III
3
There was a poor man named Scedasus who lived at Leuctra; that is a village of the country of the Thespians. This man had two daughters, called Hippo and Miletia, or, as some say, Theano and Euxippê. Now Scedasus was a worthy man and friendly to strangers, though he was not very well off. So when two Spartan youths came to his house he received them gladly. They fell in love with the maidens, but were restrained from overboldness by the worthy character of Scedasus, and the next day went away to Delphi, for that was the place for which they were bound. And when they had consulted the god about the matters which concerned them, they went back again towards home, and passing through Boeotia they stopped again at the house of Scedasus. Now he, as it happened, was not at Leuctra; but his daughters, in accordance with their usual custom, received the strangers, who, finding the maidens unprotected, ravished them; and then, seeing that they were exceedingly distressed by the violent wrong they had suffered, they killed them, threw their bodies into a well, and went away. When Scedasus came home, he missed the girls, but found everything that he had left in the house undisturbed, and so he did not know what to make of it all until, because his dog kept whimpering and often running up to him and from him to the well, he guessed the truth, and so drew up the bodies of his daughters. And finding out from his neighbours that on the previous day they had seen going into his house the Lacedaemonians who had been entertained there shortly before, he guessed that they had done the deed, because during their previous visit they had constantly been praising the girls and talking of the happiness of their future husbands.
