Delphi Complete Works of Pausanias

by Pausanias

  [3.4.6] It may well be too that the wrath of heroes and the wrath of gods united together to punish Cleomenes since it is a fact that for a personal wrong Protesilaus, a hero not a whit more illustrious than Argus, punished at Elaeus Artayctes, a Persian; while the Megarians never succeeded in propitiating the deities at Eleusis for having encroached upon the sacred land. As to the tampering with the oracle, we know of nobody, with the exception of Cleomenes, who has had the audacity even to attempt it.

  [3.4.7] Cleomenes had no male issue, and the kingdom devolved on Leonidas, son of Anaxandrides and full brother of Dorieus. At this time Xerxes led his host against Greece, and Leonidas with three hundred Lacedaemonians met him at Thermopylae. Now although the Greeks have waged many wars, and so have foreigners among themselves, yet there are but few that have been made more illustrious by the exceptional valor of one man, in the way that Achilles shed luster on the Trojan war and Miltiades on the engagement at Marathon. But in truth the success of Leonidas surpassed, in my opinion, all later as well as all previous achievements.

  [3.4.8] For Xerxes, the proudest of all who have reigned over the Medes, or over the Persians who succeeded them, the achiever of such brilliant exploits, was met on his march by Leonidas and the handful of men he led to Thermopylae, and they would have prevented him from even seeing Greece at all, and from ever burning Athens, if the man of Trachis had not guided the army with Hydarnes by the path that stretches across Oeta, and enabled the enemy to surround the Greeks; so Leonidas was overwhelmed and the foreigners passed along into Greece.

  [3.4.9] Pausanias the son of Cleombrotus never became king. For while guardian of Pleistarchus, the son of Leonidas, who was a child when his father died, he led the Lacedaemonians to Plataea, and afterwards with their fleet to the Hellespont. I cannot praise too highly the way in which Pausanias treated the Coan lady, who was the daughter of a man of distinction among the Coans, Hegetorides the son of Antagoras, and the unwilling concubine of a Persian, Pharandates the son of Teaspis.

  [3.4.10] When Mardonius fell in the battle of Plataea, and the foreigners were destroyed, Pausanias sent the lady back to Cos, and she took with her the apparel that the Persian had procured for her as well as the rest of her belongings. Pausanias also refused to dishonor the body of Mardonius, as Lampon the Aeginetan advised him to do.

  [3.5.1] V. Shortly after Pleistarchus the son of Leonidas came to the throne he died, and the kingdom devolved on Pleistoanax, son of the Pausanias who commanded at Plataea. Pleistoanax had a son Pausanias; he was the Pausanias who invaded Attica, ostensibly to oppose Thrasybulus and the Athenians, but really to establish firmly the despotism of those to whom the government had been entrusted by Lysander. Although he won a battle against the Athenians holding the Peiraens, yet immediately after the battle he resolved to lead his army back home, and not to bring upon Sparta the most disgraceful of reproaches by increasing the despotic power of wicked men.

  [3.5.2] When he returned from Athens with only a fruitless battle to his credit, he was brought to trial by his enemies. The court that sat to try a Lacedaemonian king consisted of the senate, “old men” as they were called, twenty eight in number, the members of the ephorate, and in addition the king of the other house. Fourteen senators, along with Agis, the king of the other house, declared that Pausanias was guilty; the rest of the court voted for his acquittal.

  [3.5.3] Shortly after this the Lacedaemonians gathered an army against Thebes; the reason for so doing will be given in my account of Agesilaus. On this occasion Lysander came to Phocis, took along with him the entire Phocian army, and without any further delay entered Boeotia and began assaults upon the wall of Haliartus, the citizens of which refused to revolt from Thebes. Already a band of Thebans and Athenians had secretly entered the city; these came out and offered battle before the wall, and there fell here several Lacedaemonians, including Lysander himself.

  [3.5.4] Pausanias was too late for the fight, having been collecting forces from Tegea and Arcadia generally; when he finally reached Boeotia, although he heard of the defeat of the forces with Lysander and of the death of Lysander himself, he nevertheless led his army against Thebes and purposed to take the offensive. Thereupon the Thebans offered battle, and Thrasybulus was reported to be not far away with the Athenians. He was waiting for the Lacedaemonians to take the offensive, on which his intention was to launch an attack himself against their rear.

  [3.5.5] So Pausanias, fearing lest he should be caught between two enemy forces, made a truce with the Thebans and took up for burial those who had fallen under the wall of Haliartus. The Lacedaemonians disapproved of this decision, but the following reason leads me to approve it. Pausanias was well aware that the disasters of the Lacedaemonians always took place when they had been caught between two enemy forces, and the defeats at Thermopylae and on the island of Sphacteria made him afraid lest he himself should prove the occasion of a third misfortune for them.

  [3.5.6] But when his fellow citizens charged him with his slowness in this Boeotian campaign, he did not wait to stand his trial, but was received by the people of Tegea as a suppliant of Athena Alea. Now this sanctuary had been respected from early days by all the Peloponnesians, and afforded peculiar safety to its suppliants, as the Lacedaemonians showed in the case of Pausanias and of Leotychides before him, and the Argives in the case of Chrysis; they never wanted even to ask for these refugees, who were sitting as suppliants in the sanctuary, to be given up.

  [3.5.7] When Pausanias fled, his sons Agesipolis and Cleombrotus were still quite boys, and Aristodemus, their nearest relative, was their guardian. This Aristodemus was in command of the Lacedaemonians when they won their success at Corinth.

  [3.5.8] When Agesipolis grew up and came to the throne, the first Peloponnesians against whom he waged war were the Argives. When he led his army from the territory of Tegea into that of Argos, the Argives sent a herald to make for them with Agesipolis a certain ancestral truce, which from ancient times had been an established custom between Dorians and Dorians. But Agesipolis did not make the truce with the herald, but advancing with his army proceeded to devastate the land. Then there was an earthquake, but not even so would Agesipolis consent to take away his forces. And yet more than any other Greeks were the Lacedaemonians (in this respect like the Athenians) frightened by signs from heaven.

  [3.5.9] By the time that he was encamping under the wall of Argos, the earthquakes were still occurring, some of the troops had actually been killed by lightning, and some moreover had been driven out of then senses by the thunder. In this circumstance he reluctantly withdrew from Argive territory, and began another campaign, attacking Olynthus. Victorious in the war, having captured most of the cities in Chalcidice, and hoping to capture Olynthus itself, he was suddenly attacked by a disease which ended in his death.

  [3.6.1] VI.As Agesipolis died childless, the kingdom devolved upon Cleombrotus, who was general in the battle at Leuctra against the Boeotians. Cleombrotus showed personal bravery, but fell when the battle was only just beginning. In great disasters Providence is peculiarly apt to cut off early the general, just as the Athenians lost Hippocrates the son of Ariphron, who commanded at Delium, and later on Leosthenes in Thessaly.

  [3.6.2] Agesipolis, the elder of the sons of Cleombrotus, is not a striking figure in history, and was succeeded by his younger brother Cleomenes. His first son was Acrotatus, his second Cleonymus. Acrotatus did not outlive his father, and when Cleomenes afterwards died, there arose a dispute about the throne between Cleonymus the son of Cleomenes and Areus the son of Acrotatus. So the senators acted as arbitrators, and decided that the dignity was the inheritance of Areus the son of Acrotatus, and not of Cleonymus.

  [3.6.3] Deprived of his kingship Cleonymus became violently angry, and the ephors tried to soothe his feelings by bestowing upon him various honors, especially the leadership of the armies, so as to prevent his becoming one day an enemy of Sparta. But at last he committed many hostile acts against his fatherla
nd, and induced Pyrrhus the son of Aeacides to invade Laconia.

  [3.6.4] While Areus the son of Acrotatus was king in Sparta, Antigonus the son of Demetrius attacked Athens with an army and a fleet. To the help of the Athenians there came the Egyptian expedition with Patroclus, and every available man of the Lacedaemonians with Areus their king at their head.

  [3.6.5] Antigonus invested Athens and prevented the Athenian reinforcements from entering the city; so Patroclus dispatched messengers urging Areus and the Lacedaemonians to take the offensive against Antigonus. On their doing so, he would himself, he said, attack the Macedonians in rear; but before such a move it was not fair for Egyptian sailors to attack Macedonians on land. The Lacedaemonians were eager to make the venture, both because of their friendship for Athens and also because they were ambitious to hand down to posterity a famous achievement,

  [3.6.6] but as their supplies were exhausted Areus led his army back home, thinking that desperate measures should be reserved for one’s own advantage and not risked recklessly for the benefit of others. After they had held out as long as they could, Antigonus made peace with the Athenians, on condition that he brought a garrison into the Museum to be a guard over them. After a time Antigonus himself removed the garrison from Athens of his own accord while Areus begat Acrotatus, and Acrotatus Areus, who died of disease when he was just about eight years old.

  [3.6.7] And as the only male representative of the house of Eurysthenes was Leonidas the son of Cleonymus, by this time a very old man, the Lacedaemonians gave him the throne. Leonidas, it so happened, had a bitter opponent in Lysander, a descendant of Lysander the son of Aristocritus. This Lysander won over to his side Leonidas’ son-in-law Cleombrotus. After gaining his support he brought various charges against Leonidas, in particular that when a boy he had sworn to his father Cleonymus to ruin Sparta.

  [3.6.8] So Leonidas ceased to be king and Cleombrotus came to the throne in his stead. Now if Leonidas had given way to impulse and retired, like Demaratus the son of Ariston, either to the king of Macedonia or to the Egyptian king, he would have profited nothing even by the Spartans changing their minds. But as it was, when the citizens sentenced him to exile, he went to Arcadia, whence not many years later he was recalled by the Lacedaemonians, who made him king again.

  [3.6.9] Now how Cleomenes the son of Leonidas performed daring feats of valor, and how after him the Spartans ceased to be ruled by kings, I have already shown in my account of Aratus of Sicyon. My narrative also included the manner of his death in Egypt.

  [3.7.1] VII. So of the family of Eurysthenes, called the Agiadae, Cleomenes the son of Leonidas was the last king in Sparta. I will now relate what I have heard about the other house. Procles the son of Aristodemus called his son Sous, whose son Eurypon they say reached such a pitch of renown that this house, hitherto called the Procleidae, came to be named after him the Eurypontidae.

  [3.7.2] The son of Eurypon was Prytanis, in whose reign began the enmity of the Lacedaemonians against the Argives, although even before this quarrel they made war against the Cynurians. During the generations immediately succeeding this, while Eunomus the son of Prytanis and Polydectes the son of Eunomus were on the throne, Sparta continued at peace,

  [3.7.3] but Charillus the son of Polydectes devastated the land of the Argives – for he it was who invaded Argolis – and not many years afterwards, under the leadership of Charillus, took place the campaign of the Spartans against Tegea, when lured on by a deceptive oracle the Lacedaemonians hoped to capture the city and to annex the Tegean plain from Arcadia.

  [3.7.4] After the death of Charillus, Nicander his son succeeded to the throne, in whose reign the Messenians murdered, in the sanctuary of the Lady of the Lake, Teleclus the king of the other house. Nicander also invaded Argolis with an army, and laid waste the greater part of the land. The Asinaeans took part in this action with the Lacedaemonians, and shortly after were punished by the Argives, who inflicted great destruction on their fatherland and drove out the inhabitants.

  [3.7.5] About Theopompus, the son of Nicander, who ascended the throne after him, I shall have more to say later on, when I come to the history of Messenia. While Theopompus was still king in Sparta there also took place the struggle of the Lacedaemonians with the Argives for what is called the Thyreatid district. Theopompus personally took no part in the affair, chiefly because of old age and sorrow, for while he was yet alive Archidamus died.

  [3.7.6] Nevertheless Archidamus did not die childless, but left a son Zeuxidamus, whose son Anaxidamus succeeded to the throne. In his reign the Messenians were expelled from the Peloponnesus, being vanquished for the second time by the Spartans. Anaxidamus begat Archidamus, and Archidamus begat Agesicles. It was the lot of both of these to pass all their lives in peace, undisturbed by any wars.

  [3.7.7] Ariston, son of Agesicles, married a wife who, they say, was the ugliest maiden in Sparta, but became the most beautiful of her women, because Helen changed her; seven months only after his marriage with her Ariston had born to him a son, Demaratus. As he was sitting in council with the ephors there came to him a servant with the news that a child was born to him. Ariston, forgetting the lines in the Iliad about the birth of Eurystheus, or else never having understood them at all, declared that because of the number of months the child was not his.

  [3.7.8] Afterwards he repented of his words. Demaratus, a king of good repute at Sparta, particularly for his helping Cleomenes to free Athens from the Peisistratidae, became a private citizen through the thoughtlessness of Ariston and the hatred of Cleomenes. He retired to king Dareius in Persia, and they say that his descendants remained in Asia for a long time.

  [3.7.9] Leotychides, on coming to the throne in place of Demaratus, took part with the Athenians and the Athenian general Xanthippus, the son of Ariphron, in the engagement of Mycale, and afterwards undertook a campaign against the Aleuadae in Thessaly. Although his uninterrupted victories in the fighting might have enabled him to reduce all Thessaly, he accepted bribes from the Aleuadae.

  [3.7.10] Or, being brought to trial in Lacedaemon he voluntarily went into exile to Tegea, where he sought sanctuary as a suppliant of Athena Alea. Zeuxidamus, the son of Leotychides, died of disease while Leotychides was still alive and before he retired into exile so his son Archidamus succeeded to the throne after the departure of Leotychides for Tegea. This Archidamus did terrible damage to the land of the Athenians, invading Attica with an army every year, on each occasion carrying destruction from end to end; he also besieged and took Plataea, which was friendly to Athens.

  [3.7.11] Nevertheless he was not eager that war should be declared between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, but to the utmost of his power tried to keep the truce between them unbroken. It was Sthenelaidas, an influential Spartan who was an ephor at the time, who was chiefly responsible for the war. Greece, that still stood firm, was shaken to its foundations by this war, and afterwards, when the structure had given way and was far from sound, was finally overthrown by Philip the son of Amyntas.

  AGIS OF SPARTA, HISTORY

  [3.8.1] VIII. Archidamus left sons when he died, of whom Agis was the elder and inherited the throne instead of Agesilaus. Archidamus had also a daughter, whose name was Cynisca; she was exceedingly ambitious to succeed at the Olympic games, and was the first woman to breed horses and the first to win an Olympic victory. After Cynisca other women, especially women of Lacedaemon, have won Olympic victories, but none of them was more distinguished for their victories than she.

  [3.8.2] The Spartans seem to me to be of all men the least moved by poetry and the praise of poets. For with the exception of the epigram upon Cynisca, of uncertain authorship, and the still earlier one upon Pausanias that Simonides wrote on the tripod dedicated at Delphi, there is no poetic composition to commemorate the doings of the royal houses of the Lacedaemonians.

  [3.8.3] In the reign of Agis the son of Archidamus the Lacedaemonians had several grievances against the people of Elis, being especiall
y exasperated because they were debarred from the Olympic games and the sanctuary at Olympia. So they dispatched a herald commanding the people of Elis to grant home-rule to Lepreum and to any other of their neighbors that were subject to them. The people of Elis replied that, when they saw the cities free that were neighbors of Sparta, they would without delay set free their own subjects; whereupon the Lacedaemonians under king Agis invaded the territory of Elis.

  [3.8.4] On this occasion there occurred an earthquake, and the army retired home after advancing as far as Olympia and the Alpheus but in the next year Agis devastated the country and carried off most of the booty. Xenias, a man of Elis who was a personal friend of Agis and the state-friend of the Lacedaemonians, rose up with the rich citizens against the people but before Agis and his army could come to their aid, Thrasydaeus, who at this time championed the interests of the popular party at Elis, overthrew in battle Xenias and his followers and cast them out of the city.

  [3.8.5] When Agis led back his army, he left behind Lysistratus, a Spartan, with a portion of his forces, along with the Elean refugees, that they might help the Lepreans to ravage the land. In the third year of the war the Lacedaemonians under Agis again prepared to invade the territory of Elis. So Thrasydaeus and the Eleans, reduced to dire extremities, agreed to forgo their supremacy over their neighbors, to dismantle the fortifications of their city, and to allow the Lacedaemonians to sacrifice to the god and to compete in the games at Olympia.

  [3.8.6] Agis used also to make continual incursions into Attica, and established the fortified post at Decelea to annoy the Athenians. When the Athenian navy was destroyed at Aegospotami, Lysander, the son of Aristocritus, and Agis violated the oaths which the Lacedaemonians as a state had sworn by the gods to the Athenians, and it was on their own initiative, and without the approval of the Spartan state, that they put before their allies the proposal to destroy Athens root and branch.