When Adrastus1 and Polyneices had marched against Thebes and had been vanquished in battle, and the Cadmeans would not allow the corpses to be buried, the Athenians decided that, if those men had done some wrong, they had paid by their death the heaviest penalty, while the gods below were not obtaining their dues, and by the pollution of the shrines the gods above were being treated with impiety: so first they sent heralds and requested permission to take up the corpses,
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