272 HISTORY OF GREECE. out this dangerous correspondence, — he was at length rewarded with nothing better than the same miserable fate which had be- fallen the previous messengers. Pausanias, admitting all these facts, tried to appease the slave's disquietude, and gave him a solemn assurance of safety if he would quit the sanctuary; urging him at the same time to proceed on the journey forthwith, in order that the schemes in progress might not be retarded. All this passed within the hearing of the concealed ephors ; who at length thoroughly satisfied, determined to arrest Pausa- nias immediately on his return to Sparta. They met him in the public street, not far from the temple of Athene Chalkicekus (or of the Brazen House) ; but as they came near, either their men- acing looks, or a significant nod from one of them, revealed to this guilty man their purpose ; and he fled for refuge to the temple, which was so near that he reached it before they could overtake him. He planted himself as a suppliant, far more hopeless than the Argilian slave whom he had so recently talked over at Ta^narus, in a narrow-roofed chamber belonging to the sacred building; where the ephors, not warranted in touching him, took off the roof, built up the doors, and kept watch until he was on the point of death by starvation. According to a cur- rent story,! — not recognized by Thucydides, yet consistent with Spartan manners, — his own mother was the person who placed the first stone to build up the door, in deep abhorrence of his trea- son. His last moments being carefully observed, he was brought away just in time to expire without, and thus to avoid the desecra- tion of the temple. The first impulse of the ephors was to cast' his body into the ravine, or hollow, called the Kaeadas, the usual place of punishment for criminals : probably, his powerful friends averted this disgrace, and he was buried not far off, until, some time afterwards, under the mandate of the Delphian oracle, his body was exhumed and transported to the exact spot where he had died. Nor was the oracle satisfied even with this reinter- ment : pronouncing the whole proceeding to be a profanation of the sanctity of Athene, it enjoined that two bodies should be presented to her as an atonement for the one carried away. In the very early days of Greece, — or among the Carthaginians^ ' Diodor. xi, 45 ; Cornel. Nepos, Pausan. c. 5 ; Polysen. viii, 51
