Military leader and regent of Sparta (r. 479 b. c.e.)
Born: Late sixth century b. c.e.; Sparta, Greece Died: c. 470 b. c.e.; Sparta, Greece Category: Military; government and politics
Life Son of King Cleombrotus and regent for the minor son of Leonidas, Pausanias (paw-SAY-nee-uhs) of Sparta was given supreme command in 479 b. c.e., when Athens appealed to Sparta. At the Battle of Plataea, Pausanias rallied the Greek troops against daunting odds and led his Spartans to decisive victory over the Persian elite. Pausanias displayed honor by refusing to behead and crucify the Persian general Mardonius, as the Persians had done to Leonidas. He killed the traitors to the Greek cause at Thebes. Comparing a banquet that he ordered Mardonius’s cooks to serve with a Spartan supper, Pausanias ridiculed the extravagant Persian for coming to rob poor Greeks.
Two years later, Pausanias commanded a Spartan/Athenian fleet, liberating Cypriot cities from Persian control, then Byzantium. There he became a ruthless tyrant, flaunting a Persian lifestyle. Proposing to marry Xerxes I’s daughter and to subject all Greece to Xerxes, he was promised money and troops to attain the goal. The “liberated” peoples appealed to Athens, which Thucydides credits for the Athenian rise to supremacy. Recalled by Sparta, Pausanias was tried but acquitted. Venturing without authority to Byzantium and expelled by the Athenians, Pausanias submitted to Sparta’s second recall, expecting to win by bribery or by fomenting a helot (serf-slave) insurrection. Only the testimony of a trusted servant gave the ephors (magistrates) sufficient cause to convict. After fleeing to the temple of Athena, Pausanias was walled in and starved to death.
Influence Though his success at Plataea saved Greece from Persian domination, Pausanias was remembered more for hubris and treachery.
Further Reading
Cartledge, Paul. The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece, from Utopia to Crisis and Collapse. Woodstock, N. Y.: Overlook Press, 2003.
De Souza, Philip. The Greek and Persian Wars, 499-386 B. C. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Green, Peter. The Greco-Persian Wars. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Hooker, J. T. The Ancient Spartans. London: J. M. Dent, 1980.
Hornblower, Simon. The Greek World, 479-323 B. C. 3d ed. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Kenneth L. Burres
See also: Greco-Persian Wars; Leonidas; Plataea, Battle of; Thucydides;
Xerxes I.
World History
