History of the Peloponnesian War

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.

The ephori, when these letters were by him shown unto them, though they believed the matter much more than they did before, yet desirous to hear somewhat themselves from Pausanias his own mouth, the man being upon design gone to Taenarus into sanctuary and having there built him a little room with a partition in which he hid the ephori, and Pausanias coming to him and asking the cause of his taking sanctuary, they plainly heard the whole matter. For the man both expostulated with him for what he had written about him and from point to point discovered all the practice, saying that though he had never boasted unto him these and these services concerning the king, he must yet have the honour as well as many other of his servants to be slain. And Pausanias himself both confessed the same things and also bade the man not to be troubled at what was past and gave him assurance to leave sanctuary, intreating him to go on in his journey with all speed and not to frustrate the business in hand.