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Lysander, who took an active part in promoting the war, was directed to attack the town of Haliartus; and it was arranged that King Pausanias should join him on a fixed day under the walls of that town, with the main body of the Lacedaemonians and their Peloponnesian allies.
They were, about this time, when they held possession of most of Greece, emulating the Pisan taste for Greek sculptures; and the four fine lions standing at the gate of the arsenal in Venice still testify to their zeal in carrying home Greek trophies to adorn their capital. In its great day, and even as Pausanias saw it, the Acropolis was covered with statues, as well as with shrines.
In the character, therefore, of a man like Pausanias, risking so much glory, daring so much peril, strong indeed must have been this sanguine motive power of human action. Nor is a large and active development of hope incompatible with a temperament habitually grave and often profoundly melancholy. For hope itself is often engendered by discontent.
Interference of Sparta with respect to the Fortifications of Athens. Dexterous Conduct of Themistocles. The New Harbour of the Piraeus. Proposition of the Spartans in the Amphictyonic Council defeated by Themistocles. Allied Fleet at Cyprus and Byzantium. Pausanias. Alteration in his Character. His ambitious Views and Treason. The Revolt of the Ionians from the Spartan Command. Pausanias recalled.
It is true that these early images attributed to Daedalus showed already a considerable advance on the shapeless or roughly shaped stocks or stones that had served as the most primitive objects of worship; but it was their resemblance to these rather than their difference from them that impressed the imagination of Pausanias.
Xerxes was highly delighted with this letter, and sent a reply in which he urged Pausanias to pursue his project night and day, and promised to supply him with all the money and troops that might be needful for its execution. But the childish vanity of Pausanias betrayed his plot before it was ripe for execution.
When Pausanias went about this treasonable design, he concealed it at first from Themistocles, though he were his intimate friend; but when he saw him expelled out of the commonwealth, and how impatiently he took his banishment, he ventured to communicate it to him, and desired his assistance, showing him the king of Persia's letters, and exasperating him against the Greeks, as a villainous, ungrateful people.
It was men of this stamp that the Grecian States used to ask of Sparta for generals. They did not send to Lacedaemon for troops, but they said, "Send us a commander"; and Pausanias, or Gylippus, or Brasidas, or Agis, was despatched by the Ephors.
Pausanias paused a moment in deep and perturbed thought. "Have they dared yet, think you, to send to Sparta?" "I hear not; but a trireme is in readiness to sail after your conference with the captains." "So, Alcman, it were ruin to my schemes to be recalled until until " "The hour to join the Persians on the frontier yes." "One word more. Have you had occasion to sound the Helots?"
XVIII. And still sacrifice after sacrifice seemed to forbid the battle, when Pausanias, lifting his eyes, that streamed with tears, to the temple of Juno that stood hard by, supplicated the tutelary goddess of Cithaeron, that if the fates forbade the Greeks to conquer, they might at least fall like warriors . And while uttering this prayer, the tokens waited for became suddenly visible in the victims, and the augurs announced the promise of coming victory.
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