood, if they were resolved to help each other against the sons of the lawful wives and attempted to rule them already.
6.138.4
Thereupon the Pelasgians resolved to kill the sons of the Attic women; they did this, and then killed the boys' mothers also. From this deed and the earlier one which was done by the women when they killed their own husbands who were Thoas' companions, a “Lemnian crime” has been a proverb in Hellas for any deed of cruelty.
ch. 139
6.139.1
But when the Pelasgians had murdered their own sons and women, their land brought forth no fruit, nor did their wives and their flocks and herds bear offspring as before. Crushed by hunger and childlessness, they sent to Delphi to ask for some release from their present ills.
6.139.2
The Pythian priestess ordered them to pay the Athenians whatever penalty the Athenians themselves judged. The Pelasgians went to Athens and offered to pay the penalty for all their wrongdoing.
6.139.3
The Athenians set in their town-hall a couch adorned as finely as possible, and placed beside it a table covered with all manner of good things, then ordered the Pelasgians to deliver their land to them in the same condition.
6.139.4
The Pelasgians answered, “We will deliver it when a ship with a north wind accomplishes the voyage from your country to ours in one day”; they supposed that this was impossible, since Attica is far to the south of Lemnos.
ch. 140
6.140.1
At the time that was all. But a great many years later, when the Chersonese on the Hellespont was made subject to Athens, Miltiades son of Cimon accomplished the voyage from Elaeus on the Chersonese to Lemnos with the Etesian note winds then constantly blowing; he proclaimed that the Pelasgians must leave their island, reminding them of the oracle which the Pelasgians thought would never be fulfilled.
6.140.2
The Hephaestians obeyed, but the Myrinaeans would not agree that the Chersonese was Attica and were besieged, until they too submitted. Thus did Miltiades and the Athenians take possession of Lemnos.
