Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
History
Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.
Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
Greece -- Antiquities; Greece -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
Plistarchus the son of Leonidas died soon after succeeding to the
kingdom, and Plistoanax the son of Pausanias, the hero of Platæa,
succeeded him. And Plistoanax was succeeded by his son Pausanias. This
is that Pausanias who led an army into Attica, ostensibly against
Thrasybulus and the Athenians, but really to establish the dominion
of the Thirty Tyrants who had been set over Athens by Lysander. And
he conquered in an engagement the Athenians who guarded the Piræus,
but directly after the battle he took his army off home again, not to
bring upon Sparta the most shameful disgrace of establishing the power
of unholy men. And when he returned from Athens with nothing to show
for his battle, his enemies brought him to trial. Now a king of the
Lacedæmonians is tried by a court composed of twenty-eight Seniors,
and the Ephors, and the King of the other family. Fourteen of the
Seniors and Agis, the King of the other family, condemned Pausanias,
the rest of the Court acquitted him. And no long time after the
Lacedæmonians gathering together an army against Thebes, the reason
for which war we shall relate in our account about Agesilaus, Lysander
marched into Phocis, and, having mustered the Phocians in full force,
lost no time in advancing into Bœotia, and making an attack upon the
fortified town Haliartus, which would not revolt from Thebes. Some
Thebans however and Athenians had secretly entered the town, and they
making a sally and drawing up in battle array, Lysander and several
of the Lacedæmonians fell. And Pausanias, who had been collecting
forces from Tegea and the rest of Arcadia, came too late to take part
in the fight, and when he got to Bœotia and heard of the death of
Lysander and the defeat of his army, he nevertheless marched his army
to Thebes, intending to renew the fight there. But when he got there
he found the Thebans drawn up in battle array against him, and it was
also reported that Thrasybulus was coming up with an Athenian force;
accordingly, fearing to be taken between two fires, he made a treaty
with the Thebans, and buried those who had fallen in the sally from
Haliartus. This conduct of his did not please the Lacedæmonians, but
I praise his determination for the following reason. Well knowing
that reverses always found the Lacedæmonians surrounded by a swarm of
enemies, what happened after Thermopylæ and in the island of Sphacteria
made him afraid of causing a third disaster. But as the citizens
accused him of slowness in getting to Bœotia he did not care to stand
a second trial, but the people of Tegea received him as a suppliant
at the temple of Alean Athene. This temple was from time immemorial
venerated throughout the Peloponnese, and afforded safety to all
suppliants, as was shewn by the Lacedæmonians to Pausanias, and earlier
still to Leotychides, and by the Argives to Chrysis, who all took
sanctuary here, and were not demanded up. And after the voluntary exile
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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