Hegesistratus
2. An Elean soothsayer, one of the Telliadae. The Spartans, whose enemy he was, having once got him into their power, confined him with his foot in a species of stocks, intending to put him to death; but Hegesistratus cut his foot off with a knife, escaped from prison, and fled to Tegea, which was then at war with the Lacedaemonians. He was hired by Mardonius, and acted as sooth-sayer sayer for the Persians at the battle of Plataea, B. C. 479; some time after which he fell again into the hands of the Spartans, at Zacynthus, and was put to death by them. (Hdt. 9.37.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.