historical.
1. A Spartan of the Agid branch of the royal family, the son of Cleombrotus and nephew of
Leonidas (ad Thuc. 1.134; Schol. ad Aristoph. Equit. 1. 84; Suidas calls her Polit. 5.1.5, 7.13.13; Plut. Consol. ad
Apollon. p. 182; Dem. in Neaer. § 97, p. 1378, ed. Reiske;
Suidas, s. v.
Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. p.
327, &c., has thrown considerable light), sent a body of five thousand Spartans, each
attended by seven Helots, under the command of Pausanias. From Herodotus (OLYMPIODORUS], and Masistius had fallen. For the purpose of being better supplied with
water, Pausanias now descended into the territory of Plataeae, and posted his army on the
banks of a small stream, which Herodotus calls the Asopus, and which was probably one of its
tributaries. Mardonius drew up his forces on the opposite bank of the stream. After a delay of
ten days, during which the armies were kept inactive by the unfavourable reports of the
soothsayers, Mardonius resolved to attack the Greeks. Information of his intention was
conveyed by night to the Greeks by Alexander of Macedon. Accordingly, the next day the Persian
cavalry made a vigorous attack upon the Greeks, and gained possession of the Gargaphian
spring, on which the Greeks depended for their supply of water; and as there seemed no
likelihood of a general engagement that day, Pausanias, with the concurrence of the allied
generals, resolved to remove move nearer to Plataeae. This was done in the course of the
ensuing night. On the following day the great battle of Plataeae took place. The Persian
forces were speedily routed and their camp stormed, where a terrible carnage ensued. The
Spartans were judged to have fought most bravely in the battle, and among them, according to
Diodorus (
As to the generalship of Pausanias in this action, Bishop Thirlwall remarks (Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. p. 352) : "Whether Pausanias committed any considerable
faults as a general, is a question still more open to controversy than similar cases in modern
warfare. But at least it seems clear that he followed, and did not direct or control events,
and that he was for a time on the brink of rain, from which he was delivered more by the
rashness of the enemy than by his own prudence. In the critical moment, however, he displayed
the firmness, and if, as appears manifest, the soothsayer was his instrument, the ability of a
commander equal to the juncture."
Immediately after the battle a formal confederacy was entered into, on the proposition of
Aristeides (
Παυσανίας Φοίβῳ μνῆμʼ ἀνέθηκε τόδε.
The inscription was afterwards obliterated by the Lacedaemonians, and the names of the
states which joined in effecting the overthrow of the barbarian substituted (in Neaeram, p. 1378, ed.
Reiske; Corn. Nepos, Paus. 1 ;
In On the
Athenian Empire, Fasti Hellen. vol. ii. p. 248, &c.) the confederate Greeks sent out
a fleet under the command of Pausanias, to follow up their success by driving the Persians
completely out of Europe and the islands. Cyprus was first attacked, and the greater part of
it subdued. From Cyprus Pausanias sailed to Byzantium, and captured the city (Origines, 15.1.42); though if, as Justin says, Pausanias held possession of the city
for seven years, he may have had opportunities for effecting such alterations in the city and
the government as nearly to have remodelled both, and the honours usually accorded to founders
may have been conferred on him by the Byzantines.
The capture of Byzantium afforded Pausamas an opportunity for commencing the execution of
the design which he had apparently formed even before leaving Greece. Dazzled by his success
and reputation, his station as a Spartan citizen had become too restricted for his ambition.
His position as regent was one which must terminate when the king became of age. As a tyrant
over, not Sparta merely, but the whole of Greece (
Among the prisoners taken at Byzantium were some Persians connected with the royal family.
These Pausanias, by the aid of Gongylus, whom he had made governor of Byzantium, sent to the
king without the knowledge of the other allies, giving out that they had made their escape.
Gongylus escorted them, and was the bearer of a letter from Pausanias to the king, in which
the former offered to bring Sparta and the rest of Greece under his power, and proposed to
marry his daughter (Herodotus, Parall.
10, he actually received 500 talents of gold from the king.) Pausanias now set no bounds to
his arrogant and domineering temper. He treated the allies with harshness and injustice, made
himself difficult of access, and conducted himself so angrily and violently towards all alike,
that no one could come near him; and with a rashness that even exceeded his arrogance assumed
the dress and state of a Persian satrap, and even journeyed through Thrace with a guard of
Persians and Egyptians. The allies were so disgusted by this conduct, especially as contrasted
with that of Cimon and Aristeides, that they all, except the Peloponnesians and Aeginetans,
voluntarily offered to transfer to the Athenians that preeminence of rank which Sparta had
hitherto enjoyed. In this way the Athenian confederacy first took its rise. Reports of the
conduct and designs of Pausanias reached Sparta, and he was recalled; and as the allies
refused to obey Dorcis, who was sent in his place, the Spartans declined to take any farther
share in the operations against the Persians. Pausanias, on reaching Sparta, was put upon his
trial, and convicted of various offences against individuals; but the evidence respecting his
meditated treachery and Medism was not yet thought sufficiently strong. He however, without
the orders of the ephors, sailed in a vessel of Hermione, Moral. p. 555b.),
the immediate occasion of his expulsion from the city was an atrocious injury offered to a
family of distinction in Byzantium, which ended in the tragical death of the victim of his
lust and cruelty, at which the allies were so incensed, that they called upon the Athenians to
expel him. He did not return to Sparta, but went to Colonae in the Troas, where he again
entered into communication with the Persians. Having received an imperative recal to Sparta,
and not thinking his plans sufficiently matured to enable him to bid defiance to the ephors,
he returned at their command, and on his arrival was thrown into prison. He was, however, soon
set at liberty; and, trusting to the influence of money, offered himself for trial. Still all
the suspicious circumstances which were collected and compared with respect to his present and
previous breaches of established customs did not seem sufficient to warrant the ephors in
proceeding to extremities with a man of his rank. But even after this second escape Pausanias
could not rest. He opened an intrigue with the Helots (comp. Arist. Polit. 5.1, 7), promising them freedom and the rights of citizenship, if they would
rise and overthrow the government. But even when these designs were betrayed by some of the
Helots, the ephors were still reluctant to act upon this information. Accident, however, soon
furnished them with decisive evidence. Pausanias was still carrying on his intrigues with
Persia. A man named Argilius, who was charged with a letter to Artabazus, having his
suspicions awakened by noticing that none of those sent previously on similar errands had
returned, counterfeited the seal of Pausanias and opened the letter, in which he found
directions for his own death. He carried the letter to the ephors, and, in accordance with a
plan suggested by himself, took refuge in the temple of Poseidon at Taenarus, in a hut which
he divided by a partition, behind which he placed some of the ephors. Pausanias, as he
expected, came to inquire the reason of his placing himself here as a suppliant. Argilius
reproached him with his ungrateful disregard of his past services, and contrived that the
ephors should hear from the lips of Pausanias himself the admission of his various intrigues
with the barbarian. Upon this the ephors prepared to arrest him in the street as he returned
to Sparta. But, warned by a friendly signal from one of the ephors, and guessing from the
looks of another the purpose for which they were coming, he fled and took refuge in the temple
of Athene Chalcioecus, establishing himself for shelter in a building attached to the temple.
The ephors, having watched for a time when he was inside, intercepted him, stripped off the
roof, and proceeded to build up the door; the aged mother of Pausanias being said to have been
among the first who laid a stone for this purpose. When he was on the point of expiring, the
ephors took him out lest his death should pollute the sanctuary. He died as soon as he got
outside. It was at first proposed to cast his body into the Caeadas; but that proposal was
overruled, and he was buried in the neighbourhood of the temple. Subsequently, by the
direction of the Delphic oracle, his body was removed and buried at the spot where he died;
and to atone to the goddess for the loss of her suppliant, two brazen statues were dedicated
in her temple. (Paus. 5; Suidas,
s. v.
de sera
numinum Vindicta, p. 560), an oracle directed the Spartans to propitiate the soul of
Pausanias, for which purpose they brought necromancers from Italy. As to the date of the death
of Pausanias, we only know that it must have been later than Themist. p. 123), and
before
Pausanias left three sons behind him, Pleistoanax (afterwards king; Apophth. p. 230c.) it has been concluded that on one occasion
Pausanias was a victor at the Olympic games. But the passage may refer merely to his success
at Plataeae, having been publicly announced by way of honour at the games.
The character and history of Pausanias furnish a remarkable exemplification of some of the leading features and faults of the Spartan character and constitution. His pride and arrogance were not very different either in kind or in degree from that commonly exhibited by his countrymen. The selfish ambition which appears in him as an individual Spartan appears as characteristic of the national policy of Sparta throughout her whole history; nor did Sparta usually show herself more scrupulous in the choice of means for attaining her ends than Pausanias. Sparta never exhibited any remarkable fidelity to the cause of Greece, except when identical with her own immediate interests ; and at a subsequent period of her history appears with the aid of Persia in a position that bears considerable analogy to that which Pausanias designed to occupy. If these characteristics appear in Pausanias in greater degree, their exaggeration was but a natural result of the influence of that position in which he was placed, so calculated to foster and stimulate ambition, and so little likely ultimately to supply it with a fair field for legitimate exertion.