1On this charge he was attacked by his enemies in the assembly. 1But the time for setting out to the war was pressing. 1Seeing this, and not unaware of the habits of his fellow citizens, he demanded that, if they wished to take any action about him, the inquiry should be held while he was present, rather than that he should be accused in his absence on a charge born of envy. 2His enemies, however, decided that they must keep quiet for the present, because they realised he could not be harmed, and wait for the time when the fleet had sailed, so as to attack him in his absence; and so they did.
3For after they believed that he had reached Sicily, they indicted him in his absence for having profaned the sacred rites. 3When a messenger had been sent to him in Sicily by the magistrates about this, ordering him to return home to plead his case, and he was in great hope of conducting his command successfully, he was not unwilling to obey, and boarded the trireme which had been sent to bring him back. 4Carried in it to Thurii in Italy, reflecting much on the unbridled licence of his fellow citizens and their cruelty towards the nobles, and thinking it most advantageous to avoid the storm that hung over him, he secretly slipped away from his guards and went from there first to Elis, then to Thebes.
5But after he heard that he had been condemned to death and his property confiscated, and that, a thing which had never happened before, the Eumolpid priests had been forced by the people to curse him, and that, so that the record of that curse might be the better attested, a copy carved on a stone pillar had been set up in public, he moved to Sparta. 6There, as he himself used to declare, he waged war not against his country but against his personal enemies, who were also enemies of the state: for though they understood that he could be of the greatest service to the commonwealth, they had driven him out of it and had obeyed their own anger more than the common good.
7So on his advice the Spartans made friendship with the Persian king, then fortified Decelea in Attica and, stationing a permanent garrison there, kept Athens under siege. 7Through his efforts too they turned Ionia away from its alliance with the Athenians. 7After this they began to be much superior in the war.