Some Agiad Dates: Pausanias and His Sons

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Abstract
Thucydides' digression (i 126–38) on the later careers of Pausanias and Themistokles is deservedly famous for the lucidity of its style and the interest of its subject matter, but the chronological difficulties of the apparently perspicuous narrative are notorious. A. W. Gomme singles out the date of Themistokles' flight to Asia Minor as the major difficulty of the first half of the Pentekontaetia, ‘a difficulty which, if it could be solved, would lead to the solution of most of the others’. He concludes his discussion by saying: ‘The question remains unsolved.’ However, some simple facts (for which Thucydides is himself the authority) about the number and ages of Pausanias' sons have a direct bearing on the time of Pausanias' death and so on the date of Themistokles' flight; curiously enough their importance has not been noticed. After the deaths of his uncle Leonidas and his father Kleombrotos in 480, Pausanias became regent for his nephew Pleistarchos, the son of Leonidas and Gorgo, who died in 459/8 or 458/7 and before the battle of Tanagra. Pausanias' eldest son Pleistoanax then succeeded as the king of the Agiad royal house. Thucydides (i 107.2) says that he was still a minor and that his uncle Nikomedes, the younger brother of Pausanias, commanded for him at Tanagra in 458 or 457. Pleistoanax did, however, command the Peloponnesian forces which invaded Attica in 446, just after the revolt of Euboia (Thuc. i 114.2).

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