Short answers, pulled from the story.
Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer, born around 110 AD, probably in Lydia in Asia Minor. He traveled throughout mainland Greece from around 150 AD until his death around 180 AD, documenting monuments, sacred sites, and natural phenomena.
The Description of Greece, known in Greek as Helládos Periḗgēsis, is a lengthy firsthand account of ancient Greece written by Pausanias during his travels across the mainland. It records monuments, artworks, myths, sacred spaces, and natural observations, and is the only extended work of its kind to survive from antiquity.
Pausanias's descriptions have proven accurate enough that twentieth-century archaeologists use his writing as a guide to excavation sites. His accounts provide links between classical literature and physical remains, and his writing about Tartessos continues to aid contemporary research into that site's existence, location, and culture.
For much of history, classicists dismissed Pausanias as a purveyor of secondhand accounts, following the judgment of the influential scholar Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. That view reversed in the twentieth century, when archaeological excavations confirmed the accuracy of his descriptions and established him as a credible historical source.
Pausanias wrote in a plain, direct style, avoiding elaborate ornamentation. He wove mythological and ritual discussions into his descriptions of sites, made honest disclosures when drawing on secondhand sources, and sometimes used past tenses deliberately to place his readers in the same temporal setting as the ancient events he described.
Pausanias was probably a native of Lydia in Asia Minor, born into a Greek family within the Roman Empire. He valued his Greek heritage and traveled through mainland Greece to create a lasting record of Greek culture and history, aiming to document what he called "all things Greek," or panta ta hellenika.