1. d. 467/6 BC, Spartan general in the Persian Wars, son of the king Cleombrotus 1 and nephew of Leonidas. He commanded the Greek forces that defeated the Persians at Plataea (479) and captured Byzantium (478), but he was suspected of treasonable negotiations with the Persian king Xerxēs. He was twice acquitted of the charge, but was later suspected of fomenting a revolt by the helots (the Spartan serfs). To escape arrest he took refuge in a sanctuary, where he was walled up and left to starve. At the point of death he was taken out, to die on unconsecrated ground (467/6 BC).
2. (flourished c. AD 160), Greek traveller and geographer, the author of an extant ‘Description of Greece’ (Periēgēsis Hellados), who appears from passages in it to have been born in Lydia. The work is in ten books, namely: I, Attica and Megara; 2, Corinth and Argolis; 3, Laconia; 4, Messenia; 5 and 6, Elis (with Olympia); 7, Achaea; 8, Arcadia; 9, Boeotia; 10, Phocis (with Delphi). Pausanias generally outlines the history and then the topography of important cities, followed by their religious cults and mythology. He is most interested in objects and places of historical and religious interest, and especially in artistic monuments; indeed his work is the most important literary source for the history of Greek art (what he tells us is based on his own travels and his general accuracy is attested by the extant remains of the monuments he describes). Only occasionally does he refer to the scenery and natural products of the regions he describes. He is honest about reputed marvels, such as the spotted fish of the river Aroanius; these he admits did not, as was supposed, sing like thrushes, although he waited by the river till sunset. Of the two stories accounting for the presence of a pickled Triton (perhaps some sea-creature) in a temple at Tanagra, he thinks it more credible that the creature was lured ashore by a bowl of wine and decapitated as it lay drunk on the beach, than that it was killed in single combat by the god Dionysus. His style is simple and unpretentious.
