Pausanias (; died c. 477 BC ) was a Spartan regent and a general who succeeded his father Cleombrotus who, in turn, succeeded king Leonidas I. In 479 BC, as a leader of the Hellenic League's combined land forces, Pausanias won a pivotal victory in the Battle of Plataea ending the Second Persian invasion of Greece. One year after the victories over Persians and Persian allies, Pausanias fell under suspicion of conspiring with the Persian king, Xerxes I to betray Greeks and died in 477 BC in Sparta starved to death by fellow citizens. What is known of his life is largely according to Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War", Diodorus' "Bibliotheca historica" and a handful of other classical sources.