Pausanias (d.c.470-465) was a controversial Spartan who commanded the victorious Greek army at Plataea, but who was later accused of treason and executed in Sparta.
Pausanias son of Cleombrotus was a member of the Agiad royal family. He was a son of King Cleombrotus I and nephew of the famous King Leonidas. After Leonidas was killed at Thermopylae in 480, Pausanias became regent for his young son.
In 479 Pausanias commanded the Greek army that defeated the Persians at Plataea, effectively ending the Persian threat to mainland Greece (Greco-Persian Wars). He commanded the largest Greek contingent at the battle, but his control of his fellow Spartans wasn 't complete. A key moment of the battle came when the Greek army decided to move from an exposed position without easy access to water to a new position near Plataea. When the move began Amompharetus, 'lochagos of the Pitanata lochos ', one of the Spartan officers, refused to take part in the movement, on the grounds that Spartans didn 't retreat. Pausanias was unable to
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Some time after this Pausanias was accused of attempting to seize power in Sparta with the help of a helot uprising, and of communicating with Xerxes. According to one story his guilt was proved after Argilius, one of his messengers, opened a message in which Pausanias ordered the recipients to kill the messenger. Argilius turned against his master and betrayed him to the Ephors.
Pausanias took refuge in the temple of Athena of the Brazen House, where he was said to have been walled into the sanctuary and either starved to death or taken out on the verge of dying of starvation (the details and even the basic chronology of Pausanias 's fall is rather obscure). The Athenian Themistocles was also implicated in this plot, and was forced to flee into exile in Persia.
One of Pausanias 's sons, Pleistoanax, later became king of Sparta.
The ancient sources disagreed on his guilt, with Herodotus supporting him but Thucydides convinced of his