Pausanias

Family: Greek · Role: son of Cleombrotos · First appears: Book 4 · §78–84

In Book 9, Pausanias, son of Cleombrotos, led the Spartan army from Lacedemon while Pleistarchos, the son of Leonidas, was still a boy; Pausanias was the boy’s guardian and cousin. Cleombrotos had died not long after bringing the army home from the Isthmus. Before the fighting, Alexander secretly revealed Mardonios’s plan and asked that the message be passed only to Pausanias.

At Kithairon, Pausanias and Euryanax tried to persuade Amompharetos to retreat, but he refused and cast his vote to remain and fight. Pausanias eventually led the other troops away, and his force halted at the river Moloeis to await Amompharetos’s division. After the allied troops had left the Athenians, Pausanias told them, “we have been deserted by our allies”; when his Spartans were hard pressed and the sacrifices were unfavorable, he prayed to Hera. The offerings then proved favorable, and at Plataia the Hellenes won a famous victory; Arimnestos slew Mardonios.

After the battle, Pausanias refused to outrage the dead, saying that Leonidas, his father’s brother, had already been avenged. He ordered the spoil collected and set aside offerings for sanctuaries. On the eleventh day after the battle, the Hellenes marched on Thebes and began a siege; on the twentieth day, the Thebans sent a herald to Pausanias offering to surrender the men who had sided with the Medes.