134.
The Ephors, who had heard every word, went away for the present,
intending, now that
they1 had certain knowledge, to take Pausanias in the city.
It is said that he was on the point of being arrested in the street, when the face of
one of them as they approached revealed to him their purpose, and another who was
friendly warned him by a hardly perceptible nod. Whereupon he ran and fled to the temple of Athenè of the Brazen House and
arrived before them,
for the precinct was not far off.
There, entering into a small chamber which belonged to the temple, that he might not
suffer from exposure to the weather, he remained.
[2]
His pursuers, failing to overtake him,
afterwards unroofed the building,
and watching
when he was within, and preventing him from getting out, they built up the doors,
and,
investing the place, starved him to death.
[3]
He was on the point of expiring in the chamber where he lay, when they, observing his
condition, brought him out; he was still breathing,
but as soon as he was brought out he died.
[4]
The Spartans were going to cast his body into the Caeadas, a chasm into which they
throw malefactors, but they changed their minds and buried him somewhere in
the neighbourhood.
The God of Delphi afterwards come manded them to transfer him to the place where he
died,
and he now lies in the entrance to the precinct, as the inscription on the column
testifies.
The oracle also told them that they had brought a curse upon themselves, and must offer
two bodies for one to Athenè of the Brazen House.
Whereupon they made two brazen statues, which they dedicated, intending them to be an
expiation for Pausanias.
1 The Ephors attempt to arrest Pausanias. He flies to the temple of Athenè and is there shut in and starved to death.
Thucydides translated into English; with introduction, marginal analysis, notes, and indices. Volume 1. Thucydides. Benjamin Jowett. translator. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1881.
This text was converted to electronic form by optical character recognition and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.