To the Sikyonians: they will be ruled by the scourge for a hundred years (PW 23)

This entry comments on the Delphic oracle predicting that Sikyon would be ruled “by the scourge” for a hundred years (Diod. 8.24 = PW 23; Fo. Q73), set before the rise of the Orthagorid tyranny and complemented by a second response identifying its agent as the first man to hear of a newborn son — the cook Andreas, father of the future tyrant Orthagoras. Drawing on Diodoros and Plutarch’s notice (De sera 553a–b), the entry reconstructs the oracular story and traces its vocabulary (particularly the term μαστιγονόμος) to the judicial language of athletic contests. Rejecting the oracle’s status as a vaticinium ex eventu, it argues that the “hundred years” encode three generations, meant to place the dynasty’s fall at the end of Kleisthenes’ reign — a prediction that went unfulfilled. The entry connects this oracle to the other Delphic oracle in Herodotus dubbing Kleisthenes λευστήρ, suggesting a common hostile tradition later split in two.