Pausanias, the Spartan by Lord Lytton

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"Your suggestions shall be law. May Ormuzd favour the bold!"

"Away, Gongylus. You know the rest."

Pausanias followed with thoughtful eyes the receding forms of Gongylus
and the Barbarians.

"I have passed for ever," he muttered, "the pillars of Hercules. I
must go on or perish. If I fall, I die execrated and abhorred; if I
succeed, the sound of the choral flutes will drown the hootings. Be it
as it may, I do not and will not repent. If the wolf gnaw my entrails,
none shall hear me groan." He turned and met the eyes of Alcman, fixed
on him so intently, so exultingly, that, wondering at their strange
expression, he drew back and said haughtily, "You imitate Medusa, but
I am stone already."

"Nay," said the Mothon, in a voice of great humility, "if you are of
stone, it is like the divine one which, when borne before armies,
secures their victory. Blame me not that I gazed on you with triumph
and hope. For, while you conferred with the Persian, methought the
murmurs that reached my ear sounded thus: 'When Pausanias shall rise,
Sparta shall bend low, and the Helot shall break his chains.'"

"They do not hate me, these Helots?"

"You are the only Spartan they love."

"Were my life in danger from the Ephors--"

"The Helots would rise to a man."

"Did I plant my standard on Taygetus, though all Sparta encamped
against it--"

"All the slaves would cut their way to thy side. O Pausanias, think
how much nobler it were to reign over tens of thousands who become
freemen at thy word, than to be but the equal of 10,000 tyrants."

"The Helots fight well, when well led," said Pausanias; as if to
himself. "Launch the boat."

"Pardon me, Pausanias. but is it prudent any longer to trust Lysander?
He is the pattern of the Spartan youth, and Sparta is his mistress. He
loves her too well not to blab to her every secret."

"O Sparta, Sparta, wilt thou not leave me one friend?" exclaimed
Pausanias. "No, Alcman, I will not separate myself from Lysander, till
I despair of his alliance. To your oars! be quick."

At the sound of the Mothon's tread upon the pebbles, Lysander, who had
hitherto remained motionless, reclining by the boat, rose and advanced
towards Pausanias. There was in his countenance, as the moon shining
on it cast over his statue-like features a pale and marble hue, so
much of anxiety, of affection, of fear, so much of the evident,
unmistakable solicitude of friendship, that Pausanias, who, like most
men, envied and unloved, was susceptible even of the semblance of
attachment, muttered to himself, "No, thou wilt not desert me, nor I
thee."

"My friend, my Pausanias," said Lysander, as he approached, "I have
had fears--I have seen omens. Undertake nothing, I beseech thee, which
thou hast meditated this night."

"And what hast thou seen?" said Pausanias, with a slight change of
countenance.

"I was praying the Gods for thee and Sparta, when a star shot suddenly
from the heavens. Pausanias, this is the eighth year, the year in
which on moonless nights the Ephors watch the heavens."

"And if a star fall they judge their kings," interrupted Pausanias
(with a curl of his haughty lip) "to have offended the Gods, and
suspend them from their office till acquitted by an oracle at Delphi,
or a priest at Olympia. A wise superstition. But, Lysander, the night
is not moonless, and the omen is therefore nought."

Lysander shook his head mournfully, and followed his chieftain to the
boat, in gloomy silence.

Note:

[24] After the action at Thermopylae, Demaratus advised Xerxes to send
three hundred vessels to the Laconian coast, and seize the island of
Cythera, which commanded Sparta. "The profound experience of Demaratus
in the selfish and exclusive policy of his countrymen made him argue
that if this were done the fear of Sparta for herself would prevent
her joining the forces of the rest of Greece, and leave the latter a
more easy prey to the invader."--_Athens, its Rise and Fall_. This
advice was overruled by Achaemenes. So again, had the advice of
Artemisia, the Carian princess, been taken--to delay the naval
engagement of Salamis, and rather to sail to the Peloponnesus--the
Greeks, failing of provisions and divided among themselves, would
probably have dispersed.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

At noon the next day, not only the vessels in the harbour presented
the same appearance of inactivity and desertion which had
characterised the preceding evening, but the camp itself seemed
forsaken. Pausanias had quitted his ship for the citadel, in which
he took up his lodgment when on shore: and most of the officers
and sailors of the squadron were dispersed among the taverns and
wine-shops, for which, even at that day, Byzantium was celebrated.

It was in one of the lowest and most popular of these latter resorts,
and in a large and rude chamber, or rather outhouse, separated from
the rest of the building, that a number of the Laconian Helots were
assembled. Some of these were employed as sailors, others were the
military attendants on the Regent and the Spartans who accompanied
him.

At the time we speak of, these unhappy beings were in the full
excitement of that wild and melancholy gaiety which is almost peculiar
to slaves in their hours of recreation, and in which reaction of
wretchedness modern writers have discovered the indulgence of a native
humour. Some of them were drinking deep, wrangling, jesting, laughing
in loud discord over their cups. At another table rose the deep voice
of a singer, chanting one of those antique airs known but to these
degraded sons of the Homeric Achaean, and probably in its origin
going beyond the date of the Tale of Troy; a song of gross and rustic
buffoonery, but ever and anon charged with some image or thought
worthy of that language of the universal Muses. His companions
listened with a rude delight to the rough voice and homely sounds, and
now and then interrupted the wassailers at the other tables by cries
for silence, which none regarded. Here and there, with intense and
fierce anxiety on their faces, small groups were playing at dice; for
gambling is the passion of slaves. And many of these men, to whom
wealth could bring no comfort, had secretly amassed large hoards at
the plunder of Plataea, from which they had sold to the traders of
Aegina gold at the price of brass. The appearance of the rioters was
startling and melancholy. They were mostly stunted and undersized,
as are generally the progeny of the sons of woe; lean and gaunt with
early hardship, the spine of the back curved and bowed by habitual
degradation; but with the hard-knit sinews and prominent muscles which
are produced by labour and the mountain air; and under shaggy and
lowering brows sparkled many a fierce, perfidious, and malignant eye;
while as mirth, or gaming, or song, aroused smiles in the various
groups, the rude features spoke of passions easily released from the
sullen bondage of servitude, and revealed the nature of the animals
which thraldom had failed to tame. Here and there however were to be
seen forms, unlike the rest, of stately stature, of fair proportions,
wearing the divine lineaments of Grecian beauty. From some of these a
higher nature spoke out, not in mirth, that last mockery of supreme
woe, but in an expression of stern, grave, and disdainful melancholy;
others, on the contrary, surpassed the rest in vehemence, clamour,
and exuberant extravagance of emotion, as if their nobler physical
development only served to entitle them to that base superiority.
For health and vigour can make an aristocracy even among Helots. The
garments of these merrymakers increased the peculiar effect of their
general appearance. The Helots in military excursions naturally
relinquished the rough sheep-skin dress that characterised their
countrymen at home, the serfs of the soil. The sailors had thrown off,
for coolness, the leathern jerkins they habitually wore, and, with
their bare arms and breasts, looked as if of a race that yet shivered,
primitive and unredeemed, on the outskirts of civilization.

Strangely contrasted with their rougher comrades, were those who,
placed occasionally about the person of the Regent, were indulged with
the loose and clean robes of gay colours worn by the Asiatic slaves;
and these ever and anon glanced at their finery with an air of
conscious triumph. Altogether, it was a sight that might well have
appalled, by its solemn lessons of human change, the poet who would
have beheld in that embruted flock the descendants of the race over
whom Pelops and Atreus, and Menelaus, and Agamemnon the king of men,
had held their antique sway, and might still more have saddened the
philosopher who believed, as Menander has nobly written, 'That Nature
knows no slaves.'

Suddenly, in the midst of the confused and uproarious hubbub, the door
opened, and Alcman the Mothon entered the chamber. At this sight the
clamour ceased in an instant. The party rose, as by a general impulse,
and crowded round the new comer.

"My friends," said he, regarding them with the same calm and frigid
indifference which usually characterised his demeanour, "you do well
to make merry while you may, for something tells me it will not last
long. We shall return to Lacedaemon. You look black. So, then, is
there no delight in the thought of home?"

"_Home!_" muttered one of the Helots, and the word, sounding drearily
on his lips, was echoed by many, so that it circled like a groan.

"Yet ye have your children as much as if ye were free," said Alcman.

"And for that reason it pains us to see them play, unaware of the
future," said a Helot of better mien than his comrades.

"But do you know," returned the Mothon, gazing on the last speaker
steadily, "that for your children there may not be a future fairer
than that which your fathers knew?"

"Tush!" exclaimed one of the unhappy men, old before his time, and
of an aspect singularly sullen and ferocious. "Such have been your
half-hints and mystic prophecies for years. What good comes of them?
Was there ever an oracle for Helots?"

"There was no repute in the oracles even of Apollo," returned Alcman,
"till the Apollo-serving Dorians became conquerors. Oracles are the
children of victories."

"But there are no victories for us," said the first speaker
mournfully.

"Never, if ye despair," said the Mothon loftily. "What," he added
after a pause, looking round at the crowd, "what, do ye not see that
hope dawned upon us from the hour when thirty-five thousand of us were
admitted as soldiers, ay, and as conquerors, at Plataea? From that
moment we knew our strength. Listen to me. At Samos once a thousand
slaves--mark me, but a thousand,--escaped the yoke--seized on arms,
fled to the mountains (we have mountains even in Laconia), descended
from time to time to devastate the fields and to harass their
ancient lords. By habit they learned war, by desperation they grew
indomitable. What became of these slaves? were they cut off? Did they
perish by hunger, by the sword, in the dungeon or field? No; those
brave men were the founders of Ephesus."[25]

"But the Samians were not Spartans," mumbled the old Helot.

"As ye will, as ye will," said Alcman, relapsing into his usual
coldness. "I wish you never to strike unless ye are prepared to die or
conquer."

"Some of us are," said the younger Helot.

"Sacrifice a cock to the Fates, then."

"But why, think you," asked one of the Helots, "that we shall be so
soon summoned back to Laconia?"

"Because while ye are drinking and idling here--drones that ye
are--there is commotion in the Athenian bee-hive yonder. Know that
Ariamanes the Persian and Datis the Mede have escaped. The allies,
especially the Athenians, are excited and angry; and many of them are
already come in a body to Pausanias, whom they accuse of abetting the
escape of the fugitives."

"Well?"

"Well, and if Pausanias does not give honey in his words,--and few
flowers grow on his lips--the bees will sting, that is all. A trireme
will be despatched to Sparta with complaints. Pausanias will be
recalled--perhaps his life endangered."

"Endangered!" echoed several voices.

"Yes. What is that to you--what care you for his danger? He is a
Spartan."

"Ay," cried one; "but he has been kind to the Helots."

"And we have fought by his side," said another.

"And he dressed my wound with his own hand," murmured a third.

"And we have got money under him," growled a fourth.

"And more than all," said Alcman, in a loud voice, "if he lives, he
will break down the Spartan government. Ye will not let this man die?"

"Never!" exclaimed the whole assembly. Alcman gazed with a kind of
calm and strange contempt on the flashing eyes, the fiery gestures of
the throng, and then said, coldly,

"So then ye would fight for one man?"

"Ay, ay, that would we."

"But not for your own liberties, and those of your children unborn?"

There was a dead silence; but the taunt was felt, and its logic was
already at work in many of these rugged breasts.

At this moment, the door was suddenly thrown open; and a Helot, in the
dress worn by the attendants of the Regent, entered, breathless and
panting.

"Alcman! the gods be praised you are here. Pausanias commands your
presence. Lose not a moment. And you too, comrades, by Demeter, do you
mean to spend whole days at your cups? Come to the citadel; ye may be
wanted."

This was spoken to such of the Helots as belonged to the train of
Pausanias.

"Wanted--what for?" said one. "Pausanias gives us a holiday while he
employs the sleek Egyptians."

"Who that serves Pausanias ever asks that question, or can foresee
from one hour to another what he may be required to do?" returned the
self-important messenger, with great contempt.

Meanwhile the Mothon, all whose movements were peculiarly silent and
rapid, was already on his way to the citadel. The distance was not
inconsiderable, but Alcman was swift of foot. Tightening the girdle
round his waist, he swung himself, as it were, into a kind of run,
which, though not seemingly rapid, cleared the ground with a speed
almost rivalling that of the ostrich, from the length of the stride
and the extreme regularity of the pace. Such was at that day the
method by which messages were despatched from state to state,
especially in mountainous countries; and the length of way which was
performed, without stopping, by the foot-couriers might startle the
best-trained pedestrians in our times. So swiftly indeed did the
Mothon pursue his course, that just by the citadel he came up with the
Grecian captains who, before he joined the Helots, had set off for
their audience with Pausanias. There were some fourteen or fifteen
of them, and they so filled up the path, which, just there, was not
broad, that Alcman was obliged to pause as he came upon their rear.

"And whither so fast, fellow?" said Uliades the Samian, turning round
as he heard the strides of the Mothon.

"Please you, master, I am bound to the General."

"Oh, his slave! Is he going to free you?"

"I am already as free as a man who has no city can be."

"Pithy. The Spartan slaves have the dryness of their masters. How,
sirrah! do you jostle me?"

"I crave pardon. I only seek to pass."

"Never! to take precedence of a Samian. Keep back."

"I dare not."

"Nay, nay, let him pass," said the young Chian, Antagoras; "he will
get scourged if he is too late. Perhaps, like the Persians, Pausanias
wears false hair, and wishes the slave to dress it in honour of us."
"Hush!" whispered an Athenian. "Are these taunts prudent?"

Here there suddenly broke forth a loud oath from Uliades, who,
lingering a little behind the rest, had laid rough hands on the
Mothon, as the latter once more attempted to pass him. With a
dexterous and abrupt agility, Alcman had extricated himself from the
Samian's grasp, but with a force that swung the captain on his knee.
Taking advantage of the position of the foe, the Mothon darted onward,
and threading the rest of the party, disappeared through the
neighbouring gates of the citadel.

"You saw the insult?" said Uliades between his ground teeth as he
recovered himself. "The master shall answer for the slave; and to me,
too, who have forty slaves of my own at home!"

"Pooh! think no more of it," said Antagoras gaily; "the poor fellow
meant only to save his own hide."

"As if that were of any consequence! my slaves are brought up from the
cradle not to know if they have hides or not. You may pinch them by
the hour together and they don't feel you. My little ones do it, in
rainy weather, to strengthen their fingers. The Gods keep them!"

"An excellent gymnastic invention. But we are now within the citadel.
Courage! the Spartan greyhound has long teeth."

Pausanias was striding with hasty steps up and down a long and narrow
peristyle or colonnade that surrounded the apartments appropriated to
his private use, when Alcman joined him.

"Well, well," cried he, eagerly, as he saw the Mothon, "you have
mingled with the common gangs of these worshipful seamen, these new
men, these Ionians. Think you they have so far overcome their awe
of the Spartan that they would obey the mutinous commands of their
officers?"

"Pausanias, the truth must be spoken--Yes!"

"Ye Gods! one would think each of these wranglers imagined he had a
whole Persian army in his boat. Why, I have seen the day when, if in
any assembly of Greeks a Spartan entered, the sight of his very hat
and walking-staff cast a terror through the whole conclave." "True,
Pausanias; but they suspect that Sparta herself will disown her
General."

"Ah! say they so?"

"With one voice."

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?"

"But half an hour since. They will be true to you. Lift your right
hand, and the ground where you stand will bristle with men who fear
death even less than the Spartans."

"Their aid were useless here against the whole Grecian fleet; but in
the defiles of Laconia, otherwise. I am prepared then for the worst,
even recall."

Here a slave crossed from a kind of passage that led from the outer
chambers into the peristyle.

"The Grecian captains have arrived to demand audience."

"Bid them wait," cried Pausanias, passionately.

"Hist! Pausanias," whispered the Mothon. "Is it not best to soothe
them--to play with them--to cover the lion with the fox's hide?"

The Regent turned with a frown to his foster-brother, as if surprised
and irritated by his presumption in advising; and indeed of late,
since Pausanias had admitted the son of the Helot into his guilty
intrigues, Alcman had assumed a bearing and tone of equality which
Pausanias, wrapped in his dark schemes, did not always notice, but at
which from time to time he chafed angrily, yet again permitted it,
and the custom gained ground; for in guilt conventional distinctions
rapidly vanish, and mind speaks freely out to mind. The presence of
the slave, however, restrained him, and after a momentary silence his
natural acuteness, great when undisturbed by passion or pride, made
him sensible of the wisdom of Alcman's counsel.

"Hold!" he said to the slave. "Announce to the Grecian Chiefs that
Pausanias will await them forthwith. Begone. Now, Alcman, I will
talk over these gentle monitors. Not in vain have I been educated in
Sparta; yet if by chance I fail, hold thyself ready to haste to Sparta
at a minute's warning. I must forestall the foe. I have gold, gold;
and he who employs most of the yellow orators, will prevail most with
the Ephors. Give me my staff; and tarry in yon chamber to the left."

Note:

[25] Malacus ap. Athen. 6.

CHAPTER II

In a large hall, with a marble fountain in the middle of it, the
Greek captains awaited the coming of Pausanias. A low and muttered
conversation was carried on amongst them, in small knots and groups,
amidst which the voice of Uliades was heard the loudest. Suddenly the
hum was hushed, for footsteps were heard without. The thick curtains
that at one extreme screened the door-way were drawn aside, and,
attended by three of the Spartan knights, amongst whom was Lysander,
and by two soothsayers, who were seldom absent, in war or warlike
council, from the side of the Royal Heracleid, Pausanias slowly
entered the hall. So majestic, grave, and self-collected were the
bearing and aspect of the Spartan general, that the hereditary awe
inspired by his race was once more awakened, and the angry crowd
saluted him, silent and half-abashed. Although the strong passions,
and the daring arrogance of Pausanias, did not allow him the exercise
of that enduring, systematic, unsleeping hypocrisy which, in relations
with the foreigner, often characterised his countrymen, and which,
from its outward dignity and profound craft, exalted the vice into
genius; yet trained from earliest childhood in the arts that hide
design, that control the countenance, and convey in the fewest words
the most ambiguous meanings, the Spartan general could, for a brief
period, or for a critical purpose, command all the wiles for which the
Greek was nationally famous, and in which Thucydides believed that,
of all Greeks, the Spartan was the most skilful adept. And now, as,
uniting the courtesy of the host with the dignity of the chief, he
returned the salute of the officers, and smiled his gracious welcome,
the unwonted affability of his manner took the discontented by
surprise, and half propitiated the most indignant in his favour.

"I need not ask you, O Greeks," said he, "why ye have sought me.
Ye have learnt the escape of Ariamanes and Datis--a strange and
unaccountable mischance."

The captains looked round at each other in silence, till at last every
eye rested upon Cimon, whose illustrious birth, as well as his known
respect for Sparta, combined with his equally well-known dislike of
her chief, seemed to mark him, despite his youth, as the fittest
person to be speaker for the rest. Cimon, who understood the mute
appeal, and whose courage never failed his ambition, raised his head,
and, after a moment's hesitation, replied to the Spartan:

"Pausanias, you guess rightly the cause which leads us to your
presence. These prisoners were our noblest; their capture the reward
of our common valour; they were generals, moreover, of high skill and
repute. They had become experienced in our Grecian warfare, even by
their defeats. Those two men, should Xerxes again invade Greece, are
worth more to his service than half the nations whose myriads crossed
the Hellespont. But this is not all. The arms of the Barbarians we can
encounter undismayed. It is treason at home which can alone appal us."

There was a low murmur among the Ionians at these words. Pausanias,
with well-dissembled surprise on his countenance, turned his eyes from
Cimon to the murmurers, and from them again to Cimon, and repeated:

"Treason! son of Miltiades; and from whom?"

"Such is the question that we would put to thee, Pausanias--to thee,
whose eyes, as leader of our armies, are doubtless vigilant daily and
nightly over the interests of Greece."

"I am not blind," returned Pausanias, appearing unconscious of the
irony; "but I am not Argus. If thou hast discovered aught that is
hidden from me, speak boldly."

"Thou hast made Gongylus, the Eretrian, governor of Byzantium; for
what great services we know not. But he has lived much in Persia."

"For that reason, on this the frontier of her domains, he is better
enabled to penetrate her designs and counteract her ambition."

"This Gongylus," continued Cimon, "is well known to have much
frequented the Persian captives in their confinement."

"In order to learn from them what may yet be the strength of the king.
In this he had my commands."

"I question it not. But, Pausanias," continued Cimon, raising his
voice, and with energy, "had he also thy commands to leave thy galley
last night, and to return to the citadel?"

"He had. What then?"

"And on his return the Persians disappear--a singular chance, truly.
But that is not all. Last night, before he returned to the citadel,
Gongylus was perceived, alone, in a retired spot on the outskirts of
the city."

"Alone?" echoed Pausanias.

"Alone. If he had companions they were not discerned. This spot was
out of the path he should have taken. By this spot, on the soft soil,
are the marks of hoofs, and in the thicket close by were found these
witnesses," and Cimon drew from his vest a handful of the pearls, only
worn by the Eastern captives.

"There is something in this," said Xanthippus, "which requires at
least examination. May it please you, Pausanias, to summon Gongylus
hither?"

A momentary shade passed over the brow of the conspirator, but the
eyes of the Greeks were on him; and to refuse were as dangerous as to
comply. He turned to one of his Spartans, and ordered him to summon
the Eretrian.

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