_BOHN’S CLASSICAL LIBRARY._
PAUSANIAS’ DESCRIPTION OF
GREECE.
PAUSANIAS’
DESCRIPTION OF GREECE,
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH
WITH NOTES AND INDEX
BY ARTHUR RICHARD SHILLETO, M.A.,
_Sometime Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge_.
VOLUME I.
“Pausanias est un homme qui ne manque ni de bon sens ni de
bonne foi, mais qui croit ou au moins voudrait croire à ses dieux.”
--CHAMPAGNY.
LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS,
YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
1886.
CHISWICK PRESS:--C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT,
CHANCERY LANE.
PREFACE.
Of Pausanias personally we know very little, but that he lived during
the Reign of the Antonines, and travelled all round Greece, and wrote
his famous _Tour round Greece_, or _Description of Greece_, in 10
Books, describing what he had seen and heard. His chief merit is his
showing to us the state of the works of art still remaining in his day
in the Greek cities, which have since been swept away by the various
invasions that have devastated that once happy land. “When Pausanias
travelled through Greece, during the age of the Antonines, about 1690
years ago, he found every city teeming with life and refinement; every
Temple a Museum of Art; and every spot hallowed by some tradition which
contributed to its preservation. The ruthless destruction of these
works of art, in subsequent ages, has reduced them to a small number;
and the Traveller now pauses, with a melancholy interest, to reflect
upon the objects described by Pausanias, but which no longer exist.”[1]
Pausanias’ _Description of Greece_ is also full of various
information on many topics. It is for example a mine of Mythology. For
its various matter it has been happily compared to a “County History.”
There is often a quiet vein of humour in Pausanias, who seems to have
been almost equally a believer in Providence and in Homer.
I have translated from _Schubart’s_ Text in the _Teubner_ Series,
(1875), but have taken the liberty always, where the text seemed
hopeless, to adopt a reading that seemed preferable from any other
source. I have constantly had before me the valuable edition of
_Siebelis_, (Lipsiæ, 1827), to whom I am much indebted, especially for
his Illustrations, still veracity obliges me to state that occasionally
he too gives one reason to remember the famous lines of a well-known
Rector of Welwyn in the Eighteenth Century.
“_The_ commentators each dark passage shun,
And hold their farthing candle to the Sun.”
In the _Index_ it is hardly necessary to state that I owe much to
_Schubart_.
CAMBRIDGE,
_May, 1886_.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] George Scharf, Esq., F.S.A. 1859. _Wordsworth’s Greece_, p. 1.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
BOOK I. ATTICA 1
II. CORINTH 90
III. LACONIA 168
IV. MESSENIA 228
V. ELIS 302
VI. ELIS. Part ii. 360
INDEX 414
PAUSANIAS.
BOOK I.--ATTICA.
CHAPTER I.
On the mainland of Greece, facing the islands called the Cyclades and
the Ægean sea, the promontory of Sunium stands out on Attic soil:
and there is a harbour for any one coasting along the headland, and
a temple of Athene of Sunium on the summit of the height. And as one
sails on is Laurium, where the Athenians formerly had silver mines, and
a desert island of no great size called after Patroclus; for he had
built a wall in it and laid a palisade, when he sailed as admiral in
the Egyptian triremes, which Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, sent to punish
the Athenians, Antigonus, the son of Demetrius, in person making a raid
into their territory with a land force and ravaging it, and the fleet
simultaneously hemming them in by sea. Now the Piræus was a township
in ancient times, but was not a port until Themistocles ruled the
Athenians; but their port was Phalerum, (for here the sea is nearest to
Athens), and they say that it was from thence that Menestheus sailed
with the ships to Troy, and before him Theseus to exact vengeance
from Minos for the death of Androgeos. But when Themistocles was in
power, because the Piræus appeared to him to be more convenient as a
harbour, and it was certainly better to have three harbours than one
as at Phalerum, he made this the port. And even up to my time there
were stations for ships, and at the largest of the three harbours the
tomb of Themistocles; for they say that the Athenians repented of their
conduct to him, and that his relatives exhumed his remains and brought
them home from Magnesia. Certain it is that the sons of Themistocles
returned from exile, and hung up a painting of Themistocles in the
Parthenon. Now of all the things in the Piræus best worth seeing is the
temple of Athene and Zeus; both their statues are of gold, and Zeus has
a sceptre and Victory, while Athene is armed with a spear. Here, too,
is a painting by Arcesilaus of Leosthenes and his sons, that famous
hero who at the head of the Athenians and all the Greeks defeated the
Macedonians in battle in Bœotia, and again beyond Thermopylæ, and drove
them into Lamia over against Mount Œta and shut them up there. And it
is in the long portico, where those near the sea have their market,
(for there is another market for those more inland), and in the back
of the portico near the sea are statues of Zeus and Demos, the design
of Leochares. And near the sea is a temple erected to Aphrodite by
Conon, after his victory over the Lacedæmonian fleet off Cnidus in the
peninsula of Caria. For Aphrodite is the tutelary saint of the men of
Cnidus, and they have several temples of the goddess; the most ancient
celebrates her as Doritis, the next in date as Acræa, and latest of
all that which everybody else calls Athene of Cnidus, but the Cnidians
themselves call it Athene of the Fair Voyage.
The Athenians have also another harbour at Munychia, and a temple
of Artemis of Munychia, and another at Phalerum, as has been stated
by me before, and near it a temple of Demeter. Here too is a temple
of Sciradian Athene, and of Zeus at a little distance, and altars of
gods called unknown, and of heroes, and of the children of Theseus and
Phalerus; for this Phalerus, the Athenians say, sailed with Jason to
Colchis. There is also an altar of Androgeos the son of Minos, though
it is only called altar of a hero, but those who take pains to know
more accurately than others their country’s antiquities are well aware
that it is the altar of Androgeos. And twenty stades[2] further is
the promontory Colias; when the fleet of the Persians was destroyed
the tide dashed the wrecks against it. There is here also a statue of
Aphrodite of Colias and the goddesses who are called Genetyllides.
I am of opinion that the Phocian goddesses in Ionia, that they call
by the name of Gennaides, are the same as these at Colias called
Genetyllides. And there is on the road to Athens from Phalerum a temple
of Hera without doors or roof; they say that Mardonius, the son of
Gobryas, burnt it. But the statue there now is (as they say) the work
of Alcamenes; this, indeed, the Persian cannot have touched.