a Spartan king and general, who signalized himself at the battle of Platæa against the Persians. The Greeks, very sensible of his services, rewarded his merit with a tenth of the spoils taken from the Persians. He was afterwards appointed to command the Spartan armies, and he extended his conquests in Asia; but the haughtiness of his behaviour created him many enemies; and the Athenians soon obtained a superiority in the affairs of Greece.—Pausanias, dissatisfied with his countrymen, offered to betray Greece to the Persians, if he received in marriage as the reward of his perfidy the daughter of their king. His intrigues were discovered by means of a young man who was intrusted with his letters to Persia, and who refused to go, on recollecting that such as had been employed in that office before had never returned. The letters were given to the Ephori of Sparta, and the perfidy of Pausanias was thus discovered. He fled for safety to a temple of Minerva; and as the sanctity of the place screened him from the violence of his pursuers, the sacred building was surrounded with heaps of stones, the first of which was carried there by the indignant mother of the unhappy man. He was starved to death in the temple, and died about 474 years before the Christian era.

There was a festival and solemn games instituted to his honour, in which only free-born Spartans contended. There was also an oration spoken in his praise, in which his actions were celebrated, particularly the battle of Platæa, and the defeat of Mardonius. See PAUSANIA.

a learned Greek historian and orator, in the second century, under the reign of Antoninus the Philosopher, was the disciple of Herodus Atticus. He lived for a long time in Greece; and afterwards went to Rome, where he died at a great age. He wrote an excellent description of Greece, in ten books; in which we find not only the situation of places, but the antiquities of Greece, and every thing most curious and worthy of knowledge. Abbe Gedoin has given a French translation of it, in two volumes.