Book 1
On the contrary, men of the allies, recognize that we are now facing the inevitable, and at the same time that this proposal is for the best; and vote for the war, not fearing the immediate danger, but coveting the more enduring peace which will result from the war. For peace is more firmly established when it follows war, but to refuse to go to war from a desire for tranquillity is by no means so free from danger.
And so, in the conviction that the state which has set itself up as a tyrant in Hellas is a menace to all alike, ruling over some already and designing to rule over others, let us attack and reduce it, and henceforth dwell in security ourselves and set free those Hellenes who are already enslaved."
Thus spoke the Corinthians. And the Lacedaemonians when they had heard the opinions of all, put the vote in succession to all the allied states which were present, both great and small; and the majority voted for war.
But though the decision was made it was impossible for them to take up arms at once, as they were unprepared; it was determined, however, that the several states should make the fitting preparations and that there should be no delay. Nevertheless, in providing themselves with what was needed there was spent, not indeed a full year, but somewhat less, before they invaded Attica and took up the war openly.
During this interval they kept sending embassies to the Athenians and making complaints, that they might have as good a pretext as possible for making war, in case the Athenians should refuse to consider them.
And first the Lacedaemonian envoys bade the Athenians drive out the "curse of the goddess." The curse was as follows:
There was an Athenian in days of old named Cylon, a victor at Olympia, of noble birth and powerful; and he had married a daughter of Theagenes, a Megarian, who was at that time tyrant of Megara.
Now Cylon consulted the oracle at Delphi, and the god in answer told him to seize the Acropolis of Athens "at the greatest festival of Zeus."
So he obtained a force from Theagenes and, persuading his friends to help, when the Olympic festival in the Peloponnesus came on he seized the Acropolis with a view to making himself tyrant; for he thought that the Olympic festival was not only the greatest festival of Zeus, but also in a manner was connected with him as having won an Olympic victory.On this first attempt to establish a tyranny in Athens, see also Hdt. 5.71; Plut. Sol. 12. It was not a rising of the people against the nobles, but the attempt of an ambitious man who aspired to royal power, supported only by a few friends and a body of Megarian soldiers. To the mass of the people it seemed to portend subjection to Megara, so they flocked in to crush the movement, not, as Cylon hoped, to support it.
But whether the oracle meant the greatest festival in Attica or somewhere else he did not go on to consider, and the oracle did not make it clear. For, in fact, the Athenians also have a festival in honour of Zeus Meilichius, the Diasia, as it is called, a very great festival celebrated outside the city, whereat all the people offer sacrifices, many making offeringsA scholiast suggests cakes (πέμματα) made in the forms of animals. peculiar to the country instead of victims. But Cylon, thinking that he was right in his opinion, made his attempt.
And the Athenians, when they were aware of it, came in a body from the fields against them and sitting down before the Acropolis laid siege to it.
But as time passed the Athenians grew weary of the siege and most of them went away, committing the task of guarding to the nine Archons, to whom they also gave full power to settle the whole matter as they might determine to be best;
for at that timei.e. before the legislation of Solon; from that time the power of the Archons decreased, and was restricted chiefly to judicial functions. the nine Arclons transacted most of the public business.
But Cylon and those who were being besieged with him were in hard straits through lack of food and water. So Cylon and his brother escaped; but the rest, when they were in great distress and some of them were even dying of hunger, sat down as suppliants at the altarOf Athena Polias. on the Acropolis.
And the Athenians who had been charged with guarding them, when they saw them dying in the temple, caused them to arise on promise of doing them no harm, and leading them away put them to death; and some who in passing by took refuge at the altar of the Awful GoddessesThe sanctuary of the Eumenides, which lay between the Acropolis and the Areopagus. they dispatched even there. For this act both they and their descendantsChiefly the Alcmaeonidae, whose head was Megacles, Archon at the time of Cylon's attempt. were called accursed and sinners against the Goddess.
Accordingly the accursed persons were driven out not only by the Athenians but also at a later time by Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian, with the help of a faction of the Athenians, during a civil strife, when they drove out the living and disinterred and cast out the bones of the dead. Afterwards, however, they were restored, and their descendants are still in the city.
It was this "curse " that the Lacedaemonians now bade the Athenians drive out, principally, as they pretended, to avenge the honour of the gods, but in fact because they knew that Pericles son of Xanthippus was implicated in the curse on his mother's side,Pericles was a descendant in the sixth generation from Megacles, his mother Agariste being niece of the Alcmaeonid Cleisthenes (Hdt 6.131.). and thinking that, if he were banished, they would find it easier to get from the Athenians the concessions they hoped for.
They did not, however, so much expect that he would suffer banishment, as that they would discredit him with his fellow-citizens, who would feel that to some extent his misfortuneAs belonging to the accursed family. would be the cause of the war.
For being the most powerful man of his time and the leader of the state, he was opposed to the Lacedaemonians in all things, and would not let the Athenians make concessions, but kept urging them on to the war.
The Athenians answered with the demand that the Lacedaemonians should drive out the curse of Taenarus. For the Lacedaemonians had on one occasion caused some suppliant Helots to leave their refuge in the temple of Poseidon at Taenarus, then had led them off and put them to death; and the Lacedaemonians believe that it was because of this sacrilege that the great earthquakecf. Thuc. 1.101.2. befell them at Sparta.
And the Athenians also bade them drive out the curse of Athena of the Brazen House.So called from her temple or shrine in the citadel at Sparta. Pausanias says (3.17.2) both temple and statue were of bronze. And this is the way it was incurred.
After Pausanias the Lacedaemonian had been recalled by the Spartans, on the first occasion,477 B.C. cf. Thuc. 1.95.3. from his command on the Hellespont, and on trial had been acquitted of wrong-doing, he was never again sent out in a public capacity, but privately and on his own account he took a trireme of Hermione without authority of the Lacedaemonians and came to the Hellespont, to take part, as he pretended, in the Persian war, but in reality to carry on an intrigue with the Great King—an enterprise to which he had set his hand in the first instance also, his aim being to become master of all Hellas.
He had namely first laid up for himself with the King a store of gratitude in the following circumstances, and thus had begun the whole affair.
When he was in that quarter before, after the return of the Hellenic fleet from Cyprus,cf. Thuc. 1.94.2. he had taken Byzantium, then in the possession of the Persians, and certain connections and kinsmen of the King were captured in the place when the city fell. These prisoners he sent back to the King without the knowledge of the allies in general, whom he gave to understand that they had escaped from him.
And he was carrying on this intrigue in concert with Gongylus the Eretrian, the very man whom he had placed in charge of Byzantium and the captives. And he also sent a letter by Gongylus to the King, in which the following was written, as was afterwards discovered:
"Pausanias, the Spartan commander, wishing to do you a favour, sends you back these men whom he took with the spear. And I make the proposal, if it seems good to you also, to marry your daughter and to make Sparta and the rest of Hellas subject to you. And I am able, I think, to accomplish these things with the help of your counsel. If any of these things pleases you, send a trusty man to the sea, and through him we shall in future confer." So much the letter disclosed.
Xerxes was pleased with the letter, and sent Artabazus son of Pharnaces to the sea, commanding him to take over the satrapy of Dascylium, superseding Megabates, who was governor before; and he charged him with a letter in reply to Pausanias, bidding him transmit it to him in Byzantium as quickly as possible and to show him the seal, and if Pausanias should give him any direction about the King's affairs, to execute it with all care and fidelity.
And he on his arrival did other things as he was told and transmitted the letter. And this reply of the King ran as follows:
" Thus saith King Xerxes to Pausanias: As touching the men whom thou didst save for me out of Byzantium beyond the sea, a store of gratitude is laid up for thee, of record, in our house forever, and with thy words also I am pleased. And let neither night nor day stay thee to make thee remiss in performing aught of what thou dost promise mee; and let nothing hinder thee, either expense of gold and silver or number of troops, if there be need of their presence anywhere; but with Artabazus, a good man, whom I have sent to thee, transact with confidence my business and thine as shall be most honourable and best for both of us."
When Pausanias received this letter, although even before this he had been held in high consideration by the Hellenes because he had led them at Plataea, he was then far more elated and could no longer bring himself to live in the usual manner of his people, but clad himself in Persian apparel whenever he went forth from Byzantium, and when he travelled through Thrace a body-guard of Medes and Egyptians attended him; he had his table served in Persian style, and indeed could not conceal his real purpose, but by such trifling acts showed plainly what greater designs he purposed in his heart to accomplish thereafter.
And so he made himself difficult of access, and indulged in such a violent temper towards everybody that no one could come near him; and this was one of the chief reasons why the allies went over to the Athenians.
Now it was just this conduct that had caused the Lacedaemonians in the first instance to recall Pausanias, when they learned of it; and when this second time, on his sailing away in the ship of Hermione without their authority, it was evident that he was acting in the very same manner—when, after being forcibly dislodged from Byzantium by the Athenians, instead of returning to Sparta, he settled at Colonae in the Troad and was reported to the ephors to be intriguing with the Barbarians and tarrying there for no good purpose—then at length they held back no longer, but sent a herald with a skytale-dispatch,The σκυτάλη was a staff used for writing dispatches. The Lacedaemonians had two round staves of one size, the one kept at Sparta, the other in possession of commanders abroad. A strip of paper was rolled slantwise round the staff and the dispatch written lengthwise on it; when unrolled the dispatch was unintelligible, but rolled slantwise round the commander's skytale it could be read. in which they told him not to lag behind the herald, or the Spartans would declare war upon him.
And he, wishing to avoid suspicion as far as possible, and confident that he could dispose of the charge by the use of money, returned the second time to Sparta. And at first he was thrown into prison by the ephors, who have the power to do this in the case of the king himself; then, having contrived after a time to get out, he offered himself for trial to any who might wish to examine into his case.
There was, indeed, no clear proof in the possession of the Spartans, either his personal enemies or the state at large, on the strength of which they could with entire confidence proceed to punish a man who was of the royal family and held high office for the time being—for as cousin of Pleistarchus son of Leonidas, who was king and still a minor, he was acting as regent for him;
but he, by his disregard of propriety, and particularly by his aping of the Barbarians, gave them much ground for suspecting that he did not want to remain an equal in the present order of things at Sparta. And they went back into his past and scrutinized all his other acts, to see if perchance he had in his mode of life departed from established customs, and they recalled especially that he had once presumed, on his own authority, to have inscribed on the tripod at Delphi,A golden tripod set upon a three-headed bronze serpent (9.81). The gold tripod was carrid off by the Phocians in the Sacred War (Paus. 10.13.5, but the bronze pillar, eighteen feet high, of three intertwined snakes, was removed by the Emperor Constantine to Constantinople and placed in the hippodrome, the modern Atmeidan, where it still is. It contains the names of thirty-one Greek states which took part in the Persian War. which the Hellenes dedicated as first fruits of the spoils they had won fiom the Persians, the following elegiac couplet:
"When as captain of the Hellenes he had destroyed the Persian host, Pausanias dedicated this memorial to Phoebus.The distich was composed by Simonides.” Now the Lacedaemonians had immediately chiselled off these verses and inscribed on the tripod by name all the cities which had had a part in overthrowing the Barbarians and had together set up this offering. The act of Pausanias, however, was felt at the time to have been a transgression, and now that he had got into this further trouble, it stood out more clearly than ever as having been but a prelude to his present designs.
They were informed also that he was intriguing with the Helots; and it was even so, for he was promising them freedom and citizenship if they would join him in a revolt and help him accomplish his whole plan.
But not even then, nor relying on certain Helots who had turned informers, did they think it best to take harsh measures against him; they adhered to their usual method in dealing with men of their own class—not to be hasty, in the case of a Spartan, in adopting an irrevocable decision unless they had indisputable proofs. But at last, as it is said, the man who was to take to Artabazus Pausanias' last letter to the King, a man of Argilus who had once been a favourite of his and had hitherto been most loyal to him, turned informer. For he took fright when he called to mind that no previous messenger had ever come back again; and so, having made a counterfeit seal, in order that his act might not be discovered, in case he should be wrong in his suspicion or in case Pausanias should ask to make some alteration in the letter, he opened the letter and in fact found written therein, as he suspected he should find something of the sort to have been directed, an order for his own death.
At this point the ephors, when the man showed them the letter, were at last more nearly convinced, but they wished besides to hear with their own ears some word from Pausanias' own lips; so in accordance with a prearranged plan the man went as a suppliant to Taenarus and put up there a hut divided by a partition. In the inner room of the hut he concealed some of the ephors, and when Pausanias visited him and asked the reason of his taking the position of a suppliant, they heard clearly everything that was said: they heard the man accuse Pausanias of having written the order about himself, reveal the other items of the plot in detail, and protest that, though he had never yet compromised Pausanias in his errands to the King, the special honour awarded him was no better than that which the common run of his servants received—to be put to death; and they heard Pausanias acknowledge these same things, urge the man not to be angry with him this time, offer him a guarantee that he might leave the temple in safety, and finally request him to go on his way with all speed and not frustrate the negotiations.
When the ephors had heard all the details they went back home for the present, but inasmuch as they now had certain knowledge, they were planning to make the arrest in the city. And the story goes that when Pausanias was about to be arrested in the street, he saw the face of one of the ephors as he was approaching and realised for what purpose he was coming, and that another ephor out of friendship warned him by giving a covert nod, whereupon he set off on a run for the temple of Athena of the Brazen House, and reached the refuge first, as the sacred precinct was near by. Entering then into a building of no great size belonging to the temple, that he might not suffer from exposure under the open sky, he kept quiet.