History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides. The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Hobbes, Thomas. translator. London: John Bohn, 1843.

But Pausanias, being now grown insolent, both the rest of the Grecians and especially the Ionians who had newly recovered their liberty from the king, offended with him, came to the Athenians and requested them for consanguinity's sake to become their leaders and to protect them from the violence of Pausanias.

The Athenians, accepting the motion, applied themselves both to the defence of these and also to the ordering of the rest of the affairs there in such sort as it should seem best to themselves.

In the meantime the Lacedaemonians sent for Pausanias home to examine him of such things as they had heard against him. For great crimes had been laid to his charge by the Grecians that came from thence;

and his government was rather an imitation of tyranny than a command in war. And it was his hap to be called home at the same time that the confederates, all but the soldiers of Peloponnesus, out of hatred to him had turned to the Athenians.

When he came to Lacedaemon, though he were censured for some wrongs done to private men, yet of the greatest matters he was acquit, especially of Medising, the which seemed to be the most evident of all.

Him therefore they sent general no more, but Dorcis, and some others with him, with no great army, whose command the confederates refused;

and they, finding that, went their ways likewise. And after that the Lacedaemonians sent no more, because they feared lest such as went out would prove the worse for the state, as they had seen by Pausanias, and also because they desired to be rid of the Persian war, conceiving the Athenians to be sufficient leaders and at that time their friends.