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These things being transacted in this manner, one Hellanicus moved a conspiracy against this tyrant. He was a man who, by reason of old age and the loss of two sons by death, was unsuspected of the tyrant, as being altogether unlikely for action. In the mean time also the exiles waft themselves over from Aetolia, and take Amymona, a very convenient place on the borders to entrench a camp in, where they received great numbers of the citizens who made their escape by flight from Elis. Aristotimus being startled at these things went in to the imprisoned women, and thinking to work them to his pleasure more by fear than by favor, charged them to send letters to their husbands, enjoining them to depart out of the coasts; if they would not write, he threatened them to slay their children before their eyes, and then put them (the mothers) to death by torments. Whilst he was long provoking and urging them to declare whether they would obey his mandates or not, most of them answered him nothing, but looked with silence one upon another, signifying by nods and gestures that they were not at all affrighted at his threat. But Megisto the wife of Timocleon, who both in respect of her husband and her own excellent accomplishments carried the port of a princess among them, would not vouchsafe to rise off her seat to him nor permit the rest so to do, but as she sat, she gave him this answer:—
