Kitap 1
but considering, allies, that we have reached a point of necessity, and, moreover, that what is mentioned is the best course, vote for the war; not being afraid of the immediate danger, but setting your hearts on the more lasting peace that will result from it. For it is by war that peace is rendered the more stable; but to refuse to pass from a state of quiet to one of war is not equally free from danger.
Being of opinion then that the tyrant state which has set itself up in Greece, has set itself up against all alike, so that it already rules over some, and is designing to rule over others, let us go against it and reduce it; and live ourselves free from danger in future, and give freedom to the Greeks who are now enslaved. To this effect spoke the Corinthians.
The Lacedaemonians, after they had heard from all what they thought, put the question to the vote of all the allies who were present in succession, both to greater and smaller states alike: and the majority voted for war.
But though they had resolved on it, it was impossible to take it in hand immediately, as they were unprepared; but it was determined that suitable means should be provided by the several states, and that there should be no delay. A year, however, did not pass while they were settling all that was necessary, but less, before they invaded Attica, and openly proceeded to the war.
During this time they were sending ambassadors to the Athenians with complaints, in order that they might have as good a pretext as possible for the war, in case they should not listen to them.
In the first place the Lacedaemonians sent ambassadors, and ordered the Athenians to drive out the pollution of the goddess; which pollution was of the following nature.
There was one Cylon, a man who had conquered at the Olympic games, an Athenian of the olden time, both noble and powerful; he had married a daughter of Theagenes, a Megarean, who at that time was tyrant of Megara.
Now when Cylon was consulting the oracle at Delphi, the god told him to seize on the Acropolis of the Athenians during the greatest feast of Jupiter.
So having received a force from Theagenes, and persuaded his friends to it, when the Olympic festival in the Peloponnese came on, he seized the Acropolis with a view to establishing a tyranny;
thinking that that was the greatest festival of Jupiter, and that it was a very proper time for him, as he had conquered at the Olympic games. But whether it was the greatest festival in Attica, or elsewhere, that had been alluded to, lie neither stopped to consider, nor did the oracle express. For the Athenians also have a Diasian festival, which is called the greatest festival of Jupiter Milichius, held outside the city, in which all the people offer [something, though] many of them not victims, but country-offerings. i. e. little figures of dough or paste made into the shape of the swine, or other animals, which they were too poor to offer.
Thinking, however, that he understood it rightly, he took the business in hand.
The Athenians, on perceiving it, ran in a body from the fields to resist them, and sitting down before the place besieged them. But as time went on, being tired out by the blockade, most of them went away, having commissioned the nine Archons to keep guard, and to arrange every thing with full powers, as they should consider best:
for at that time the nine Archons transacted most of the state affairs.
Now those who were besieged with Cylon were in a wretched condition for want of food and water. Cylon therefore and his brother made their escape, but when the rest were pressed hard, and some were even dying of famine, they seated themselves as suppliants on the altar of the Acropolis.
And those of the Athenians who had been commissioned to keep guard, when they saw them dying in the temple, raised them up on condition of doing them no harm, and led them away and killed them; while some who were seated before the Awful Goddesses A title of the Furies peculiarly given to them at Athens, according to Pausanias as that of εὐμένιδες was at Sicyon—each 'per euphemismum.' they despatched on the altars at the side entrance. And from this both they and their descendants after them were called accursed of, and offenders against, the goddess.
The Athenians therefore expelled these accursed ones, and Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian also expelled them subsequently, in conjunction with some Athenian partisans, both driving out the living, and taking up and casting out the bones of the dead. They returned, however, afterwards, and their descendants are still in the city.
This pollution then the Lacedaemonians ordered them to drive out; principally, as they professed, to avenge the honour of the gods; but really, because they know that Pericles, the son of Xanthippus, was connected with it on his mother's side, and thought that if he were banished, their business with the Athenians would more easily succeed.
They did not, however, so much hope that he would be treated in that way, as that it would cause a prejudice against him in the city; from an idea that the war would in part be occasioned by his misfortune.
For being the most powerful man of his time, and taking the lead in the government, he opposed the Lacedaemonians in every thing, and would not let the Athenians make concessions, but instigated them to hostilities.
The Athenians also, in return, commanded the Lacedaemonians to drive out the pollution of Taenarus. For the Lacedaemonians having formerly raised up some suppliants of the Helots from the temple of Neptune at Taenarus, led them away and slew them: and for this they think they were themselves also visited with the great earthquake at Sparta.
They likewise ordered them to drive out the curse of Minerva of the Brazen-House; which was of the following kind.
When Pausanias the Lacedaemonian, after being sent for by the Spartans for the first time from his command in the Hellespont, and brought to trial, was acquitted by them as not guilty, he was not sent out again in a public capacity; but in a private capacity, of his own accord, he took a trireme of Hermione, without the authority of the Lacedaemonians, and came to the Hellespont; nominally, to join in the war of the Greeks; but really, to carry out his measures with the king; which he had undertaken, in the first instance, from a desire of sovereignty over Greece.
Now it was from the following fact that he first established a claim for service with the king, and made a commencement of the whole business.
Having taken Byzantium when he was there before, after the return from Cyprus, (the Medes were in possession of it, and some connexions and relations of the king were taken in it,) on that occasion he sent back to the king those whom he had taken, not letting the other allies know, but giving out that they had escaped from him.
This he managed in concert with Gongylus the Eretrian, to whom he had committed Byzantium and the prisoners. He also sent Gongylus with a letter to him; in which, as was afterwards discovered, the following was written:
Pausanias, the general of Sparta, wishing to oblige thee, sends these men back to thee, after taking them in war. And I make a proposal, if thou also art pleased with it, that I should marry thy daughter, and make Sparta and the rest of Greece subject to thee. And I think that I am able to do this in concert with thee. If then any of these proposals please thee, send a trustworthy man to the sea, through whom in future we will confer.
Such was the purport of the writing; and Xerxes was pleased with the letter, and sent Artabazus, the son of Pharnaces, to the sea, and ordered him to succeed to the satrapy of Dascylium, superseding Megabates, who was governor be fore; and gave him a letter in answer, to send over as quickly as possible to Pausanias at Byzantium, and to show him the seal; and whatever message Pausanias should send him on his own affairs, to execute it in the best and most faithful manner possible.
On his arrival he did every thing as had been told him, and also sent over the letter; the following being written in reply to him:
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:— The Greek Pausanias, victor o'er the Mede,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.