In 479 BC, as a leader of the Hellenic League's combined land forces, he won a pivotal victory against the Achaemenid Empire in the Battle of Plataea.

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.

Pausanias led 5000 Spartans to the aid of the league of Greek cities created to resist the Persian invasion.

[4] With no answer to his challenge, Mardonius ordered his cavalry to pollute the Asopos from which the Greeks were getting their water, so the Athenian forces decided in the night to move towards Plataea.

[12] After the victories at Plataea and the subsequent Battle of Mycale, the Spartans lost interest in liberating the Greek cities of Asia Minor until it became clear that Athens would dominate the League in Sparta's absence.

One allegation was that after capturing Cyprus and Byzantium (478 BC), Pausanias released some of the prisoners of war who were friends and relatives of the king of Persia.

Due to lack of evidence, Pausanias was acquitted and left Sparta on his own accord, taking a trireme from the town of Hermione.

[18] According to Thucydides, Diodorus and Polyaenus, Pausanias, pursued by the ephors, took refuge in the temple of Athena "of the Brazen House" (Χαλκίοικος, Chalkioikos) (located in the acropolis of Sparta).

Pausanias' mother Theano (Ancient Greek: Θεανώ) immediately went to the temple, and laid a brick at the door saying: "Unworthy to be a Spartan, you are not my son" (according to Diodorus).

After Pausanias' body was turned over to relatives for burial, the divinity through the Oracle of Delphi showed displeasure at the violation of the sanctity of supplicants.

Unable to carry out the injunction of the goddess, the Spartans set up two bronze statues of Pausanias at the temple of Athena.