PAUSA'NIAS (Lat., from Gk. Tfaeowv;ac) ( ?-c.469 n.c.). A son of Cleombrotus, and regent of Sparta as guardian of his cousin, Plistarchus, the son of Leonidas. He commanded the Greeks in the battle of Platam, B.C. 479, in which the Persian army under Ma rdonius was overwhelmed, and eleven days later, marching to Thebes, de manded of that city the surrender of all who had been traitors to the Greek cause. After a siege of twenty days, the Thebans yielded. In B.C. 477 there was put under his command a fleet of the confederate Greeks, wherewith to drive the Per sians from the islands and coast-towns, and with this he took Cyprus and Byzantium. Elated by these victories and puffed up with pride and am bition, he enterqd into secret negotiations with the Persians, with the view of becoming ruler, subject to the Persian monarch, of the whole of Greece. Meanwhile, he treated the allies as though he were their lord and sovereien, adopted Persian dress and manners, protected his per son with a bodyguard of Persians and Egyptians, and introduced into his household habits of Oriental luxury. Being recalled by the authori ties at Sparta, he was acquitted on the main charge of treason, and again returned to the Hellespont to renew his intrigues with the Per sians. He was a second time summoned home
and arraigned, but was a second time acquitted. He now, while still continuing his negotiations with Xerxes, began also to intrigue with the Helots, promising them freedom and citizenship if they would rise and overthrow the govern ment. At last he was betrayed by one Argilius, whom he had commissioned to carry a letter to the Persians. -Argilius, noticing that no one of those previously sent on a similar errand had ever returned, opened the letter. found directions therein for his own death, and laid the matter before the ephors. Pausanias, finding his plot discovered and himself entrapped. took refuge in the temple of Athene Chalciaecus. Hereupon the people blocked up the entrance with a pile of stones, the first stone being laid by his aged mother, and left him to die of hunger. This was about B.C. 469. Consult the histories of Greece by Grote, Curtius, Abbott, Holm, Beloch, and Meyer.