Ionic settlements to the barbarians, could not but bequeath a lasting
resentment to those proud and polished colonies.

XIV. Aware of the offence he had given, and disgusted himself alike
with his allies and his country, the Spartan chief became driven by
nature and necessity to a dramatic situation, which a future Schiller
may perhaps render yet more interesting than the treason of the
gorgeous Wallenstein, to whose character that of Pausanias has been
indirectly likened [134]. The capture of Byzantium brought the
Spartan regent into contact with many captured and noble Persians
[135], among whom were some related to Xerxes himself. With these
conversing, new and dazzling views were opened to his ambition. He
could not but recall the example of Demaratus, whose exile from the
barren dignities of Sparta had procured him the luxuries and the
splendour of oriental pomp, with the delegated authority of three of
the fairest cities of Aeolia. Greater in renown than Demaratus, he
was necessarily more aspiring in his views. Accordingly, he privately
released his more exalted prisoners, pretending they had escaped, and
finally explained whatever messages he had intrusted by them to
Xerxes, in a letter to the king, confided to an Eretrian named
Gongylus, who was versed in the language and the manners of Persia,
and to whom he had already deputed the government of Byzantium. In
this letter Pausanias offered to assist the king in reducing Sparta
and the rest of Greece to the Persian yoke, demanding, in recompense,
the hand of the king's daughter, with an adequate dowry of possessions
and of power.

XV. The time had passed when a Persian monarch could deride the
loftiness of a Spartan's pretensions--Xerxes received the
communications with delight, and despatched Artabazus to succeed