Note 485 — Chapter XCIV · MILITARY OPERATIONS AND CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER, AFTER HIS WINTER-QUARTERS IN PERSIS, DOWN TO HIS DEATH AT BABYLON.

The Delphian oracle pronounced, in explaining the subjugation and ruin of Krœsus king of Lydia, that he had thereby expiated the sin of his ancestor in the fifth generation before (Herodot. i. 91: compare vi. 86). Immediately before the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war, the Lacedæmonians called upon the Athenians to expel the descendants of those who had taken part in the Kylonian sacrilege, 180 years before; they addressed this injunction with a view to procure the banishment of Perikles, yet still τοῖς θεοῖς πρῶτον τιμωροῦντες (Thucyd. i. 125-127).

The idea that the sins of fathers were visited upon their descendants, even to the third and fourth generation, had great currency in the ancient world.