History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides [best free ebook reader TXT] 📗

had chosen the right time, he made the attempt.

As soon as the Athenians perceived it, they flocked in, one and all,

from the country, and sat down, and laid siege to the citadel. But

as time went on, weary of the labour of blockade, most of them

departed; the responsibility of keeping guard being left to the nine

archons, with plenary powers to arrange everything according to

their good judgment. It must be known that at that time most political

functions were discharged by the nine archons. Meanwhile Cylon and his

besieged companions were distressed for want of food and water.

Accordingly Cylon and his brother made their escape; but the rest

being hard pressed, and some even dying of famine, seated themselves

as suppliants at the altar in the Acropolis. The Athenians who were

charged with the duty of keeping guard, when they saw them at the

point of death in the temple, raised them up on the understanding that

no harm should be done to them, led them out, and slew them. Some

who as they passed by took refuge at the altars of the awful goddesses

were dispatched on the spot. From this deed the men who killed them

were called accursed and guilty against the goddess, they and their

descendants. Accordingly these cursed ones were driven out by the

Athenians, driven out again by Cleomenes of Lacedaemon and an Athenian

faction; the living were driven out, and the bones of the dead were

taken up; thus they were cast out. For all that, they came back

afterwards, and their descendants are still in the city.

 

This, then was the curse that the Lacedaemonians ordered them to

drive out. They were actuated primarily, as they pretended, by a

care for the honour of the gods; but they also know that Pericles, son

of Xanthippus, was connected with the curse on his mother’s side,

and they thought that his banishment would materially advance their

designs on Athens. Not that they really hoped to succeed in

procuring this; they rather thought to create a prejudice against

him in the eyes of his countrymen from the feeling that the war

would be partly caused by his misfortune. For being the most

powerful man of his time, and the leading Athenian statesman, he

opposed the Lacedaemonians in everything, and would have no

concessions, but ever urged the Athenians on to war.

 

The Athenians retorted by ordering the Lacedaemonians to drive out

the curse of Taenarus. The Lacedaemonians had once raised up some

Helot suppliants from the temple of Poseidon at Taenarus, led them

away and slain them; for which they believe the great earthquake at

Sparta to have been a retribution. The Athenians also ordered them

to drive out the curse of the goddess of the Brazen House; the history

of which is as follows. After Pausanias the Lacedaemonian had been

recalled by the Spartans from his command in the Hellespont (this is

his first recall), and had been tried by them and acquitted, not being

again sent out in a public capacity, he took a galley of Hermione on

his own responsibility, without the authority of the Lacedaemonians,

and arrived as a private person in the Hellespont. He came

ostensibly for the Hellenic war, really to carry on his intrigues with

the King, which he had begun before his recall, being ambitious of

reigning over Hellas. The circumstance which first enabled him to

lay the King under an obligation, and to make a beginning of the whole

design, was this. Some connections and kinsmen of the King had been

taken in Byzantium, on its capture from the Medes, when he was first

there, after the return from Cyprus. These captives he sent off to the

King without the knowledge of the rest of the allies, the account

being that they had escaped from him. He managed this with the help of

Gongylus, an Eretrian, whom he had placed in charge of Byzantium and

the prisoners. He also gave Gongylus a letter for the King, the

contents of which were as follows, as was afterwards discovered:

“Pausanias, the general of Sparta, anxious to do you a favour, sends

you these his prisoners of war. I propose also, with your approval, to

marry your daughter, and to make Sparta and the rest of Hellas subject

to you. I may say that I think I am able to do this, with your

co-operation. Accordingly if any of this please you, send a safe man

to the sea through whom we may in future conduct our correspondence.”

 

This was all that was revealed in the writing, and Xerxes was

pleased with the letter. He sent off Artabazus, son of Pharnaces, to

the sea with orders to supersede Megabates, the previous governor in

the satrapy of Daskylion, and to send over as quickly as possible to

Pausanias at Byzantium a letter which he entrusted to him; to show him

the royal signet, and to execute any commission which he might receive

from Pausanias on the King’s matters with all care and fidelity.

Artabazus on his arrival carried the King’s orders into effect, and

sent over the letter, which contained the following answer: “Thus

saith King Xerxes to Pausanias. For the men whom you have saved for me

across sea from Byzantium, an obligation is laid up for you in our

house, recorded for ever; and with your proposals I am well pleased.

Let neither night nor day stop you from diligently performing any of

your promises to me; neither for cost of gold nor of silver let them

be hindered, nor yet for number of troops, wherever it may be that

their presence is needed; but with Artabazus, an honourable man whom I

send you, boldly advance my objects and yours, as may be most for

the honour and interest of us both.”

 

Before held in high honour by the Hellenes as the hero of Plataea,

Pausanias, after the receipt of this letter, became prouder than ever,

and could no longer live in the usual style, but went out of Byzantium

in a Median dress, was attended on his march through Thrace by a

bodyguard of Medes and Egyptians, kept a Persian table, and was

quite unable to contain his intentions, but betrayed by his conduct in

trifles what his ambition looked one day to enact on a grander

scale. He also made himself difficult of access, and displayed so

violent a temper to every one without exception that no one could come

near him. Indeed, this was the principal reason why the confederacy

went over to the Athenians.

 

The above-mentioned conduct, coming to the ears of the

Lacedaemonians, occasioned his first recall. And after his second

voyage out in the ship of Hermione, without their orders, he gave

proofs of similar behaviour. Besieged and expelled from Byzantium by

the Athenians, he did not return to Sparta; but news came that he

had settled at Colonae in the Troad, and was intriguing with the

barbarians, and that his stay there was for no good purpose; and the

ephors, now no longer hesitating, sent him a herald and a scytale with

orders to accompany the herald or be declared a public enemy.

Anxious above everything to avoid suspicion, and confident that he

could quash the charge by means of money, he returned a second time to

Sparta. At first thrown into prison by the ephors (whose powers enable

them to do this to the King), soon compromised the matter and came out

again, and offered himself for trial to any who wished to institute an

inquiry concerning him.

 

Now the Spartans had no tangible proof against him—neither his

enemies nor the nation—of that indubitable kind required for the

punishment of a member of the royal family, and at that moment in high

office; he being regent for his first cousin King Pleistarchus,

Leonidas’s son, who was still a minor. But by his contempt of the laws

and imitation of the barbarians, he gave grounds for much suspicion of

his being discontented with things established; all the occasions on

which he had in any way departed from the regular customs were

passed in review, and it was remembered that he had taken upon himself

to have inscribed on the tripod at Delphi, which was dedicated by

the Hellenes as the first-fruits of the spoil of the Medes, the

following couplet:

 

The Mede defeated, great Pausanias raised

This monument, that Phoebus might be praised.

 

At the time the Lacedaemonians had at once erased the couplet, and

inscribed the names of the cities that had aided in the overthrow of

the barbarian and dedicated the offering. Yet it was considered that

Pausanias had here been guilty of a grave offence, which,

interpreted by the light of the attitude which he had since assumed,

gained a new significance, and seemed to be quite in keeping with

his present schemes. Besides, they were informed that he was even

intriguing with the Helots; and such indeed was the fact, for he

promised them freedom and citizenship if they would join him in

insurrection and would help him to carry out his plans to the end.

Even now, mistrusting the evidence even of the Helots themselves,

the ephors would not consent to take any decided step against him;

in accordance with their regular custom towards themselves, namely, to

be slow in taking any irrevocable resolve in the matter of a Spartan

citizen without indisputable proof. At last, it is said, the person

who was going to carry to Artabazus the last letter for the King, a

man of Argilus, once the favourite and most trusty servant of

Pausanias, turned informer. Alarmed by the reflection that none of the

previous messengers had ever returned, having counterfeited the

seal, in order that, if he found himself mistaken in his surmises,

or if Pausanias should ask to make some correction, he might not be

discovered, he undid the letter, and found the postscript that he

had suspected, viz. an order to put him to death.

 

On being shown the letter, the ephors now felt more certain.

Still, they wished to hear Pausanias commit himself with their own

ears. Accordingly the man went by appointment to Taenarus as a

suppliant, and there built himself a hut divided into two by a

partition; within which he concealed some of the ephors and let them

hear the whole matter plainly. For Pausanias came to him and asked him

the reason of his suppliant position; and the man reproached him

with the order that he had written concerning him, and one by one

declared all the rest of the circumstances, how he who had never yet

brought him into any danger, while employed as agent between him and

the King, was yet just like the mass of his servants to be rewarded

with death. Admitting all this, and telling him not to be angry

about the matter, Pausanias gave him the pledge of raising him up from

the temple, and begged him to set off as quickly as possible, and

not to hinder the business in hand.

 

The ephors listened carefully, and then departed, taking no action

for the moment, but, having at last attained to certainty, were

preparing to arrest him in the city. It is reported that, as he was

about to be arrested in the street, he saw from the face of one of the

ephors what he was coming for; another, too, made him a secret signal,

and betrayed it to him from kindness. Setting off with a run for the

temple of the goddess of the Brazen House, the enclosure of which

was near at hand, he succeeded in taking sanctuary before they took

him, and entering into a small chamber, which formed part of the

temple, to avoid being exposed to the weather, lay still there. The

ephors, for the moment distanced