Pausanias

Pausanias the Lacedaemonian was a great man, but inconsistent in every kind of life: for as he was conspicuous in virtues, so was he overwhelmed by vices. His most illustrious exploit is the battle at Plataea. For under his leadership Mardonius — the king's satrap, a Mede by nation, the king's son-in-law, among all the Persians foremost both in personal courage and in resourcefulness — was put to flight, with two hundred thousand foot whom he had chosen man by man and twenty thousand horse, by no very great force of Greece, and in that battle the leader himself fell. Elated by this victory, he began to throw all into confusion and to covet greater things. But first he was censured for this, that out of the spoil he had set up a golden tripod at Delphi with an inscription engraved upon it, the gist of which was this: that under his leadership the barbarians had been destroyed at Plataea, and that, on account of that victory, he had given this gift to Apollo. These verses the Lacedaemonians chiselled out, and inscribed nothing but the names of those states by whose aid the Persians had been conquered.

After that battle they sent the same Pausanias with the combined fleet to Cyprus and the Hellespont, to drive the garrisons of the barbarians out of those regions. Having met with equal good fortune in this enterprise, he began to bear himself more loftily and to grasp at greater things. For when, on the storming of Byzantium, he had taken captive several Persian nobles, and among them some kinsmen of the king, these he secretly sent back to Xerxes, pretending that they had escaped from the public prison; and with them Gongylus of Eretria, to deliver to the king a letter in which Thucydides has recorded that this was written: 'Pausanias, the general of Sparta, having learned that those whom he took at Byzantium were your kinsmen, sends them to you as a gift, and desires to be joined with you by a marriage alliance; therefore, if it seems good to you, give him your daughter in marriage. If you do this, he promises that, with your help, he will bring both Sparta and the rest of Greece under your power. If you wish to do anything in these matters, see that you send a trusty man to him, with whom he may confer.' The king, greatly rejoicing at the safety of so many men so necessary to him, at once sent Artabazus with a letter to Pausanias, in which he praised him and asked that he spare no pains to accomplish what he had promised: if he carried it through, he should meet with refusal in nothing from him. His good will being thus made known, Pausanias became more eager to carry out the affair, and fell under the suspicion of the Lacedaemonians. By this he was recalled home and, being accused on a capital charge, was acquitted; he was nonetheless fined money, and for that reason was not sent back to the fleet.

But not long after he returned of his own accord to the army, and there laid bare the schemes he had conceived — not by stupid, but by mad reasoning. For he changed not only his ancestral customs but also his manner of life and dress. He used royal pomp and Median garb; Median and Egyptian attendants followed him; he feasted in the Persian fashion more luxuriously than those present could endure; to those seeking an audience he granted no opportunity of meeting him, answered haughtily, and gave commands cruelly. He was unwilling to return to Sparta; he had betaken himself to Colonae, a place in the Troad; there he conceived designs hostile both to his country and to himself. When the Lacedaemonians learned of this, they sent envoys to him with a staff, on which, after their custom, was written that, unless he returned home, they would condemn him to death. Moved by this message, and hoping that even then, by his money and influence, he could ward off the impending danger, he returned home. When he arrived there, he was cast by the ephors into the public prison; for it is permitted by their laws for any ephor to do this to a king. From this, however, he extricated himself, nor was he any the more free from suspicion: for the belief persisted that he had an alliance with the king. There is a certain class of men called Helots, a great multitude of whom till the fields of the Lacedaemonians and perform the office of slaves. These too he was thought to be stirring up with the hope of liberty. But because there was no open proof of these matters by which he could be convicted, they did not think it right that a judgement be passed upon so great and so renowned a man on mere suspicions, but that they should wait until the affair should disclose itself.

Meanwhile a certain young man, Argilius, whom as a boy Pausanias had loved with a sensual passion, having received from him a letter to Artabazus, and having come to suspect that something concerning himself was written in it, because none of those who had been sent on a like errand to the same place had returned, loosened the fastenings of the letter and, having drawn off the seal, learned that, if he delivered it, he must perish. There were in that same letter matters bearing upon what had been agreed between the king and Pausanias. This letter he handed over to the ephors. The firmness of the Lacedaemonians is not to be passed over at this point. For not even by this man's information were they moved to arrest Pausanias, nor did they think force should be used before he had betrayed himself. And so they instructed this informer what they wished done. There is a temple of Neptune at Taenarum, which the Greeks count it a sin to violate. To it that informer fled and sat down upon the altar. Close beside it they made a chamber underground, from which whatever was said with Argilius could be overheard. To this place some of the ephors went down. Pausanias, when he heard that Argilius had fled to the altar, came thither in alarm. When he saw him sitting as a suppliant of the god upon the altar, he asked what was the cause of so sudden a resolve. The other disclosed to him what he had learned from the letter. The more disturbed thereby, Pausanias began to entreat him not to reveal it, nor to betray one who had deserved most kindly of him; that if he granted him this indulgence, and relieved him, entangled as he was in such great affairs, it would be greatly to his reward.

Having learned these things, the ephors thought it better that he be arrested in the city. When they had set out thither, and Pausanias, having appeased Argilius, as he supposed, was returning to Lacedaemon, on the way, when he was now on the point of being arrested, from the look of one of the ephors, who wished to give him warning, he understood that a snare was being laid for him. And so, a few steps ahead of those who were pursuing him, he fled into the temple of Minerva which is called the House of Bronze. That he might not be able to come out of it, the ephors at once blocked up the doors of that temple and pulled down the roof, that he might the more quickly perish under the open sky. It is said that at that time the mother of Pausanias was living, and that she, now far advanced in age, after she learned of her son's crime, was among the first to bring a stone to the entrance of the temple to wall in her son. When he had been carried out of the temple half-dead, he straightway breathed out his life. Thus Pausanias stained the great glory of war by a shameful death. When some said that his dead body ought to be carried to the same place as the bodies of those who had been given over to execution, the greater number disapproved, and they buried him far from the place where he had died. Afterwards, by a response of the Delphic god, he was dug up again and buried in the same place where he had laid down his life.