Pausanias, a famous Spartan general, the grandson of Leonidas, who, as commander-in-chief of the Greeks, overthrew the Persian army under Mardonius at Platæa in 479, but who, elated by this and other successes, aimed at the sovereignty of Greece by alliance with Xerxes, and being discovered, took refuge in a temple at Athens, where he was blockaded and starved to death in 477 B.C., his mother throwing the first stone of the pile that was cast up to bar his exit.

Pausanias, a Greek traveller and topographer, lived during the reigns of Antoninus Pius and M. Aurelius; wrote an "Itinerary of Greece" in 10 books, the fruit of his own peregrinations, full of descriptions of great value both to the historian and the antiquary.