History of the Peloponnesian War

Thus saith King Xerxes to Pausanias. For the men whom thou hast saved from Byzantium, and sent over the sea to me, there is laid up for thee in our house [*]( For other instances of this custom, see Herodotus V. 11. and VIII. 85., and the book of Esther, ch. vi. According to Herodotus, the name by which persons so registered were called was Orosangae, or benefactors. ) [the record of] a benefit registered for ever; and I am also pleased with thy proposals. And let neither night nor day stop thee, that thou shouldst be remiss in doing any of the things which thou hast promised me: neither let them be impeded by outlay of gold or silver, nor by number of troops, whithersoever there is need of their coming; but in conjunction with Artabazus, an honourable man, whom I have sent to thee, fear not to promote both my interest and thine own, as shall be most creditable and advantageous for both.

On the receipt of this letter, Pausanias, though he was even before held in high repute by the Greeks for his generalship at Plataea, was then much more exalted; and could no longer live in the ordinary style, but went out of Byzantium clothed in a Median dress; and when he went through Thrace, Medes and Egyptians formed his body-guard; and he had a Persian table laid for him, and could not conceal his purpose, but betrayed beforehand by trifling actions what he intended to practise in future on a larger scale.

He also made himself difficult of access, and indulged such a violent temper towards all, that no one dared to approach him; and this was none of the least reasons why the confederates went over from him to the Athenians.

The Lacedaemonians, on becoming acquainted with it, recalled him the first time on this very account; and when he went out the second time in the vessel of Hermione, without their orders, and appeared to be acting in this way, and did not return to Sparta when forcibly driven out from Byzantium by the Athenians after a siege, but news came of his being settled at Colonae in the Troad, and intriguing with the barbarians, and making his stay there for no good; under these circumstances they waited no longer, but the ephors sent a herald and a scytale, [*]( The scytale was a staff used at Sparta as a cipher for writing despatches. A strip of paper was rolled slantwise round it, on which the despatches were written lengthwise, so that when unrolled they were unintelligible; commanders abroad had one of like thickness, round which they rolled those papers, and so were able to read the despatches.) and told him not to leave the herald, else that they declared war against him.

Wishing to be as little suspected as possible, and trusting to quash the charge by means of money, he proceeded to return the second time to Sparta. And at first he was thrown into prison by the ephors, (for the ephors have power to do this to the king,) but afterwards, having settled the business, he subsequently came out, and offered himself for trial to those who wished to examine into his case.

Now the Spartans had no clear proof, neither his enemies nor the state at large, on which they could safely rely in punishing a man who was of the royal family and at present holding an honourable office; (for as his cousin and guardian, he was regent for Pleistarchus, the son of Leonidas, who was king and at present a minor;) but by his contempt of the laws, and imitation of the barbarians, he gave room for many suspicions of his not wishing to be content with things as they were.

And they reviewed his other acts, in whatever on any occasion he had lived beyond the established usages; and especially, that on the tripod at Delphi, which the Greeks dedicated as the first-fruits of the spoil of the Medes, he had formerly on his own individual responsibility presumed to have the following distich inscribed:—

3. The Greek Pausanias, victor o'er the Mede,
4. To Phoebus this memorial decreed.

This distich then the Lacedaemonians at the very time erased from the tripod, and engraved by name all the cities that had joined in overthrowing the barbarian, and had dedicated the offering. This, however, was considered to be an act of guilt in Pausanias; and since he had put himself in his present position, it appeared to have been done in much closer keeping with his present views. They also heard that he was tampering with the Helots; and it was the fact too;

for he was promising them liberation and citizenship, if they would join in an insurrection, and in carrying out the whole of his plan. But not even then did they think right to [*]( Or, even though they believed some of the Helots who had informed against him. ) believe even any of the Helots [themselves] as informers, and to proceed to any great severity against him;

acting according to the custom which they usually observe towards their own citizens, not to be hasty in adopting any extreme measure in the case of a Spartan without unquestionable evidence: until a man of Argilus, it is said, who was about to carry to Artabazus the last letter for the king, and who had before been his favourite and very much trusted by him, gave information to them; having been alarmed at a thought which struck him, that none of the messengers before him had hitherto come back again; and so, having counterfeited the seal, in order that if he were mistaken in his surmise, or if Pausanias should ask to make some alteration in the writing, he might not discover it, he opened the letter, and found written in it—having suspected [*](προσεπεστάλθαι. The same verb occurs with the same force of the πρὸς II. 85. 6, τῷ δὲ κομίζοντι αὐτας προσεπέστειλαν ἐς κρήτην πρῶτον ἀφικέσθαι.) some additional order of the kind—directions to put him also to death.

Then, however, the ephors, on his showing them the letter, gave greater credence to it; but still wished to be ear-witnesses of Pausanias' saying something. When therefore, from a concerted plan, the man had gone to Taenarus [*]( i. e. to the temple of Neptune on the promontory of Taenarus, which enjoyed the privileges of an asylum, or sanctuary.) as a suppliant, and had built himself a hut, divided into two by a partition wall, in which he concealed some of the ephors; and when Pausanias came to him, and asked the reason for his becoming a suppliant, they heard all distinctly; while the man charged him with what had been written, and set forth the other particulars, one by one, saying that he had never yet endangered him at all in his services with respect to the king, yet had been, just like the mass of his servants, preferred to death; and Pausanias acknowledged these very things, and desired him not to be angry for what had happened, but gave him the security of raising him up from the temple, and begged him to go as quickly as possible, and not to put an obstacle in the way of his designs.

After hearing him accurately, the ephors then went away, and having now certain knowledge [of his guilt], were preparing to arrest him in the city. But it is said that when he was just going to be arrested in the street, from seeing the face of one of the ephors as he approached him, he understood for what purpose he was coming; and on another of them making a secret nod, and out of kindness showing him [their object], he set off running to the temple of Minerva of the Brazen-House, and reached his place of refuge first; for the sacred ground was near at hand. To avoid suffering from exposure to the open air, he entered a building of no great size, which formed part of the temple, and remained quiet in it.