History of the Peloponnesian War

And though the Spartans had against him no manifest proof, neither his enemies nor the whole city, whereupon to proceed to the punishment of a man both of the race of their kings and at that present in great authority (for Plistarchus the son of Leonidas being king and as yet in minority, Pausanias, who was his cousin-german, had the tuition of him yet), by his licentious behaviour and affectation of the barbarian customs, he gave much cause of suspicion that he meant not to live in the equality of the present state.

They considered also that he differed in manner of life from the discipline established: amongst other things by this, that upon the tripode at Delphi, which the Grecians had dedicated as the best of the spoil of the Medes, he had caused to be inscribed of himself in particular this elegiac verse:

Pausanias, Greek General,

Having the Medes defeated,

To Phoebus in record thereof

This gift hath consecrated.

But the Lacedaemonians then presently defaced that inscription of the tripode and engraved thereon by name all the cities that had joined in the overthrow of the Medes, and dedicated it so. This therefore was numbered amongst the offences of Pausanias and was thought to agree with his present design, so much the rather for the condition he was now in.

They had information farther that he had in hand some practice with the Helots. And so he had, for he promised them not only manumission but also freedom of the city if they would rise with him and co-operate in the whole business.

But neither thus upon some impeachment of the Helots would they proceed against him but kept the custom which they have in their own cases not hastily to give a peremptory sentence against a Spartan without unquestionable proof. Till at length (as it is reported) purposing to send over to Artabazus his last letters to the king, he was bewrayed unto them by a man of Argilus, in time past his minion and most faithful to him, who, being terrified with the cogitation that not any of those which had been formerly sent had ever returned, got him a seal like to the seal of Pausanias (to the end that if his jealousy were false or that he should need to alter anything in the letter, it might not be discovered) and opened the letter, wherein (as he had suspected the addition of some such clause) he found himself also written down to be murdered.