on in the Persian war, the Athenian delegates held forth about Athens's legitimate interest in empire. The Athenian delegates warned that "the gods who heard the oaths to witness [that] if you begin hostilities, whatever line of action you choose, we will try not to be behindhand in repelling you" (Thucydides 45-6). The Lacedaemonian (Spartan) king, bristling at Athens's imperial plans, replied in kind, calling on Sparta's allies not to "allow the further aggrandisement of Athens . . . but with the gods let us advance against the aggressors" (Thucydides 49). Gods were repeatedly invoked throughout the war as a feature of debate, though power repeatedly overtook pleas made in the name of the gods. When the Spartans brought their erstwhile allies the Plataeans to trial for aligning with Athens--mainly because of bullying at the hands of the Thebans, also aligned with Sparta--the Plataean advocates cited not only the Persian War alliance but also the "gods who once presided over our confederacy" (Thucydides 177) to support their plea for mercy; the Spartans slaughtered the Plataean men and enslaved the Plataean women.
The efficacy of curses and the import of blasphemy or heresy appear to have been embedded into cultural consciousness of ancient Greece. At the second congress of Spartan allies, the Spartans cited a curse that had been placed on one Cylon and his followers, who in previous generations had occupied the altar at the Acropolis in a bid for political power. Those occupiers not starved had been executed or banished and cursed through the generations for heresy and impiety. The second congress took the view that the Athenian demands for empire were a legacy of that heresy and tantamount to blasphemy: Pericles, ruler of Athens and an imperialist, was a descendant of the occupiers of the temple, thus legatee of the curse. As Thucydides explains, the Spartans "were actuated primarily, as they pretended, by a care for the honour o...