Kitap 1
But making account that a tyrant city set up in Greece is set up alike over all and reigneth over some already and the rest in intention, we shall bring it again into order by the war and not only live for the time to come out of danger ourselves but also deliver the already enthralled Grecians out of servitude. Thus said the Corinthians.
The Lacedaemonians, when they had heard the opinion of them all, brought the balls to all the confederates present in order, from the greatest state to the least; and the greatest part gave their votes for the war.
Now after the war was decreed, though it were impossible for them to go in hand with it presently because they were unprovided and every state thought good without delay severally to furnish themselves of what was necessary, yet there passed not fully a year in this preparation before Attica was invaded and the war openly on foot.
In the meantime they sent ambassadors to the Athenians with certain criminations to the end that if they would give ear to nothing, they might have all the pretext that could be for raising of the war.
And first the Lacedaemonians, by their ambassadors to the Athenians, required them to banish such as were under curse of the goddess Minerva for pollution of sanctuary. Which pollution was thus.
There had been one Cylon an Athenian, a man that had been victor in the Olympian exercises, of much nobility and power amongst those of old time, and that had married the daughter of Theagenes, a Megarean, in those days tyrant of Megara.
To this Cylon asking counsel at Delphi the God answered that on the greatest festival day he should seize the citadel of Athens.
He therefore, having gotten forces of Theagenes and persuaded his friends to the enterprise, seized on the citadel at the time of the Olympic holidays in Peloponnesus with intention to take upon him the tyranny, esteeming the feast of Jupiter to be the greatest and to touch withal on his particular in that he had been victor in the Olympian exercises.
But whether the feast spoken of were meant to be the greatest in Attica or in some other place, neither did he himself consider nor the oracle make manifest. For there is also amongst the Athenians the Diasia, which is called the greatest feast of Jupiter Meilichius and is celebrated without the city, wherein in the confluence of the whole people many men offered sacrifices not of living creatures but such as was the fashion of the natives of the place.
But he, supposing he had rightly understood the oracle, laid hand to the enterprise.
And when the Athenians heard of it, they came with all their forces out of the fields and lying before the citadel besieged it. But the time growing long, the Athenians, wearied with the siege, went most of them away, and left both the guard of the citadel and the whole business to the nine archontes with absolute authority to order the same as to them it should seem good.
For at that time, most of the affairs of the commonweal were administered by those nine archontes.
Now those that were besieged with Cylon were for want of both victual and water in very evil estate, and therefore Cylon and a brother of his fled privily out;
but the rest, when they were pressed and some of them dead with famine, sat down as suppliants by the altar that is in the citadel. And the Athenians, to whose charge was committed the guard of the place, raising them upon promise to do them no harm, put them all to the sword. Also they had put to death some of those that had taken sanctuary at the altars of the severe goddesses as they were going away. And from this the Athenians, both themselves and their posterity, were called accursed and sacrilegious persons.
Hereupon the Athenians banished those that were under the curse; and Cleomenes, a Lacedaemonian, together with the Athenians in a sedition, banished them afterwards again, and not only so but disinterred and cast forth the bodies of such of them as were dead. Nevertheless there returned of them afterwards again, and there are of their race in the city unto this day.
This pollution, therefore, the Lacedaemonians required them to purge their city of, principally, forsooth, as taking part with the gods, but knowing withal that Pericles the son of 127antippus was by the mother's side one of that race. For they thought if Pericles were banished, the Athenians would the more easily be brought to yield to their desire.
Nevertheless, they hoped not so much that he should be banished as to bring him into the envy of the city, as if the misfortune of him were in part the cause of the war.
For being the most powerful of his time and having the sway of the state, he was in all things opposite to the Lacedaemonians, not suffering the Athenians to give them the least way but inciting them to the war.
Contrariwise, the Athenians required the Lacedaemonians to banish such as were guilty of breach of sanctuary at Taenarus. For the Lacedaemonians, when they had caused their Helots, suppliants in the temple of Neptune at Taenarus, to forsake sanctuary, slew them: for which cause they themselves think it was that the great earthquake happened afterwards at Sparta.
Also they required them to purge their city of the pollution of sanctuary in the temple of Pallas Chalcioeca, which was thus.
After that Pausanias the Lacedaemonian was recalled by the Spartans from his charge in Hellespont, and having been called in question by them was absolved though he was no more sent abroad by the state, yet he went again into Hellespont in a galley of Hermione as a private man, without leave of the Lacedaemonians, to the Grecian war, as he gave out, but in truth to negotiate with the king, as he had before begun, aspiring to the principality of Greece.
Now the benefit that he had laid up with the king, and the beginning of the whole business, was at first from this.
When after his return from Cyprus he had taken Byzantium when he was there the first time (which, being holden by the Medes, there were taken in it some near to the king and of his kindred), unknown to the rest of the confederates he sent unto the king those near ones of his which he had taken and gave out they were run away.
This he practised with one Gongylus, an Eretrian, to whose charge he had committed both the town of Byzantium and the prisoners. Also he sent letters unto him which Gongylus carried wherein, as was afterwards known, was thus written:
Pausanias, General of the Spartans, being desirous to do thee a courtesy, sendeth back unto thee these men whom he hath by arms taken prisoners. And I have a purpose, if the same seem also good unto thee, to take thy daughter in marriage and to bring Sparta and the rest of Greece into thy subjection. These things I account myself able to bring to pass if I may communicate my counsels with thee. If, therefore, any of these things do like thee, send some trusty man to the seaside by whose mediation we may confer together.
These were the contents of the writing. 129erxes, being pleased with the letter, sends away Artabazus the son of Pharnaces to the seaside with commandment to take the government of the province of Dascylis and to dismiss Megabates, that was governor there before, and withal gives him a letter to Pausanias, which he commanded him to send over to him with speed to Byzantium and to show him the seal and well and faithfully to perform whatsoever in his affairs he should by Pausanias be appointed to do.
Artabazus, after he arrived, having in other things done as he was commanded, sent over the letter;
wherein was written this answer: Thus saith king 129erxes to Pausanias: For the men which thou hast saved and sent over the sea unto me from Byzantium, thy benefit is laid up in our house indelibly registered forever; and I like also of what thou hast propounded. And let neither night nor day make thee remiss in the performance of what thou hast promised unto me. Neither be thou hindered by the expense of gold and silver or multitude of soldiers requisite, whithersoever it be needful to have them come. But with Artabazus, a good man whom I have sent unto thee, do boldly both mine and thine own business as shall be most fit for the dignity and honour of us both.
Pausanias having received these letters, whereas he was before in great authority for his conduct at Plataea, became now many degrees more elevated and endured no more to live after the accustomed manner of his country but went apparelled at Byzantium after the fashion of Persia, and when he went through Thrace, had a guard of Medes and Egyptians, and his table likewise after the Persian manner. Nor was he able to conceal his purpose, but in trifles made apparent beforehand the greater matters he had conceived of the future.
He became moreover difficult of access, and would be in such choleric passions toward all men indifferently that no man might endure to approach him, which was also none of the least causes why the confederates turned from him to the Athenians.
When the Lacedaemonians heard of it, they called him home the first time. And when being gone out the second time without their command in a galley of Hermione, it appeared that he continued still in the same practices and, after he was forced out of Byzantium by siege of the Athenians, returned not to Sparta, but news came that he had seated himself at Colonae in the country of Troy practicing still with the barbarians and making his abode there for no good purpose, then the ephori forebore no longer but sent unto him a public officer with the scytale commanding him not to depart from the officer and, in case he refused, denounced war against him.
But he, desiring as much as he could to decline suspicion and believing that with money he should be able to discharge himself of his accusations, returned unto Sparta the second time. And first he was by the ephori committed to ward (for the ephori have power to do this to their king); but afterwards, procuring his enlargement, he came forth and exhibited himself to justice against such as had anything to allege against him.
And though the Spartans had against him no manifest proof, neither his enemies nor the whole city, whereupon to proceed to the punishment of a man both of the race of their kings and at that present in great authority (for Plistarchus the son of Leonidas being king and as yet in minority, Pausanias, who was his cousin-german, had the tuition of him yet), by his licentious behaviour and affectation of the barbarian customs, he gave much cause of suspicion that he meant not to live in the equality of the present state.
They considered also that he differed in manner of life from the discipline established: amongst other things by this, that upon the tripode at Delphi, which the Grecians had dedicated as the best of the spoil of the Medes, he had caused to be inscribed of himself in particular this elegiac verse:
But the Lacedaemonians then presently defaced that inscription of the tripode and engraved thereon by name all the cities that had joined in the overthrow of the Medes, and dedicated it so. This therefore was numbered amongst the offences of Pausanias and was thought to agree with his present design, so much the rather for the condition he was now in.
They had information farther that he had in hand some practice with the Helots. And so he had, for he promised them not only manumission but also freedom of the city if they would rise with him and co-operate in the whole business.
But neither thus upon some impeachment of the Helots would they proceed against him but kept the custom which they have in their own cases not hastily to give a peremptory sentence against a Spartan without unquestionable proof. Till at length (as it is reported) purposing to send over to Artabazus his last letters to the king, he was bewrayed unto them by a man of Argilus, in time past his minion and most faithful to him, who, being terrified with the cogitation that not any of those which had been formerly sent had ever returned, got him a seal like to the seal of Pausanias (to the end that if his jealousy were false or that he should need to alter anything in the letter, it might not be discovered) and opened the letter, wherein (as he had suspected the addition of some such clause) he found himself also written down to be murdered.
The ephori, when these letters were by him shown unto them, though they believed the matter much more than they did before, yet desirous to hear somewhat themselves from Pausanias his own mouth, the man being upon design gone to Taenarus into sanctuary and having there built him a little room with a partition in which he hid the ephori, and Pausanias coming to him and asking the cause of his taking sanctuary, they plainly heard the whole matter. For the man both expostulated with him for what he had written about him and from point to point discovered all the practice, saying that though he had never boasted unto him these and these services concerning the king, he must yet have the honour as well as many other of his servants to be slain. And Pausanias himself both confessed the same things and also bade the man not to be troubled at what was past and gave him assurance to leave sanctuary, intreating him to go on in his journey with all speed and not to frustrate the business in hand.
Now the ephori, when they had distinctly heard him, for that time went their way, and knowing now the certain truth intended to apprehend him in the city. It is said that when he was to be apprehended in the street, he perceived by the countenance of one of the ephori coming towards him what they came for; and when another of them had by a secret beck signified the matter for good will, he ran into the close of the temple of Pallas Chalcioeca and got in before they overtook him (now the temple itself was hard by) and, entering into a house belonging to the temple to avoid the injury of the open air, there stayed.
They that pursued him could not then overtake him; but afterwards they took off the roof and the doors of the house and, watching a time when he was within, beset the house and mured him up and, leaving a guard there, famished him.