Pleistoanax
Pleistoanax was the son of Pausanias, regent in the beginning of the reign of his nephew Pleistarchus (r. 480–459) until his murder by the ephors, possibly in 467/6, allegedly for Medism.
[2][3] At the time of Pleistoanax's accession, Greece was torn by the First Peloponnesian War (460–445 BC), a series of minor conflicts between Sparta and Athens and their respective allies.
In 457 Pleistoanax's uncle and regent Nicomedes commanded a large army of 1500 Spartans and 10,000 allies to help Doris to repel an attack from Phokis.
[12] Pericles swiftly returned to the mainland when he heard that Pleistoanax had passed through the Isthmus and Megara to Athens, and was ravaging the area around Eleusis in Attica.
Pericles abandoned all Athenian claims on the Greek mainland (apart from its own civic territory) and withdrew the garrisons from Megara, Troezen, and Achaia; the Spartan army then returned home.
Plutarch tells that Pericles listed the sum of ten talents (about 260kg of silver) in his accounts for his year of office, which would therefore be the money used to buy the Spartans.
[23] Although some modern scholars consider that Pleistoanax could have been sentenced to death,[24] most think he was only fined 15 talents; the king nevertheless refused to pay and went into exile.
[29] In order to escape punishment, Pleistoanax tried a different strategy from that used by his father, who, although a suppliant in the Bronze House of Athena in Sparta, was starved to death by the ephors in this temple.
The king left Laconia to Mount Lykaion in the territory of Parrhasia, a small city in Arcadia, where he built a house on the sacred ground of Zeus Lycaeus.
[34] The choice to name his son after his father shows the defiance of Pleistoanax against the Spartan authorities, as Pausanias the Regent had been convicted of treason.
Thucydides says that his younger brother Aristokles bribed the Pythia in order to convince the pious Spartans to recall him from exile.
Moreover, the Pythia knew that Pleistoanax would make peace between Athens and Sparta possible, which was desirable for Delphi, as the war hurt its finances by the lack of pilgrims and donations.
The Spartan strategy was to launch yearly invasion of Attica; that of 426 was led by Agis II, the other king and son of Archidamus, although he had just ascended the throne.
[43][44] Julius Beloch thought that the earthquake was just a pretext, showing that, with the return of Pleistoanax, the Peace Party was now in power in Sparta.
Thucydides explains his peaceful efforts by a selfish motivation: he wanted to end the war in order to stop the blame he received from some Spartans for any setback suffered by Sparta (as a result of his sacrilegious bribery of the Pythia).
