Following his great victory at Plataea, Pausanias became arrogant and adopted Persian customs, including dress and manners, which offended his allies.

Pausanias (Ancient Greek: Παυσανίας) was a Spartan regent and a general. 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. Despite his role in ending the Second Persian invasion of Greece, Pausanias subsequently fell under suspicion of conspiring with the Persian king Xerxes I. After an interval of repeated arrests and debates about his guilt, he was starved to death by his fellow Spartans. 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.
Herodotus wrote: "Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, won the most glorious victory of any known to us" after he crushed the Persian Empire at the Battle of Plataea. He was the most respected man in the ancient world, yet in Sparta, respect was a dangerous currency.
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Did he truly betray his people, or was he a hero broken by a city that refused to give him the credit he deserved? The five Ephors—the shadow rulers of Sparta—held a power that could silence even kings. They watched him trade his bronze for silk, perhaps missing the man who felt he had nothing left to win but his own pride.

In the end, the gates of his glory became the walls of his grave.