Pausanias of Sparta (470-380 BC) was King of Sparta from 445 to 426 BC (interrupting Pleistoanax's reigns) and from 408 to 395 BC (succeeding Pleistoanax and preceding Agesipolis I).
Biography[]
Pausanias yielding to Archidamus
Pausanias was born in 470 BC, the son of Pleistoanax and Axiothera. He became King in 445 BC when his father was exiled for signing the unpopular Thirty Years' Peace with Athens to end the First Peloponnesian War. Pausanias had an uneasy relationship with his co-king, Archidamus II, as Pausanias was a visionary who opposed archaic traditions such as the Cull of the Helots, while Archidamus was a staunch traditionalist. This friction led to Pausanias joining the Cult of Kosmos, which aimed to unify Greece through the overthrow of the old order amid a major war involving all the Greek city-states. Pausanias became the Sage of the Cult of Kosmos' Peloponnesian League branch, serving as the Cult's puppet-master behind one of the Peloponnesian War's two major alliances. In 430 BC, he ordered the Monger to murder the Spartan general Brasidas after he was dispatched to Corinth, seeing Brasidas as a longtime thorn in the Cult's side; however, Brasidas teamed up with the Spartan mercenary Kassandra to instead slay the Monger and liberate Corinth from the cult. In 428 BC, Pausanias first met Kassandra when she and her mother Myrrine returned to Sparta in a bid to regain their lost home, and, while Pausanias introduced himself in a cordial manner, he came to dislike Kassandra due to her confidence and her perceived indifference towards Pausanias' royalty. Pausanias sent Kassandra to escort the Spartan athlete Testikles to the Olympic Games, and he secretly arranged for the Olympic champion Kallias to break the Olympic Truce and kill Kassandra. However, Kassandra instead killed Kallias and discovered Pausanias' treason from a letter retrieved from Kallias' body. In 426 BC, with the help of information retrieved by Archon Lagos of Arcadia, Kassandra presented the proof of Pausanias' treason to King Archidamus, who had Pausanias charged and dethroned by the ephors.
Pausanias returned to the throne in 408 BC on his father's death, and he oversaw Sparta's final victory over Athens at the Battle of Aegospotami and the capitulation of Athens in 404 BC, ending the Peloponnesian War. The Spartan general Lysander then established a puppet government in Athens, ruled by a gang of oligarchs known as the "Thirty Tyrants", but Pausanias undermined Lysander's dominance of Athens by restoring Athenian democracy in 403 BC and making Athens a Spartan ally. Pausanias' actions nearly led to a second exile by the ephors, but he was acquitted. In 395 BC, Lysander triggered the "Corinthian War" against Thebes, Athens, Corinth, and Argos, and Lysander was killed at the Battle of Haliartus. Because of his poor leadership at Haliartus, Pausanias was condemned to death, but he instead went into exile in Tegea, where he wrote a pamphlet advocating the abolition of the ephors. He died in 380 BC, and his son Cleombrotus I later became King.
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