There is one side, however, of Greek rel_Studies in Greek Scenery, Legend and History Selected from His Commentary on Pausanias' 'Description of Greece,'

shows himself consistently sceptical, if not incredulous. He had serious

doubts as to the existence of a subterranean hell. “It is not easy,” he

says, “to believe that gods have an underground abode in which the souls

of the dead assemble.” He speaks of the “supposed subterranean realm” of

Pluto, and in the cave at Taenarum, which was thought to be one of the

mouths of hell, he looked in vain for any passage leading down to the

nether world. Cerberus in particular, the hound of hell, is roughly

handled by Pausanias, who ruthlessly strips him of his superfluous

heads, reduces him to a commonplace serpent, and seems to take a

malicious pleasure in enumerating all the places where the animal was

said to have been haled up by Hercules. But though Pausanias had his

doubts as to hell, he seems to have believed in the existence of the

soul after death; for in a passage which has been already quoted he

speaks of the punishment that awaits the wicked in another life. At the

same time his belief in the doctrine was apparently not very firm; at

least he refers to it somewhat hesitatingly in mentioning the Messenian

tradition that the soul of the dead hero Aristomenes had fought against

his old foes the Lacedaemonians at Leuctra. “The first people,” he there

tells us, “who asserted that the soul of man is immortal were the

Chaldeans and the Indian magicians; and some of the Greeks believed

them, especially Plato, the son of Aristo. If everybody accepts this

tenet, there can be no gainsaying the view that hatred of the

Lacedaemonians has rankled in the heart of Aristomenes through all the

ages.”

[Sidenote: His

attitude to

various

deities.]

Amongst the gods Pausanias assigns the first place to Zeus. He alone is

superior to Destiny, to which all the other gods must submit; he is the

ruler and guide of the Fates, and knows all that they have in store for

man. Of the Fates themselves Fortune is, in our author’s opinion, the

most powerful; she it is whose resistless might sweeps all things along

at her will, determining the growth and decay of cities, the revolutions

of nature, and the destiny of man. Yet Pausanias’s own devotions seem to

have been paid rather to Demeter than to Zeus or the Fates. He visited

Phigalia chiefly for the sake of the Black Demeter to whom he sacrificed

at the mouth of the cave; he relates at length the history of her image;

and he describes in unusual detail the sanctuary and images of Demeter

and Proserpine at Lycosura. Again, he had been initiated into the

Eleusinian mysteries; he loves to trace their diffusion from Eleusis

over the rest of Greece; he speaks of the Andanian mysteries as second

in point of sanctity to the Eleusinian alone; he tells us that the

Greeks of an earlier age esteemed the latter as far above all other

religious exercises as the gods were above heroes; and he expresses his

own conviction that there was nothing on which the blessing of God

rested in so full a measure as on the rites of Eleusis and the Olympic

games. His religious awe of the mysteries, silencing his antiquarian

garrulity, forbade him to describe not only the rites but the sacred

precincts in which they were celebrated. Once more, on Mount

Panhellenius in Aegina he sacrificed to the images of the kindred

deities Damia and Auxesia according to the ritual observed in

sacrificing at Eleusis. Another deity in whom Pausanias seems to have

been especially interested was Aesculapius. He examines the legends of

the god’s parentage, discusses his nature, and traces the spread of his

worship from Epidaurus. Along with his belief in the gods and in the

resistless power of Fate our author apparently cherished a dim faith in

a divine providence which watches over the affairs of man. In speaking

of the exploits of Theseus in Crete he remarks that “nothing less than

the hand of Providence could reasonably be supposed to have brought him

and his comrades safe back, guiding him through all the mazy intricacies

of the labyrinth, and leading him unseen, when his work was done,

through the midst of his enemies.”

[Sidenote: His belief

in the

active interference

the gods in

human

affairs.]

The gods, in the opinion of Pausanias, were neither cold abstractions

nor blessed beings who, lapped in the joys of heaven, took no thought

for the affairs of earth. They actively interfered in the course of

events, rewarding the virtuous and punishing the wicked. They were the

givers of good things to men; and if their rewards had been more open

and manifest in days of old, the prosperity of the pious Athenians was a

standing proof that even in later times the gods had not forgotten to

recompense their worshippers. Yet, like most people who lay themselves

out to justify the ways of God to man, Pausanias was readier to detect

the hand of the deity in the miseries and misfortunes of his

fellow-creatures than in their joys and blessings. The confidence with

which he lays his finger on the precise misdeed which drew down on a

malefactor the wrath of a justly offended god implies an astonishing

familiarity with the counsels of the Almighty. He knew that the Persians

were defeated at Marathon because they had angered Nemesis by bringing,

in the pride of their hearts, a block of marble which they proposed to

set up as a trophy of their expected victory; that the destruction of

Sparta and Helice by earthquakes was due to the wrath of Poseidon at the

violation of his sanctuaries; that the ruin and death of Mithridates had

been brought to pass by Apollo, whose sacred island had been sacked by

the king’s general; that Sulla’s miserable end was a direct consequence

of his guilt in tearing Aristion from the sanctuary of Athena; and that

the wrath of the Eleusinian goddesses abode on the Megarians for ever

because they had encroached on the sacred land and murdered a herald who

warned them to desist. Again, he shrewdly suspects that the long

misfortunes of the Messenians flowed directly from the anger of the

Dioscuri at the impious presumption of two Messenian youths; and he

surmises that gods and heroes combined to wreak their displeasure on the

devoted head of Cleomenes, who had tampered with the Delphic oracle,

ravaged the sacred Eleusinian land, and burned the grove of the hero

Argus. The Delphic Apollo was quick and powerful, according to

Pausanias, to defend his honour and to visit with vengeance the

sacrilegious persons who dared to assail his sanctuary or rifle his

treasures. King Archidamus, who had fingered the sacred moneys, fell in

battle in a foreign land and his corpse weltered unburied; the

Phlegyans, who made a raid on Delphi, perished by thunderbolts and

earthquakes; and it was in all the majesty of thunder, lightning, and

earthquake that at a later time the god stood forth to repel the Gauls.

Amongst the punishments with which the gods were thought to visit

unwarranted intrusions into their sanctuaries, blindness and madness had

a special place. King Aepytus, on forcing his way into the shrine of

Poseidon at Mantinea, which none might enter, was instantly struck blind

and died soon afterwards; some Persian soldiers who ventured into the

sanctuary of the Cabiri near Thebes became crazed and in that state put

an end to themselves; and it was believed that if any defiled or impious

person entered the sanctuary of the Eumenides at Cerynea he would go mad

on the spot.

[Sidenote: His belief

in oracles.]

Believing in the gods, Pausanias naturally believed in their official

utterances, the oracles. The Delphic oracle, he thinks, foretold the

battle of Leuctra and various episodes in the Messenian wars; and he

appeals to one of its answers as conclusive evidence that the mother of

Aesculapius was Coronis. He relates how the accidental exposure of the

bones of Orpheus was followed by the destruction of the city of Libethra

in accordance with a prediction of Dionysus in Thrace, and he narrates

the fatal disasters which Epaminondas, Hannibal, and the Athenians

incurred by misunderstanding oracular answers sent them from Delphi,

Ammon, and Dodona. The history of Macedonia, its rise and its fall, had

been predicted by the Sibyl, if we may believe Pausanias, who quotes her

prophecy; and he assures us that the inroad of the Gauls into Asia had

been foretold by Phaennis a generation before the event took place. He

had himself consulted the oracle of Trophonius, and has left us a

curious account of the ceremonies observed by enquirers at the shrine.

In his day, he informs us, the most infallible oracle was that of

Amphilochus at Mallus in Cilicia.

[Sidenote: His

criticism of

myths.]

Yet while Pausanias accepted on the whole the religion of his country,

he was by no means blind to the discrepancies and improbabilities of

many Greek myths and legends, and he speaks somewhat disdainfully of the

unquestioning faith of the multitude in the stories they had heard from

childhood. “Falsehood in general,” he says, “passes current among the

multitude because they are ignorant of history and believe all that they

have heard from childhood in choirs and tragedies.” And again he

observes that “it is not easy to persuade the vulgar to change their

opinions.” From the former of these passages it appears that Pausanias

was little disposed to place implicit faith in the utterances of the

poets on matters of tradition. Elsewhere he intimates his doubts still

more plainly. Speaking of the hydra, which he maintains had not more

than one head, he says that the poet Pisander multiplied the creature’s

heads “to make the monster more terrific, and to add to the dignity of

his own verses.” Again, he mentions that the poets have declared certain

objects of art to be works of Hephaestus, and that obsequious public

opinion has chimed in with them, but he for his part rejects all such

relics as spurious save one. The only poet to whose authority he

inclined to bow was Homer, whose testimony he often appeals to with

respect. He held that many old stories were true enough in their origin,

but had fallen into discredit by reason of the distortions and

exaggerations to which they had been subjected by the narrators. The

particular story which suggests this remark is the legend that Lycaon

had been turned into a wolf on sacrificing a babe to Lycaean Zeus.

Pausanias believes the legend, but he rejects as incredible the

assertion that at every subsequent sacrifice to Zeus on Mount Lycaeus a

man had been turned into a wolf, and he does not stick to brand as

humbugs the persons who gave out that the Arcadian boxer Damarchus had

been so transformed. “Lovers of the marvellous,” he observes, “are too

prone to heighten the marvels they hear tell of by adding touches of

their own; and thus they debase truth by alloying it with fiction.”

[Sidenote: His disbelief

certain

myths.]

The attitude of incredulity which Pausanias maintained towards many of

the current legends is declared by him in the most unequivocal manner.

He speaks of “the many falsehoods believed by the Greeks,” and reminds

us that though he is bound to record Greek stories he is not bound to

believe them, and that as a matter of fact he does not believe them all.

The myths of the transformations of gods and men into animals and plants

seem especially to have stuck in his throat. He does not believe that

Zeus changed himself into a cuckoo to win the love of Hera, and as to

the story of the transformation of Cycnus into a swan, he says roundly:

“That a man should be turned into a bird is to me incredible.” Nor will

he hear of Narcissus’s love for his own reflexion in the glassy pool and

his wondrous change into the flower that bore his name. “It is sheer

folly,” he remarks, “to suppose that a person who has reached the age of

falling in love should be unable to distinguish between a man and his

reflexion,” and as for the flower in question he has chapter and verse

for it to prove that it grew before Narcissus was born. The companion

story of the transformation of Hyacinth into the flower he does not

treat quite so cavalierly. “It may not be literally true,” he tells us,

“but let it pass.” Further, he cannot believe that the beasts followed

Orpheus as he sang, and that the minstrel journeyed down to hell to win

back his lost Eurydice. Again, while he believes in giants, he rejects

as a silly story the notion that they had serpents instead of feet, and

he supports his scepticism by referring to the corpse of one of these

monstrous beings which had been found in the bed of the river Orontes

enclosed in a coffin eleven ells long. Often, without formally refusing

his assent to some tale of wonder, he quietly hints his incredulity by

indicating that he leaves his readers to believe it or not as they feel

inclined. Thus after telling how pigs thrown into the halls of Demeter

at Potniae were supposed to re-appear next year at Dodona, he adds,

almost sarcastically: “The tale may possibly find credence with some

people.” Other marvels which he dismisses with a sneer are the sowing of

the dragon’s teeth by Cadmus and the springing up of armed men; the

sprouting of Hercules’s club into a tree when he set it on the ground;

the wonderful vision of Lynceus who could see through the trunk of an

oak-tree; and the story that at a certain rock in Megara the sad Demeter

stood and called back her daughter from the darkling road down which she

had vanished.

[Sidenote: His rationalistic

interpretation

of some

myths.]

It is not always, however, that Pausanias meets seemingly miraculous

stories with a blank negation. He had too much good sense to do that.

He knew that our experience does not exhaust the possibilities of

nature, and he endeavoured accordingly to trim the balance of his

judgment between hasty credulity on the one side and rash disbelief on

the other. Thus after pointing out that, if the descriptions of the

strange creatures of distant lands are false in some particulars, they

are true or at least not improbable in others, he concludes: “So

careful should we be to avoid hasty judgments on the one hand, and

incredulity in matters of rare occurrence on the other.” In his

endeavour to winnow the true from the false, to disentangle the

ravelled skein of tradition, he has often recourse to that convenient

and flexible instrument—rationalistic or allegorical interpretation.

We have seen with what ease he thus disencumbered himself of

Cerberus’s superfluous heads and reduced that animal from a very

extraordinary dog to a very ordinary serpent. The miraculous story of

the death of Actaeon, rent in pieces by his hounds at the instigation

of Artemis, gives him no trouble: it was a simple case of hydrophobia.

Medusa was a beautiful African queen who met Perseus at the head of

her troops. Titan was an early astronomer who resided near Sicyon and

passed for a brother of the sun for no other reason than that he made

observations on that luminary. The fable that Procne and Philomela

were turned into a nightingale and a swallow arose merely from a

comparison of their mournful cries to the plaintive notes of these

birds. In one passage, indeed, under the fierce light of criticism the

gods themselves seem on the point of melting away like mist before the

sun, leaving behind them nothing but the clear hard face of nature,

over which for a while the gorgeous pageantry of their shifting

iridescent shapes had floated in a golden haze. The passage occurs in

the description of Aegium, where our author fell in with a Phoenician

of Sidon with whom he discussed the philosophic basis of the belief in

Aesculapius, coming to the conclusion that the god was nothing but the

air and his father Apollo nothing but the sun. Had Pausanias followed

up this line of thought he might, like Schiller, have seen as in a

vision the bright procession of the gods winding up the long slope of

Olympus, sometimes pausing to look back sadly at a world where they

were needed no more. But the whole tenour of his work goes to show

that, if here he had a glimpse of a higher truth, it was only a

flash-light that went out leaving him in darkness.

[Sidenote: His change

of view as

to myths.]

In a later passage he makes a confession of his faith in matters of

mythology. After telling the barbarous tale how the cannibal Cronus,

intending to devour his infant son Poseidon, had been cozened by Rhea

into swallowing a foal, he goes on: “When I began this work I used to

look on these Greek stories as little better than foolishness; but now

that I have got as far as Arcadia my opinion about them is this: I

believe that the Greeks who were accounted wise spoke of old in riddles,

and not straight out; and, accordingly, I conjecture that this story

about Cronus is a bit of Greek philosophy. In matters of religion I will

follow tradition.” This seems to be practically a recantation of

earlier, perhaps youthful scepticism. The tales which he had once

ridiculed as absurd he now finds to be full of deep, if hidden, wisdom.

Meditation and perhaps still more the creeping paralysis of age, which

brings so many men to a dull acquiescence in beliefs and practices which

they had spurned in youth, appear to have wrought a mental revolution in

Pausanias. The scoffer had become devout.

[Sidenote: His treatment

discrepant

traditions.]

Yet to a pious believer the discrepancy between Greek traditions must

have been a sore stumbling-block. Pausanias tripped over it again and

again. “Greek traditions,” says he, “are generally discrepant.” “The

legends of the Greeks differ from each other on most points, especially

in the genealogies.” “The old legends, being unencumbered by

genealogies, left free scope for fiction, especially in the pedigrees of

heroes.” “Most things in Greece are subjects of dispute.” In face of

such differences Pausanias, when he does not content himself with simply

enumerating the various traditions, chooses to follow either the most

generally received version or the one which on any ground appears to him

the most probable. With his sober unimaginative temperament and bias to

rationalism, it was natural that between conflicting versions of the

same tradition he should choose the one which clashed least with

experience. Thus he relates the two stories told of the way in which the

people of Tanagra acquired the Triton whose stuffed carcase was the

glory of the town. One story ran that the creature had been slain by

Dionysus himself in single combat; according to the other, a common

mortal had found the Triton lying drunk on the beach and had chopped off

his head with an axe. The latter version of the tale is described by

Pausanias as “less dignified but more probable.” Tritons, it is true,

whether drunk or sober, are not common objects of the sea-shore; but

there was no need to heighten the marvel by lugging in Dionysus. Again,

the death of Aristodemus, the ancestor of the two royal houses of

Sparta, was variously narrated. “Those who wish to invest him with a

halo of glory,” writes Pausanias, “say that he was shot by Apollo”; but

the truer story was that he had been knocked on the head by the children

of Pylades. Again, he regards with suspicion the claims of men and women

to be the husbands and wives, the sons and daughters of gods and

goddesses. “The Moon, they say, loved Endymion, and he had fifty

daughters by the goddess. Others, with more probability, say that

Endymion married a wife.” “Cadmus made a distinguished marriage if he

really married, as the Greeks say he did, a daughter of Aphrodite and

Ares.” Then as to reputed sons of gods. “That Corinthus was a son of

Zeus has never yet, so far as I know, been seriously asserted by anybody

except by a majority of the Corinthians themselves.” Oenomaus was a son

of Alexion, “though the poets have given out that he was a son of Ares.”

The father of Augeas was Eleus, “though those who magnify his history

give the name of Eleus a twist, and affirm that Augeas was a son of the

sun.” The crafty Autolycus “was reputed to be a son of Hermes, though in

truth his father was Daedalion.” The story that Orpheus had the Muse

Calliope for his mother is stigmatised by our author as a falsehood.

Rivers that appeared in the character of fathers were also viewed by

Pausanias with distrust. He held that the father of Eteocles was

Andreus, not the river Cephisus; and he believed that the father of

Plataea was not the river Asopus but a king of the same name. Other

instances of his hesitation to accept legends of divine parentage might

be cited.

[Sidenote: His

application

of historical

methods to

Greek

traditions.]

But in his criticism of Greek legends Pausanias did not confine himself

to the simple test of experience. He did not merely ask whether a story

agreed more or less with the laws of nature, and accept or reject it

accordingly. In historical enquiries the application of such a criterion

obviously cannot carry the enquirer beyond the first step. Pausanias

went much further. He introduced considerations drawn from general

probability, from chronology, from the monuments, from a comparison with

other traditions, from the relative weight to be attached to the

authorities by which each version of a legend was supported. In fact,

far from being hide-bound in the trammels of tradition, he moved freely

among the materials at his disposal, accepting this and rejecting that

in obedience to the dictates of a reasonable and fairly enlightened

criticism. Thus, he rejects the Sophoclean version of the death of

Oedipus because it conflicts with the Homeric. He will not allow that a

bronze image of Athena at Amphissa can have formed part of the Trojan

spoils, and that a bronze image of Poseidon at Pheneus can have been

dedicated by Ulysses, because at the time of the Trojan war and in the

lifetime of Ulysses the art of casting in bronze had not yet been

invented. He refuses to believe that the grave of Dejanira was at Argos,

because she was known to have died at Trachis and her grave to be not

far from Heraclea. Among the several places in Greece that set up claims

to be the Oechalia of Homer, our author decides in favour of Carnasium

in Messenia, because the bones of Eurytus were there. The tradition that

the mysteries at Celeae had been founded by a man of Eleusis named

Dysaules, who had been driven into exile after a battle between the

Eleusinians and Athenians, is rejected by Pausanias on the grounds that

no such battle took place and that no such person is mentioned by Homer.

The legend that Daedalus joined Aristaeus in colonising Sardinia is set

aside by him for the reason that Daedalus lived several generations

after Aristaeus, and therefore could not possibly have shared with him

in a colony or in anything else. Similarly he argues on chronological

grounds against the traditions that Achilles had been a suitor of Helen;

that Timalcus went to Aphidna with the Dioscuri; and that the Telamon

and Chalcodon who marched with Hercules against Elis were the well-known

Telamon of Aegina and Chalcodon of Euboea. The Spartan tradition as to

the image of Brauronian Artemis is preferred by Pausanias to the

Athenian, and that for a variety of reasons which he sets forth in

detail.

Thus Pausanias criticised Greek myths and legends according to his

lights, and if his lights did not shine very brilliantly the fault was

not his.

[Sidenote: His taste in art.]

Of his taste in painting and sculpture we are scarcely able to judge,

partly because he is chary of his praise, generally confining himself to

a simple mention or description of the work before him, partly because

so few of the works described by him have survived to our time.

[Sidenote: His taste in painting.] The paintings are all gone. A little

blue pigment on a ruined wall at Delphi is all that remains of those

frescoes of Polygnotus which excited the admiration of antiquity. That

Pausanias himself admired them is clear, both from the length of his

description and from the words with which he brings it to a close: “So

varied and beautiful is the painting of the Thasian artist.” Elsewhere

he seems to have lost no opportunity of describing extant pictures of

Polygnotus, though he does not always mention his name. A painting of

Drunkenness by Pausias apparently struck Pausanias especially, for he

tells us that “in the picture you can see the crystal goblet and the

woman’s face through it.” But the only pictures, besides those of

Polygnotus at Delphi, on which he deigns to bestow a dry word of

commendation are a couple of paintings on tombstones, one of them by

Nicias, as to whom Pausanias tells us elsewhere that he had been the

greatest painter of animals of his time.

[Sidenote: His taste in

sculpture.]

In sculpture the taste of Pausanias was apparently austere. He decidedly

preferred the earlier to the later art. Of the archaic works attributed

to Daedalus he says that they “are somewhat uncouth to the eye, but

there is a touch of the divine in them for all that.” He praises

Bupalus, an artist of the sixth century B.C., as “a clever architect and

sculptor.” But on the whole it was for the sculptors of the fifth

century B.C. that he chiefly reserved his scanty praise, and amongst

them he seemingly preferred the masters of the older manner who

immediately preceded Phidias. [Sidenote: Predecessors of Phidias.] Thus,

with regard to Pythagoras of Rhegium, who flourished about 480 B.C., he

says that he was “a good sculptor, if ever there was one,” and in

speaking of the boxer Euthymus he remarks that “his statue is by

Pythagoras, and most well worth seeing it is.” Of Onatas, who was at

work about 467 B.C., he expresses a high opinion: “I am inclined to

regard Onatas, though he belongs to the Aeginetan school of sculpture,

as second to none of the successors of Daedalus and the Attic school.”

This criticism indicates that Pausanias preferred in general the Attic

school of sculpture to the Aeginetan, though he considered one master of

the latter school as the peer of the greatest Attic sculptors. At

Pergamus there was a bronze image of Apollo by this same Onatas which

Pausanias describes as “one of the greatest marvels both for size and

workmanship.” It is a proof of the independence of Pausanias’s judgment

in art that this early sculptor, whom he ranked with [Sidenote: Phidias]

Phidias and Praxiteles, is not even mentioned by any other ancient

writer except in a single epigram of the Anthology. Another old master

of the fifth century whose statues Pausanias often notices is Calamis;

on one of them he bestows a word of commendation. A statue by this

artist was much admired by Lucian. The great sculptor Myron, a

contemporary of Phidias, seems also to have found favour in the eyes of

Pausanias, for he mentions that the image of Dionysus on Mount Helicon

was the finest of all the artist’s works, next to the statue of

Erechtheus at Athens. That Pausanias appreciated the greatness of

Phidias is clear from the way in which he speaks of him and from the

detail in which he describes the sculptor’s two most famous works, the

image of the Virgin Athena at Athens and the image of Zeus at Olympia.

Of the latter he observes that the mere measurements of the image could

convey no idea of the impression which the image itself made on the

beholder. Yet he did not consider it the sculptor’s masterpiece, for as

to the image of the Lemnian Athena at Athens he remarks that it is “the

best worth seeing of all the works of Phidias.” The preference thus

given to this comparatively obscure statue over the image of Zeus which

the ancient world agreed in extolling as little less than divine is

another proof of the independence of Pausanias’s judgment in artistic

matters; and that his taste here was good is attested by the very high

place which his contemporary Lucian, one of the best critics of

antiquity, assigns to the same statue. Of Alcamenes our author observes

that as a sculptor he was second only to his contemporary Phidias, and

with regard to the statue of Aphrodite in the Gardens by this artist he

says that “few things at Athens are so well worth seeing as this.” Here,

again, our author’s judgment is confirmed by that of Lucian, who

describes this image as the most beautiful work of Alcamenes, and draws

from it not a few traits for his imaginary statue of ideal beauty which

was to combine all the most perfect features of the most celebrated

statues. Another sculptor whose style seems to have pleased Pausanias

was Naucydes, a brother of the famous Polyclitus, who worked at the end

of the fifth or at the beginning of the fourth century B.C. A bronze

image of Athena by Hypatodorus at Aliphera is declared by Pausanias to

be worth seeing both for its size and its workmanship; but the date of

this sculptor is somewhat uncertain. Strongylion, whom Pausanias

describes as unrivalled in his representations of oxen and horses, seems

to have flourished toward the end of the fifth century B.C. Among the

sculptors of the following century Pausanias praises Cephisodotus

[Sidenote: Sculptors of the fourth century B.C.] for the conception of

his statue representing the infant Wealth in the arms of Peace, and the

sculptors Xenophon and Callistratus for a similar allegorical work

representing Wealth in the arms of Fortune. Further, he commends some of

the sculptures of Damophon at Messene,[3] and he has a few words of

approbation for several works of Praxiteles, but not one for any work of

the other two great masters of the fourth century, Scopas[4] and

Lysippus, though he mentions many statues by them. A critic of a taste

so severe that he could pass by the works of Scopas and the Hermes of

Praxiteles without uttering a syllable of admiration was not likely to

take much pleasure in the productions of the decadence. Pausanias

notices few and praises none of the successors of Praxiteles. Of the

colossal image of Olympian Zeus at Athens, which must have been executed

in his own lifetime, he says condescendingly that it was good for its

size.

-----

Footnote 3:

The date of Damophon is uncertain, but on the whole the evidence seems

to point to his having been at work in the first half of the fourth

century B.C. Pausanias’s appreciation of Damophon is one more proof of

the independence of his judgment in matters of art; for Damophon is

mentioned by no other writer of antiquity.

Footnote 4:

However, he admired Scopas as an architect if not as a sculptor (viii.

45. 5). The same may be said of Polyclitus (ii. 27. 5), though the

building which Pausanias admired turns out to be by the younger and

less distinguished artist of that name.

-----

It may be noted as significant of Pausanias’s interest in the older

sculpture that the only artists with whose styles he shows himself so

familiar as to recognise them at sight are Calamis, Canachus, Endoeus,

and Laphaes, of whom Calamis and Canachus flourished in the early part

of the fifth century B.C., and Endoeus in the last part of the sixth

century B.C. The date of Laphaes is unknown, but as the two images by

this artist were both made of wood and are expressly declared by

Pausanias to be ancient, we can hardly suppose that the sculptor

flourished later than the sixth century B.C.

[Sidenote: His taste

in architecture.]

Of Pausanias’s taste in architecture we are much better able to judge,

for many of the buildings described by him exist, and by a most

fortunate coincidence amongst them are some of which he expressed his

admiration in unusually strong language. [Sidenote: Walls of Tiryns.] To

begin with the relics of the prehistoric age, the walls of Tiryns and

the beehive tomb of Orchomenus, which he calls the Treasury of Minyas,

raised his wonder to such a pitch that he compares them to the Egyptian

pyramids and animadverts on the perversity of the Greeks, who admired

and described only the marvels they saw abroad, while they entirely

neglected the marvels no less great which they had at home. The walls of

Tiryns he describes with amazement as “made of unwrought stones, each

stone so large that a pair of mules could not even stir the smallest of

them.” No modern reader who has [Sidenote: Beehive tomb at Orchomenus.]

seen the walls of Tiryns as they still stand, built of enormous stones

and resembling a work of giants rather than of men, will be likely to

regard Pausanias’s admiration of them as misplaced, whatever may be

thought of the comparison of them to the pyramids. Amongst the

prehistoric remains of Greece they are certainly unmatched. The walls of

Mycenae and of the great prehistoric fortress of Gla or Goulas in

Boeotia surpass them, indeed, in extent, but fall far short of them in

the size of the blocks of which they are composed. As to the beehive

tomb at Orchomenus, of which Pausanias says that there was no greater

marvel either in Greece or elsewhere, it is now sadly ruinous, but we

can judge of its original effect by the great beehive tomb at Mycenae

known as the Treasury of Atreus, which agrees with the tomb at

Orchomenus very closely in dimensions and exists almost intact. To stand

within the great circular chamber and look up at the domed roof, with

its rings of regularly hewn stones diminishing one above the other till

they are lost in the darkness overhead, is an impressive experience.

Those who have enjoyed it will be disposed to think that Pausanias was

right in regarding the similar edifice at Orchomenus as a very wonderful

structure.

[Sidenote: The

Propylaea.]

To come down to buildings of the historical age, Pausanias admired the

Propylaea or grand [Sidenote: Theatre at Epidaurus.] portal of the

Acropolis at Athens, which “for the beauty and size of the blocks,” he

says, “has never yet been matched.” It is probably not too much to say

that even in its ruins this magnificent portal is still the highest

triumph of the mason’s craft. The exquisite fitting of the massive

cleanly-cut blocks of white marble is a pleasure to behold. Again, the

sight of the theatre in the sanctuary of Aesculapius at Epidaurus moves

the sober Pausanias to an extraordinary, almost unparalleled burst of

admiration. “In the Epidaurian sanctuary,” he says, “there is a theatre

which in my opinion is most especially worth seeing. It is true that in

size the theatre at Megalopolis in Arcadia surpasses it, and that in

splendour the Roman theatres far transcend all the theatres in the

world; but for symmetry and beauty what architect could vie with

Polyclitus? For it was Polyclitus who made this theatre.” Here again

modern taste confirms the judgment of Pausanias. Neither the Dionysiac

theatre at Athens, nor the great theatre at Megalopolis, nor the

well-preserved theatre at Delphi, nor any other existing Greek theatre,

so far at least as my experience goes, can vie for a moment in beauty

and symmetry with the exquisite theatre at Epidaurus.

[Sidenote: Temples at

Bassae and

Tegea.]

Again, in regard to the temple of Apollo at Bassae our author says that

“of all the temples in Peloponnese, next to the one at Tegea, this may

be placed first for the beauty of the stone and the symmetry of its

proportions,” and as to the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea, to which he

here refers, he says elsewhere, “The present temple far surpasses all

other temples in Peloponnese both in size and style.” So far as the size

of the temple at Tegea goes, Pausanias is wrong. The temple of Zeus at

Olympia was nearly twice as large. But in regard to style modern taste

merely echoes the opinion of Pausanias. The scanty remains of the temple

at Tegea are now mostly buried underground, but the admirable design and

workmanship of the architectural fragments, and the beauty of the

shattered sculptures, justify the praise which Pausanias bestows on it

as the finest temple in Peloponnese in respect of artistic style. No

person of taste but will set the pathetic force and beauty of the two

battered heads from this temple above all the coarse vigour of the

Phigalian frieze and the ungraceful, almost repulsive hardness of the

groups from the gables of the Olympian temple. And that in architectural

style the temple at Bassae came next to the one at Tegea is an opinion

that will hardly be disputed by any one who has seen the beautiful

temple at Bassae with its long rows of grey columns standing solitary

among the barren mountains. That Pausanias was right in preferring it to

the temple of Zeus at Olympia both for the beauty of the stone and the

symmetry of its proportions is hardly open to question. The temple of

Zeus must have been imposing from its size, but its proportions, so far

as we can judge from the ruins, do not strike an observer as especially

harmonious; and as to the materials, the rough conglomerate of Olympia

cannot be compared for beauty with the fine hard limestone of Bassae.

[Sidenote: Walls of

Messene.]

Further, Pausanias describes the walls of Messene with their towers and

battlements, and declares them to be stronger than the finest

fortifications he had seen elsewhere. The remains of these superb

fortifications bear him out. For the scale on which they are planned and

for the solidity and perfection of the masonry they are without a rival

in Greece. In other places, as at Asea in Arcadia, at Aegosthena in

Megaris, and at Lilaea and Drymaea in Phocis, circuits of walls with

their flanking towers exist in better preservation, but none of them can

vie in style and splendour with the fortifications of Messene. Here

again we must pronounce unhesitatingly that so far as our knowledge goes

Pausanias was in the right.

[Sidenote: Music Halls

at Athens

and Patrae.]

To come down to buildings of a later age, Pausanias tells us that the

Music Hall at Patrae was the grandest in Greece except the one built by

Herodes Atticus at Athens, which excelled it both in size and style.

Here we are in the fortunate position of being able to compare for

ourselves the two buildings which Pausanias ranks together as the finest

of their kind in Greece, for both of them exist in comparatively good

preservation to the present day. That the Music Hall of Herodes Atticus

excels in size the one at Patrae, as Pausanias says it did, is obvious

at a glance. The former is in fact a spacious theatre, the latter is a

tiny one. But both, as appears from the remains, were originally cased

with marble and probably presented a splendid appearance. The lions’

paws of white marble which adorn the seats in the Music Hall at Patrae,

together with the mosaic pavement of black and white in the adjoining

chamber, enable us to form some slight idea of the elegance of those

appointments which excited the admiration of Pausanias.

[Sidenote: Stadium

at Athens.]

Lastly, our author observes that the stadium at Athens, built of white

marble by Herodes Atticus, was “wonderful to see, though not so

impressive to hear of,” and that the greater part of the Pentelic

quarries had been exhausted in its construction. The latter statement

is, of course, an exaggeration. Mount Pentelicus is made of white

marble, and there is a good deal of it left to this day, though the

great white blotches on its sides, visible even from the coast of

Epidaurus, tell plainly where the quarrymen have been at work. But we

may easily believe Pausanias that the stadium was a wonderful sight when

tiers of white marble benches, glistening in the strong sunshine, rose

steeply above each other all along both sides of the valley. For a

valley it is still, and a valley lined with white marble it must have

been in the days of Pausanias. Those who have seen the stadium since it

was partially refitted with white marble benches for the games of 1896

can better picture to themselves what its aspect must have been when the

benches were complete. Before the time of Herodes Atticus the spectators

may have sat either on the earthen slopes, as at Olympia, or on benches

of common stone, as at Epidaurus and Delphi.

On the whole, then, so far as we can judge from the existing monuments

and the testimony of ancient writers, especially of Lucian, the artistic

taste of Pausanias was sound and good, if somewhat austere.

[Sidenote: Intrinsic

evidence of

Pausanias’s

truthfulness.]

The manner in which he has described the monuments is plain and

appropriate, entirely free from those vague rhetorical flourishes,

literary graces, and affected prettinesses with which, for example,

Philostratus tricks out his descriptions of pictures, and which have

consequently left it a matter of dispute to this day whether the

pictures he describes existed anywhere but in his own imagination. No

one is ever likely seriously to enquire whether the temples and

theatres, the statues and paintings described by Pausanias ever existed

or not. His descriptions carry the imprint of reality on them to every

mind that is capable of distinguishing between the true and the false;

and even if they did not, their truthfulness would still be vouched for

by their conformity with the remains of the monuments themselves. Proof

of this confirmity might be adduced in great abundance. Here, however,

we are concerned with that internal evidence of the author’s honesty and

candour which the writings themselves supply. Evidence of this sort can

never, indeed, amount to demonstration. Candour and honesty are not

qualities that can be brought to the test of the senses; they cannot be

weighed in a balance or seen under a microscope. A man who is neither

candid nor honest himself will probably never sincerely believe in the

existence of these qualities in others, and there is no means of

convincing him. It is always open to him to find a sinister motive for

the simplest act, a covert meaning under the plainest words. In the case

of Pausanias the internal evidence of good faith seems amply sufficient

to convince a fair-minded enquirer. It consists in the whole cast and

tenour of his writings; in the naturalness and credibility of all that

he affirms of his own knowledge, with the exception of two or three

cases in which he seems to have been duped by mercenary or priestly

trickery; it consists in the plainness and directness of the

descriptions; in their freedom from any tinge of rhetoric or sophistry;

in the modesty with which the author generally keeps himself in the

background; and finally in occasional confessions of ignorance which

only malignity could interpret as artifices resorted to for the purpose

of supporting an assumed air of ingenuous simplicity. This last feature

of the work it is desirable to illustrate by instances. The others,

pervading as they do the whole book, hardly admit of exemplification.

[Sidenote: His confessions

ignorance.]

Repeatedly, then, Pausanias owns that he had not been present at certain

festivals, and consequently had not seen certain images which were only

exhibited on these occasions. Thus with regard to the very curious image

of Eurynome, which would have especially interested him as an antiquary,

he tells us that the sanctuary in which it stood was opened only on one

day in the year, and that as he did not happen to arrive on that day he

had not seen the image, and therefore could only describe it from

hearsay. Similarly he says that he cannot describe the image of Artemis

at Hyampolis because it was the custom to open the sanctuary only twice

a year. He tells at second hand of a festival of Dionysus at Elis, in

which empty kettles were said to be found miraculously filled with wine;

but he informs us that he was not himself at Elis at the time of the

festival, and from expressions which he uses in regard to the marvel we

may infer that he had his doubts about it. No one presumably will

dispute these statements of Pausanias and maintain that he arrived in

time for those festivals and saw those images although he assures us

that he did not. We are bound, therefore, in fairness to believe him

when he tells us with regard to the sanctuary of Mother Dindymene at

Thebes that “it is the custom to open the sanctuary on a single day each

year, not more. I was fortunate enough to arrive on that very day, and I

saw the image.” As other instances of his candour may be cited his

acknowledgment that he had not witnessed the ceremonies performed at the

tombs of Eteocles and Polynices at Thebes, nor beheld the secret object

revered in the worship of Demeter at Hermion; that he could describe the

sanctuary of Poseidon at Mantinea only from hearsay; that he had neither

seen the walls of Babylon and Susa nor conversed with any one who had;

that he never saw Antinous in life, though he had seen statues and

paintings of him; and that he had not heard the trout sing like thrushes

in the river Aroanius, though he tarried by the river until sunset, when

they were said to sing loudest. These are the confessions of an honest

man, inclined perhaps to credulity, but yet who will not deceive others

by professing to have seen sights, whether marvellous or otherwise,

which he has not seen. Again, when he quotes a book at second hand he is

careful to tell us so. Thus, after citing some lines from the _Atthis_

of Hegesinus, he goes on: “This poem of Hegesinus I have not read: it

was lost before my time; but the verses are quoted as evidence by

Callippus of Corinth in his history of Orchomenus, and I have profited

by his information to do the same.” Again, after quoting a couple of

verses of an Orchomenian poet Chersias, he adds. “The poetry of Chersias

is now lost, but these verses also are quoted by Callippus in the same

work of his on Orchomenus.” These statements, like the foregoing, will

hardly be disputed even by the most sceptical. No one will be likely to

insist that Pausanias read books which he tells us he did not. Therefore

in fairness we are bound to believe him when he says that he did read

certain other works, such as the memoirs of some obscure historians, a

treatise on rhetoric purporting to be by Pittheus, the epics _Eoeae_ and

_Naupactia_, a poem attributed to Linus, verses of Erato, a poem on

soothsaying which passed under the name of Hesiod, and the oracles of

Euclus, Musaeus, and Bacis. If we take the word of Pausanias for what he

tells us he did not see and did not read, we must take it also for what

he tells us he did see and did read. At least if we are to accept as

true all those statements of an author which tell against himself and to

reject as false all those which tell in his favour, there is an end of

even the pretence of fair and rational criticism.

[Sidenote: Literary

style of

Pausanias.]

The literary style of Pausanias is no exception to the rule that the

style of a writer reflects the character of the man. Pausanias was

neither a great man nor a great writer. He was an honest, laborious,

plodding man of plain good sense, without either genius or imagination,

and his style is a faithful mirror of his character. It is plain and

unadorned, yet heavy and laboured, as if the writer had had to cast

about for the proper words and then fit them painfully together like the

pieces in a Chinese puzzle. There is a sense of strain and effort about

it. The sentences are devoid of rhythm and harmony. They do not march,

but hobble and shamble and shuffle along. At the end of one of them the

reader is not let down easily by a graceful cadence, a dying fall; he is

tripped up suddenly and left sprawling, till he can pull himself

together, take breath, and grapple with the next. It is a loose, clumsy,

ill-jointed, ill-compacted, rickety, ramshackle style, without ease or

grace or elegance of any sort. Yet Pausanias had studied good models. He

knew Thucydides and his writings abound with echoes of Herodotus. But a

style that has less of the unruffled flow, the limpid clearness, the

exquisite grace, the sweet simplicity of the Herodotean prose it might

be hard to discover. The sound of the one is like the chiming of a

silver bell; that of the other like the creaking of a corn-crake. With

all its defects, however, the style of Pausanias is not careless and

slovenly. The author bestrides his high horse; he bobs up and down and

clumps about on it with great solemnity; it is not his fault if his

Pegasus is a wooden hobby-horse instead of a winged charger.

[Sidenote: He perhaps

modelled

his style on

that of

Hegesias.]

This union of seemingly opposite faults, this plainness without

simplicity, this elaboration without richness, may perhaps be best

explained by Boeckh’s hypothesis, that he modelled his style on that of

his countryman Hegesias of Magnesia, a leader of the Asiatic school of

rhetoric, who, aping the unadorned simplicity of Lysias’s manner, fell

into an abrupt and jerky, yet affected and mincing style, laboriously

chopping and dislocating his sentences so that they never ran smooth,

never by any chance slid into a rounded period with an easy cadence.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus declares peevishly that in all the voluminous

works of Hegesias there was not a single well-written page, and that the

man must have gone wrong not from stupidity but of set purpose and

malice prepense, otherwise he could not have helped writing a good

sentence now and then by accident. Frigid conceits and a puerile play

upon words were mistaken by this perverse writer for literary beauties,

and in the effort to stud his pages with these false jewels he

sacrificed both pathos and truth. In this respect, indeed, Pausanias

happily did not follow the bad example of his predecessor. His writings

are entirely free from paltry conceits and verbal quibbles. The thought

is always manly and direct, however tortuous may be the sentence in

which he seeks to express it. If he imitated Hegesias, it was apparently

in the arrangement of the words and sentences alone.

Whatever may be thought of this theory, the attention which Pausanias

obviously bestowed on literary style is in itself wholly laudable. Such

attention is a simple duty which every author owes to his readers.

Pausanias cannot be blamed for trying to write well; the pity is that

with all his pains he did not write better. He was anxious not to be

needlessly tedious, not to inflict on the reader mere bald lists of

monuments strung together on a topographical thread. He aimed at varying

the phraseology, at shunning the eternal repetition of the same words in

the same order. Yet he steered clear of one shoal only to run aground on

another. If to some extent he avoided monotony and attained variety of

expression, it was too often at the cost of simplicity and clearness.

The natural order of the words was sacrificed and a crabbed contorted

one substituted for it merely in order to vary the run of the sentences.

For the same reason a direct statement was often discarded in favour of

an indirect one, with the result that a reader who happens to be

unfamiliar with the author’s manner is sometimes at a loss as to his

meaning. For example, it has been questioned whether he means that there

was a statue of Aeschylus in the theatre at Athens and one of Oenobius

on the Acropolis. Yet any person conversant with his style must feel

sure that in both these cases Pausanias intends to intimate the

existence of the statue, and that if he does not affirm it in so many

words this is due to no other cause than a wish to turn the sentence in

another way. Similar instances could easily be multiplied. The ambiguity

which so often arises from this indirect mode of statement is one of the

many blots on the style of Pausanias. Such as it is, his style is seen

at its best in some of the longer historical passages, notably in the

spirited narratives of the Messenian wars and the Gallic invasion. Here

he occasionally rises to a fair level of literary merit, as for example

in describing the evil omens that preceded and hastened the death of the

patriot king Aristodemus, and again in relating the impious attack of

the Gauls on Delphi and their overwhelming repulse. Through the latter

narrative there runs, like a strain of solemn music, an undertone of

religious faith and fervour which greatly heightens the effect.

[Sidenote: Pausanias’s

use of

writers.]

In these and similar historical episodes we must allow something for the

influence on Pausanias’s style of the literary authorities whom he

followed. The warmer tinge of the descriptions, the easier flow of the

sentences may not be wholly due to the ardour of the writer’s piety, to

the swell of his patriotic feelings. Something of the movement, the

glow, the solemn strain, the martial fire may have been caught by him

from better models. This brings us to the enquiry, What books did

Pausanias use in writing his own? and how did he use them? Unfortunately

we are not and probably never shall be in a position to answer these

questions fully. Like most ancient writers Pausanias is sparing in the

citation of his authorities, and it is clear that he must have consulted

books of which he makes no mention. And when to this we add that the

works of most of the writers whom he does cite have perished or survive

only in a few disjointed fragments, it becomes clear that any hope of

acquiring a complete knowledge of his literary sources and mode of using

them must be abandoned. Many attempts have been made of late years to

identify the lost books consulted by Pausanias; but from the nature of

the case it is plain that such attempts must be fruitless. One of them

will be noticed presently. Meantime all that I propose to do is to

indicate some of the chief literary and documentary sources which

Pausanias expressly cites, and to illustrate by examples his method of

dealing with them.

[Sidenote: Distinction

between

the historical

and

descriptive

parts of

Pausanias’s

work.]

Before doing so it is desirable to point out explicitly a distinction

which, though obvious in itself, has apparently been overlooked or

slurred over by some of Pausanias’s critics. The matter of his work is

of two sorts, historical and descriptive: the one deals with events in

the past, the other with things existing in the present. For his

knowledge of past events, except in so far as they fell within his own

lifetime and observation, Pausanias was necessarily dependent either on

written documents or on oral testimony, in short on the evidence of

others; no other source of information was open to him. For his

knowledge of things existing in the present, on the other hand, he need

not have been indebted to the evidence of others, he may have seen them

for himself. It does not, of course, follow that what he may have seen

he did actually see. His descriptions of places and things, like his

narratives of events that happened before his time, may all have been

taken from books or from the mouths of other people; only it is not, as

in the case of the historical narratives, absolutely necessary that they

should be so derived. This distinction is so elementary and obvious that

to call attention to it may be deemed superfluous. Yet some of the

critics appear to labour under an impression that, if they can show the

historical parts of Pausanias’s work to have been taken from books, they

have raised a presumption that the descriptive or topographical parts

were also so taken. They do not, indeed, put so crass a misapprehension

into words, but they seem to be influenced by it. To brush away these

mental cobwebs it is only needful to realise clearly that, though

Pausanias certainly could not have witnessed events which happened

before he was born, he was not therefore necessarily debarred from

seeing things which existed in his own lifetime. In investigating the

sources of his information it is desirable to keep the historical and

the descriptive parts of his work quite distinct from each other and to

enquire into each of them separately.

[Sidenote: Poets

used by

Pausanias.]

To begin with the historical, in the widest sense of the word, we find

that Pausanias drew his accounts of the mythical and heroic ages in

large measure from the poets. Homer is his chief poetical authority, but

he also makes use of the later epics such as the _Cypria_, the _Eoeae_,

the _Little Iliad_, the _Minyad_, the _Naupactia_, the _Oedipodia_, the

_Returns_ (_Nostoi_), the _Sack of Ilium_ by Lesches, the _Thebaid_, and

the _Thesprotis_. Of these the _Thebaid_ was esteemed by him next to the

_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. On questions of genealogy he often cites the

early poets Asius and Cinaethon. Among the works attributed to Hesiod he

frequently refers to the _Theogony_ and the _Catalogue of Women_, and he

once quotes the _Argonautica_ of Apollonius Rhodius. That he knew the

Alexandrian poet Euphorion of Chalcis is shown by two references to his

writings. The most ancient Greek hymns in his opinion were those of

Olen; he cites several of them. Again, the testimony of Pamphos, author

of the oldest Athenian hymns, is often appealed to by Pausanias. Among

the lyric poets whose works he knew, such as Alcaeus, Alcman,

Archilochus, Pindar, Sappho, and Stesichorus, he appears to have ranked

Pindar first; at least he refers to his poems far oftener than to those

of the others. Among the elegiac poets he quotes Tyrtaeus and Simonides.

With the great tragic and comic poets he shows but little acquaintance;

Aeschylus is the only one whose authority he appeals to repeatedly. He

refers once to the testimony of Sophocles, but only to reject it; once

to that of Aristophanes; never to that of Euripides. On the other hand,

he seems to have devoted a good deal of attention to the critical study

of the older poets. He had investigated the dates of Homer and Hesiod

and the question of Homer’s native country. Nor did he neglect to

enquire into the genuineness of many poems that passed under famous

names. He tells admiringly how a contemporary of his own, Arrhiphon of

Triconium, detected the spuriousness of certain verses attributed to an

old Argive poet Philammon, by pointing out that the verses were in the

Doric dialect which had not yet been introduced into Argolis in

Philammon’s time. Among the works ascribed to Musaeus he held that

nothing was genuine except the hymn to Demeter composed for the

Lycomids; some of the verses which passed under the name of Musaeus he

set down as forgeries of Onomacritus. The hymns of Orpheus were ranked

by him next to those of Homer for poetical beauty, but he saw that some

of the verses attributed to Orpheus were spurious. He had grave doubts

as to the _Theogony_ being a genuine work of Hesiod; and he informs us

that the reading of a poem fathered on Linus sufficed to convince him of

its spuriousness. Of the works which circulated under the name of the

early Corinthian poet Eumelus one only, he tells us, was held to be

genuine. He could not believe that Anaximenes had written a certain epic

on Alexander the Great. As to the epic called the _Thebaid_, which he

admired, he reports the view of Callinus that the author was Homer,

adding that “many respectable persons have shared his opinion.”

[Sidenote: Historians

used by

Pausanias.]

The historian whom Pausanias seems to have studied most carefully and

whom he cites most frequently is Herodotus. Though he only once refers

to the history of Thucydides and once to that of Xenophon, it is

probable that he used both authors in several passages where he does not

mention their names. Other historians whom he refers to are Anaximenes,

Antiochus of Syracuse, Charon of Lampsacus, Ctesias, Hecataeus,

Hellanicus, Hieronymus of Cardia, Myron of Priene, Philistus, Polybius,

and Theopompus. Besides these he cites several local histories, such as

the histories of Attica by Androtion and Clitodemus, a history of

Corinth attributed to Eumelus, a history of Orchomenus by Callippus, and

what seems to have been a versified history of Argos by Lyceas. Further,

he had read the memoirs of certain obscure historians whose names he

does not mention. In his use of the historical materials at his disposal

Pausanias appears to have done his best to follow the same critical

principles which he applied to the mythical and legendary lore of

Greece. When the accounts conflicted he weighed them one against the

other and accepted that which on the whole seemed to him to be the more

probable or the better authenticated. Thus before proceeding to narrate

the history of the Messenian wars he mentions his two chief authorities,

namely a prose history of the first war by Myron of Priene and a

versified history of the second war by Rhianus of Bene; then he points

out a glaring discrepancy between the two in regard to the date of

Aristomenes—the William Tell or Sir William Wallace of Messenia—and

gives his reasons for accepting the testimony of Rhianus and rejecting

that of Myron, whose writings, according to him, revealed an

indifference to truth and probability of which he gives a striking

instance. Again, Pausanias was able to allow for the bias of prejudice

in an historian. Thus he points out that the history of Hieronymus the

Cardian was coloured by a partiality for Antigonus and a dislike of

Lysimachus, of whom the latter had destroyed the historian’s native

city; that the historian Philistus concealed the worst excesses of

Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, because he hoped to be allowed by the

tyrant to return to that city; and that Androtion, the historian of

Attica, had apparently introduced a certain narrative for the sole

purpose of casting reproach on the Lacedaemonians.

[Sidenote: The Elean

An historical document of which Pausanias made much use was the Elean

that he consulted the original documents in the archives at Elis. The

and copies may have been in common circulation. Wherever he may have

seen it, Pausanias appears to have studied it carefully, and sometimes

he turns the information thus acquired to good account. Thus he points

out that a statement of the Elean guides was at variance with an entry

in the register, and that the runner Oebotas could not possibly have

fought at the battle of Plataea in 479 B.C. since his Olympic victory

was won in Ol. 6 (756 B.C.).

[Sidenote: Inscriptions.]

Another trustworthy source from which Pausanias derived many of his

historical facts was inscriptions. What copious use he made of them may

be gathered from a slight inspection of his work, particularly his

description of Olympia, and that on the whole he read them correctly is

proved by inscriptions still extant of which he has given us either the

text or the general purport. Yet he did not accept their testimony

blindfold. In some of his references to them we can perceive the same

discrimination, the same desire to sift and weigh the evidence which we

have found to characterise his procedure in other enquiries. Thus in an

old gymnasium at Anticyra he saw the bronze statue of a native athlete

Xenodamus with an inscription setting forth that the man had won the

prize in the pancratium at Olympia. Pausanias accordingly consulted the

Olympic register and finding no such victor mentioned in it came to the

conclusion that, if the inscription were not lying, the victory of

Xenodamus must have fallen in Ol. 211 (65 A.D.), the only Olympiad which

had been struck out of the register. Again, at Olympia he saw a tablet

inscribed with the victories of Chionis, a Lacedaemonian runner, who

lived in the first half of the seventh century B.C. In the inscription

it was mentioned that the race in armour had not yet been instituted in

the time of Chionis; indeed we know from Pausanias that more than a

century elapsed after the time of Chionis before the race in armour was

introduced. Hence Pausanias concludes very sensibly that the inscription

could not, as some people supposed, have been set up by the runner

himself, for how could he have foreseen that the race in armour ever

would be instituted long after he was dead and buried? Again, he infers

that the Gelo who dedicated a chariot at Olympia cannot have been, as

was commonly assumed, the tyrant Gelo, because in the inscription on the

pedestal Gelo described himself as a citizen of Gela, whereas, according

to Pausanias, at the time when the chariot was dedicated Gelo had

already made himself master of Syracuse and would therefore have

described himself as a Syracusan, not as a native of Gela. The argument

falls to the ground because Pausanias mistook the date of Gelo’s

subjugation of Syracuse by several years; none the less his criticism of

the current view testifies to the attention he bestowed on inscriptions.

[Sidenote: Writers

on art.]

The image of Zeus which the united Greeks dedicated at Olympia as a

trophy of the battle of Plataea was made, Pausanias tells us, by a

sculptor of Aegina named Anaxagoras, as to whom he remarks that “the

name of this sculptor is omitted by the historians of sculpture.” This

passage proves that Pausanias consulted, as might have been anticipated,

some of the many ancient works on the history of art, but what they were

he has not told us and it would be vain to guess. He alludes to them

elsewhere.

[Sidenote: The local

guides.]

Yet another source which furnished Pausanias with information, more or

less trustworthy, on matters of history and tradition was the discourse

of the local guides whom he encountered at many or all of the chief

places of interest. We know from other ancient writers that in

antiquity, as at the present day, towns of any note were infested by

persons of this class who lay in wait for and pounced on the stranger as

their natural prey, wrangled over his body, and having secured their

victim led him about from place to place, pointing out the chief sights

to him and pouring into his ear a stream of anecdotes and explanations,

indifferent to his anguish and deaf to his entreaties to stop, until

having exhausted their learning and his patience they pocketed their fee

and took their leave. An educated traveller could often have dispensed

with their explanations, but if he were good-natured he would sometimes

let them run on, while he listened with seeming deference to the

rigmarole by which the poor men earned their daily bread. A question

interposed in the torrent of their glib discourse was too apt to bring

them to a dead stand. Outside the beaten round of their narrow circle

they were helpless. That Pausanias should have fallen into their

clutches was inevitable. He seems to have submitted to his fate with a

good grace, was led about by them to see the usual sights, heard the

usual stories, argued with them about some, and posed them with

questions which they could not answer about others. Often no doubt their

services were useful and the information they gave both true and

interesting. Among the many traditions which Pausanias has embodied in

his work there may be not a few which he picked up from the guides. We

may conjecture, too, that the measurements of buildings and images which

he occasionally records were, at least in some cases, derived by him

from the same source.

So much for the sources of historical and traditionary lore on which

Pausanias drew. That he always used them correctly cannot be maintained.

We can show that he sometimes mistook the purport of inscriptions and

blundered as to historical events and personages, but these mistakes are

not more numerous than can be reasonably allowed for in a work embracing

so great and multifarious a collection of facts.

[Sidenote: Did

Pausanias

describe

Greece

from books

or from

personal

observation?]

Coming now to the descriptive or topographical part, which forms the

staple of Pausanias’s work, we have to ask, Whence did he derive his

knowledge of the places and and monuments he describes? from

observation? or from books? or from both? To these questions Pausanias

himself gives no full and direct answer. He neither professes to have

seen everything that he describes nor does he acknowledge to have

borrowed any of his descriptions from previous writers, whom he barely

alludes to and never mentions by name. On the other hand he sometimes

affirms in the most unambiguous language that he saw the things which he

describes, and as there is no [Sidenote: He affirms that he saw many

things which he describes.] reason to doubt his word we may accept these

affirmations unconditionally, and believe that he describes some things

at least as an eye-witness. But such assertions of personal knowledge

are only incidental, and the total number of them is exceedingly small

in comparison with the number of places and things which he describes

without saying whether he saw them or not. Thus in regard to the vast

majority of Pausanias’s descriptions we have still to ask, Are they

based on personal observation or taken from books? In endeavouring to

answer this question we must first of all bear in mind that if Pausanias

saw all that he professes to have seen it is inevitable that he should

have seen a great deal more. For example, he could not have seen, as he

professes to have done, certain statues on the Acropolis of Athens

without also seeing the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, and the Propylaea,

which he does not expressly say that he saw. He could not have seen, as

he says he did, the statue of Anaximenes and the Sicyonian treasury at

Olympia without also seeing the temples of Zeus and Hera and a multitude

of buildings and statues besides. In short, in all the places which he

appears on his own showing to have visited, we may and must assume that

he saw much more than he claims in so many words to have seen. Further,

since he was not transported from one place to another by magic, he must

have travelled over the roads which joined the various places that he

visited. Thus by plotting out on the map the places which he saw and

joining them by the routes he describes, we can form some general notion

of the extent of Pausanias’s travels in Greece. Yet the notion thus

formed must necessarily be very rough and imperfect. For, in the first

place, we cannot always be sure of the route which he took from one town

or village to another. Thus, for example, he describes two roads from

Argos over Mount Artemisius to Mantinea; but there is nothing to show

which he took or even that he took either. He may, like most travellers,

have reached Mantinea from Argos by neither of the direct passes over

the mountains, but by the circuitous route that goes by Lerna and Tegea.

In the second place, it would be very rash to assume that he visited

only those places where he is proved by some incidental assertion of

personal knowledge to have been. Possibly or rather probably he visited

many more. If he did not think it worth while to assure us that he saw

the Parthenon and the Erechtheum at Athens, and the temples of Zeus and

Hera at Olympia, he need not have thought it worth while to depose to

having seen every insignificant shrine and image that he describes in

the petty towns and obscure villages through which he passed. Thus the

indications which he has given us are far too meagre to permit us to

make out his itinerary in Greece with any approach to certainty.

[Sidenote: Descriptions

which

he may

have taken

from

books.]

But if we cannot be sure that many of his descriptions are based on

personal knowledge, have we any grounds for supposing that they are

borrowed, without acknowledgment, from books? Such a supposition would

be, on the face of it, neither unreasonable nor improbable. In the

historical parts of his work Pausanias must have used many books which

he does not mention, and he may have done the same thing in the

topographical or descriptive parts. The grounds on which it could be

proved or made probable that he borrowed his descriptions from books are

various. The most obvious and certain would be the existence in an older

writer of a description agreeing in form as well as in substance so

closely with a description in Pausanias that no alternative would be

left us but to suppose, either that Pausanias copied from this older

writer, or that both of them copied from some common original. Or again

it might be that the descriptions of Pausanias contained information

which he could hardly have ascertained for himself, or mistakes into

which he could scarcely have fallen if he had seen the things for

himself. In regard to the first of these grounds it may be said at once

that in the extant literature of antiquity, so far as the present writer

is aware, there is no description of any place or monument agreeing in

form and substance so closely with a description in Pausanias as to make

it probable that he copied it. The slight and superficial resemblances

which have been traced between passages of Strabo and passages of

Pausanias are no more than such as may easily or necessarily arise when

two writers are describing independently the same places.

[Sidenote: Measurements

monuments

and of

distances.]

When we ask whether the descriptions of Pausanias contain matter which

he could not easily have ascertained for himself, we are reminded first

of his measurements of temples and images, and second of his estimates

of the exact distances in furlongs between one place and another. The

measurements of temples and images were probably derived either from the

local guides or from books. Some of them he may perhaps have taken for

himself; but that he should, for example, have measured for himself the

height of the temple of Zeus at Olympia is highly improbable. The

distances by land, estimated in furlongs, may have been drawn by

Pausanias from Roman milestones or from books or from a map like the

_Tabula Peutingeriana_. Distances by sea he can hardly have measured for

himself; if he did not borrow them from a book or a map, he may have had

them from the sailors with whom he voyaged. In all these cases it is

possible, perhaps probable, that Pausanias drew his information from

literary sources; but what particular books or maps he used, if he used

any, we do not know, and it would be vain to guess.

[Sidenote: Description

of the

coast of

Hermionis.]

When we next enquire whether the descriptions of Pausanias contain

errors into which he could scarcely have fallen if he had seen the

places and things which he describes, a student of Pausanias is at once

reminded of the author’s description of the coast of Hermionis, which it

is difficult or impossible to reconcile with the actual features of the

coast. That the description contains grave errors is almost certain. How

these errors are to be explained is much more doubtful. It is easy to

suggest, as has been done, that Pausanias did not himself sail along the

coast, but borrowed his description from one of those _Periploi_ or

_Coasting Voyages_, which enumerated the places on a coast in

topographical order and recorded the distances between them. Yet this

supposition by itself would hardly explain the confusion into which

Pausanias has fallen. Specimens of these _Coasting Voyages_ have come

down to us, and they are so exceedingly clear, concise, and

business-like, that it is difficult to understand how any one who simply

set himself to copy from them could have blundered so egregiously as

Pausanias appears to have done. More plausible is the suggestion that,

while Pausanias was obliged by the plan of his itinerary to describe the

coast in one direction, the _Coasting Voyage_ which lay before him

described it in the reverse direction, and that in his effort to throw

the information supplied by the _Voyage_ into the form that suited his

itinerary Pausanias made the jumble which has caused his critics so much

trouble. This may be the true explanation. It would have the further

advantage of helping us to understand how Pausanias obtained his

knowledge of the exact distances between places on various parts of the

coasts of Greece, notably on the coast of Achaia and on the wild

inhospitable coast of Laconia. The _Coasting Voyage_ which he used may,

like the extant _Coasting Voyage_ of Scylax, have comprised a

description of the whole coast of Greece, and from it Pausanias may have

borrowed his estimates of distances and perhaps other features of his

description as well. This is Mr. Heberdey’s theory, and it is a

perfectly tenable one, though in the absence of direct evidence it must

remain only a more or less probable hypothesis. Yet when we remember

that Pausanias’s topographical indications are nowhere more full and

exact than in Arcadia, where by the nature of the case he cannot have

used a _Coasting Voyage_, the hypothesis that he used one in other parts

of his work seems superfluous, if not improbable. It is quite possible

that he described the coast of Hermionis from notes he had made for

himself in sailing along it, and that either he failed at the time to

take in the natural features correctly or that afterwards in redacting

his notes at home he misunderstood what he had written on the spot.

Perhaps I may be allowed to say that having repeatedly sailed along the

coast in question I can testify from personal experience how difficult

it is to identify by sight the places from a ship, so bewildering is the

moving panorama of capes, islands, bays, and mountains. It would be no

great wonder if Pausanias’s head swam a little in this geographical

maze.

[Sidenote: Roads from

Lepreus.]

Another passage where error and confusion of some sort seem to have

crept in is the mention of the three roads that led from Lepreus to

Samicum, Olympia, and Elis. Here, again, Pausanias may have used and

misunderstood some literary source, or he may have blundered on the

spot, or his notes may have been lost, or his memory may have played him

false. Any of these explanations is possible. To attempt to decide

between them in the absence of any positive evidence would be fruitless.

[Sidenote: The Enneacrunus

episode.]

More famous than either of these difficulties is one which occurs in

Pausanias’s account of Athens. Here in the middle of describing the

market-place, which lay to the north-west of the Acropolis, he suddenly

without a word of warning transports the reader to the Enneacrunus

fountain, which lay in the bed of the Ilissus, not far from the

Olympieum, at the opposite extremity of the city; then, having

despatched the fountain and some buildings in its neighbourhood, he

whirls the reader back to the market-place, and proceeds with his

description of it as if nothing had happened. Of the many attempts to

clear up this mystery, as by supposing either a dislocation of the text

or a confusion in the author’s notes or the existence of another

fountain near the market-place which may have been shown to him as the

Enneacrunus, none is free from serious difficulties. That he fell into

error through copying blindly and unintelligently from a book is

possible but very improbable. As it is practically certain that he

visited Athens and saw both the market-place and the Olympieum, the

chances that he should not have seen the Enneacrunus and should

therefore have been driven to borrow his description of it from a book

are so small that they may be neglected.

[Sidenote: Law-courts

at Athens

and altars

at Olympia.]

Other passages which Pausanias may perhaps have taken either wholly or

in part from books are his account of the Athenian law-courts and his

list of the altars at Olympia. Neither of these passages, it is true, is

demonstrably infected by error or confusion, though there is some ground

for suspecting the existence of confusion in the enumeration of the

altars. But in both of them the author departs from the topographical

order of description, which is so characteristic of his method, and

arranges the monuments together simply on the ground of their belonging

to the same class. These departures from his usual principle of order

suggest that in both cases Pausanias may have borrowed from written

documents in which the monuments were grouped together according to kind

rather than in topographical order. Another set of monuments which

Pausanias links together by a chain other than the topographical are the

buildings erected by Hadrian in Athens. It is possible that he may have

taken his list of them from the inscription in the Athenian Pantheon

which recorded them all.

These are perhaps the most notable passages in Pausanias, which might be

thought to bear traces of having been derived either wholly or in part

from written documents rather than from personal observation. In none of

them are the indications so clear as to amount to a proof of borrowing.

At most they raise a probability of it, nothing more.

[Sidenote: Predecessors

Pausanias.]

It would be neither surprising nor unnatural if in writing his

_Description of Greece_ Pausanias not only consulted, as we know he did,

but borrowed from the works of previous writers on the same subject. Any

one who undertakes to write a guide-book to a country may legitimately

borrow from his predecessors, provided he has taken the trouble to

ascertain for himself that their descriptions are still applicable to

the country at the time he is writing. Pausanias in his character of the

Camden of ancient Greece had many predecessors whose writings he may and

indeed ought to have consulted. But of their works only the titles and a

few fragments have come down to us, and these contain nothing to show

that Pausanias copied or had even read them. The most considerable of

the fragments—those which pass under the name of Dicaearchus the

Messenian—have been already examined, and we have seen how different in

scope and style was the work to which they belonged from that which

Pausanias has left us. No one would dream of maintaining that Pausanias

copied his description of Greece from the pseudo-Dicaearchus. The most

famous of the antiquaries who preceded Pausanias seem to have been

Diodorus, Polemo, and Heliodorus, all of whom earned by their writings

the title of _The Periegete_ or _Cicerone_. [Sidenote: Diodorus.] Of

these the earliest was Diodorus, who is not to be confounded with the

Sicilian historian of that name. He published works on the tombs and

townships of Attica, of which a few fragments survive. [Sidenote:

Heliodorus.] They seem to have been composed before 308 B.C. Heliodorus

lived in the reign of Ptolemy Epiphanes and wrote a work on the

Acropolis of Athens in no less than fifteen books, of which only a few

brief fragments have come down to us. There is some reason to think that

Pausanias cannot have consulted it. [Sidenote: Polemo.] Polemo of Ilium

flourished in the first part of the second century B.C., and was the

author of many special treatises on the monuments of Greece. Amongst

them were works on the Acropolis of Athens, on the eponymous heroes of

the Attic townships and tribes, on the Sacred Way, on the Painted

Colonnade at Sicyon, on the votive offerings at Lacedaemon, on the

founding of the cities of Phocis, on the treasuries at Delphi, and many

more. More than a hundred extracts from or references to his works have

come down to us; and if we may judge from them, from the number and

variety of the treatises he published, and from the praise of Plutarch

we shall be inclined to pronounce Polemo the most learned of all Greek

antiquaries. His acquaintance both with the monuments and with the

literature seems to have been extensive and profound. The attention

which he bestowed on inscriptions earned for him the nickname of the

‘monument-tapper.’ His works were certainly extant later than the time

of Pausanias, since they are freely quoted by Athenaeus. It would,

therefore, be strange if Pausanias did not study them, dealing as many

of them did with the same subjects on which he touched in his

_Description of Greece_. Yet the existing fragments of Polemo hardly

justify us in supposing that Pausanias was acquainted with the writings

of his learned predecessor. Certainly they lend no countenance to the

view that he borrowed descriptions of places and monuments from them.

This will appear from an examination of those fragments of Polemo which

deal with subjects falling within the scope of Pausanias’s work. We

shall look, first, at the things mentioned by both writers, and, second,

at the things mentioned by Polemo alone. The fragments are numbered as

in the editions of L. Preller and Ch. Müller, to which the reader is

referred for the Greek text.

First, then, let us take the things mentioned by both Polemo and

Pausanias.

[Sidenote: Polemo

and

Pausanias

compared.]

Fragment ii. In his description of the Acropolis at Athens, Polemo

mentioned a sculptor Lycius, son of Myron. So does Pausanias in his

description of the Acropolis.

Fragment iii. In his description of the Acropolis, Polemo mentioned a

decree forbidding women of loose character to take the names of any of

the great quadriennial festivals. Pausanias mentions no such decree, but

among the paintings which he describes in the Propylaea is one of

Alcibiades “containing emblems of the victory won by his team at Nemea.”

Now we know from other writers that in this picture Alcibiades was

portrayed reclining in the lap of Nemea. The model who sat for the

personification of Nemea was probably a woman of the sort who were

forbidden by the decree to take the name of a quadriennial festival, and

the sight of the picture may have led Polemo to mention the decree. If

this was so—and the reasoning though a little circuitous is plausible—it

becomes probable that Polemo saw and described the picture of Alcibiades

to which Pausanias refers. The probability is strengthened, almost to

the point of certainty, by our knowledge that Polemo did describe the

paintings in the Propylaea, though no details of his description have

survived.

Fragment iv. In his description of the Acropolis, Polemo mentioned that

Thucydides was buried at the Melitian gate. So does Pausanias in his

description of the Acropolis.

Fragment vi. In his description of the pictures in the Propylaea, which

probably formed part of his treatise in four books on the Acropolis,

Polemo mentioned three Athenian festivals at which torch-races were

held, namely the Panathenian festival, the festival of Hephaestus, and

the festival of Prometheus. Pausanias in his description of the Academy

mentions that torch-races were run from an altar of Prometheus in the

Academy to the city.

Fragment x. Polemo told the story of the capture of Aphidna in Attica by

the Dioscuri, and mentioned that in the affair Castor was wounded by

king Aphidnus in the right thigh. Pausanias repeatedly refers to the

capture of Aphidna by the Dioscuri, but he expresses a belief that the

place was taken without fighting, and he gives reasons for thinking so.

Fragment xi. In one of his works which is cited as _The Greek History_

Polemo mentioned that Poseidon contended with Hera for the possession of

Argos and was worsted, and that the two deities did not exhibit tokens

in support of their claims as they did at Athens. Pausanias in his

description of Argolis twice mentions the defeat of Poseidon in his

dispute with Hera for the possession of the land, but he says nothing

about the absence of tokens.

Fragment xii. According to Polemo, the Argives related how the first

corn sown in Argolis had been fetched by Argus from Libya. According to

Pausanias, they asserted that they had received the first corn from

Demeter.

Fragment xviii. In his work on the votive offerings at Lacedaemon,

Polemo mentioned “a chapel of Cottina, close to Colone, where is the

sanctuary of Dionysus, a splendid edifice known to many in the city.”

Pausanias in his description of Sparta mentions “the place named Colona,

and a temple of Dionysus Colonatas.”

Fragment xxii. Polemo mentioned at Olympia the old temple of Hera, the

temple of the Metapontines, and the temple of the Byzantines. Pausanias

describes all three buildings, but he designates the two latter

correctly as treasuries, not temples.

Fragment xxiii. Polemo related that for a time a race had been run at

Olympia between carts drawn by mules, but that after thirteen victories

had been won the race was abolished in Ol. 84. He further said that the

name for a mule-cart (_apene_) was a Tegean word. Pausanias mentions

that the race between mule-carts at Olympia was instituted in Ol. 70 and

abolished in Ol. 84. He says nothing about the name for a mule-cart

being Tegean.

Fragment xxiv. Polemo said that Athena was wounded by Ornytus. Pausanias

says that she was wounded by Teuthis, but that some people called her

assailant Ornytus.

Fragment xxvii. In his work on the treasuries at Delphi, Polemo

mentioned the Sicyonian treasury. So does Pausanias in his description

of Delphi.

Fragment xxix. Polemo told how the Delphians honoured the wolf because a

wolf had discovered a sacred jewel of gold that had been stolen from

Delphi and buried on Mount Parnassus. Pausanias says that the Delphians

dedicated a bronze figure of a wolf in the sanctuary of Apollo, because

a man who had stolen some sacred treasures and hidden them in the forest

on Parnassus was killed by a wolf, which then went daily to the city and

howled, till people followed it and so found the stolen treasure.

Fragment xxxii. Polemo told how Palamedes invented dice to amuse the

Greek army before Troy when they were distressed by famine. Pausanias

says simply that dice were an invention of Palamedes.

Fragment xli. Polemo said that at Athens there were three images of the

Furies, two made by Scopas out of the stone called _luchneus_ (probably

Parian marble), and the middle one made by Calamis. Pausanias notices

the images of the Furies without mentioning their number, their

material, or the artists who made them.

Fragment xlii. In speaking of wineless libations Polemo remarked on the

scrupulousness of the Athenians in matters of ritual. Pausanias

observes, in different connexions, that the Athenians were more pious

and more zealous in religious matters than other people.

Fragment xliv. Polemo said that Lais was born at Hyccara in Sicily and

was murdered in Thessaly, whither she had gone for love of a Thessalian

named Pausanias; and he described her grave beside the Peneus with the

epitaph and the urn on the tombstone. Pausanias says that Lais was a

native of Hycara (_sic_) in Sicily and that her grave was at Corinth,

where it was surmounted by the figure of a lion holding a ram in its

paws. He adds that in Thessaly, whither she had gone for the love of a

certain Hippostratus, there was another tomb which claimed to be hers.

Fragment xlviii. Polemo said that copies of the laws of Solon were kept

in the Prytaneum engraved on square wooden tablets which revolved on

pivots in such a way that when the tablets were turned at an angle they

seemed to be triangular. Pausanias says briefly that the laws of Solon

were inscribed in the Prytaneum.

Fragment lv. Polemo said that wrestling was invented by Phorbas.

Pausanias says that it was invented by Theseus.

Fragment lxxviii. Polemo mentioned the sanctuary of Hercules at

Cynosarges. So does Pausanias.

Fragment lxxxiii. Polemo described two pools in Sicily, beside which the

Sicilians took their most solemn oaths, perjury being followed by death.

Pausanias describes how people threw offerings into the craters of Etna

and watched whether the offerings sank or were ejected by the volcanic

fires. Some modern writers have supposed that Pausanias meant to

describe the place and the oath described by Polemo, but that he mistook

the water for fire and the offering for an oath. The supposition is very

unlikely.

Fragment lxxxvi. Polemo mentioned the Tiasa, a river near Sparta. So

does Pausanias.

[Sidenote: No evidence

that

Pausanias

copied

Polemo.]

These are, I believe, all the existing fragments of Polemo in which he

mentions the same things as Pausanias. Not one of them supports the

theory that Pausanias copied from Polemo. In some of them the writer

mentions the same places, buildings, and works of art that are mentioned

by Pausanias. But this was almost inevitable. When two men describe the

same places correctly they can hardly help mentioning some of the same

things. In no case does the coincidence go beyond a bare mention. Again,

Polemo sometimes referred to the same myth or legend as Pausanias; but

this is no proof that Pausanias copied from Polemo. A multitude of myths

and legends were the commonplaces of every educated Greek, whether he

had read Polemo or not. The passage of Polemo as to the race between

mule-carts at Olympia agrees in substance, not in language, with the

corresponding passage of Pausanias. Both writers, it may be assumed,

derived their information from the best source, the Olympic register,

which, as we have seen, was published and accessible to all. The

Delphian story of the wolf that disclosed the stolen treasure may have

been narrated by both writers in the same way, though from the abridged

form in which Polemo’s version is reported by Aelian we cannot be sure

of this. No doubt the story was told in much the same way by the

Delphian guides to all visitors, who may have been surprised to find a

statue of a wolf dedicated to Apollo, the old mythical relationship of

the god with wolves having long fallen into the background. Again,

Polemo, like Pausanias, remarked on the scrupulous piety of the

Athenians. So, too, for that matter did St. Paul, but nobody suspects

him of having borrowed the remark from Polemo. The mention of the

sculptor Lycius, of the grave of Thucydides, and of the torch-race by

the two writers proves nothing as to the dependence of the one on the

other. Some of the fragments of Polemo show that he described in minute

detail things which Pausanias has merely mentioned. Finally, in a number

of the fragments Polemo makes statements which are explicitly or

implicitly contradicted by Pausanias. This proves that if Pausanias was

acquainted with the works of Polemo, he at least exercised complete

freedom of judgment in accepting or rejecting the opinions of his

predecessor. Another proof of his independence is furnished by his

speaking of the treasuries at Olympia as treasuries, whereas Polemo had

designated the same buildings less correctly as temples.

[Sidenote: Things

mentioned

by Polemo

but not by

Pausanias.]

Second, let us take the things mentioned by Polemo, but not by

Pausanias. They include at Munychia the worship of the hero Acratopotes;

at Athens a picture of the marriage of Pirithous, an inscription

relating to the sacrifices offered to Hercules at Cynosarges, and cups

dedicated by a certain Neoptolemus, apparently on the Acropolis; in

Attica a township called Crius; at Sicyon the Painted Colonnade (to

which Polemo seems to have devoted a special treatise), pictures by the

painters Aristides, Pausanias, and Nicophanes, a portrait of the tyrant

Aristratus partly painted by Apelles, and an obscene worship of

Dionysus; at Phlius a colonnade called the Colonnade of the Polemarch

and containing a painting or paintings by Sillax of Rhegium; at Argos a

sanctuary of Libyan Demeter; at Sparta a chapel and bronze statue of

Cottina, a bronze ox dedicated by her, a sanctuary of Corythallian

Artemis, a festival called _kopis_ (described by Polemo in detail), and

the worship of two heroes Matton and Ceraon; at Olympia a hundred and

thirty-two silver cups, two silver wine-jugs, one silver sacrificial

vessel, and three gilt cups, all preserved in the treasury of the

Metapontines, a cedar-wood figure of a Triton holding a silver cup, a

silver siren, three silver cups of various shapes, a golden wine-jug,

and two drinking-horns, all preserved in the treasury of the Byzantines,

thirty-three silver cups of various shapes, a silver pot, a golden

sacrificial vessel, and a golden bowl, all preserved in the temple of

Hera, and a statue of a Lacedaemonian named Leon who won a victory in

the chariot-race; at Elis the worship of Gourmand Apollo; at Scolus in

Boeotia the worship of Big-loaf Demeter; at Thebes a temple of Aphrodite

Lamia, a statue of the bard Cleon (about which Polemo told an anecdote),

and games held in honour of Hercules; and finally at Delphi a golden

book of the poetess Aristomache in the Sicyonian treasury, a treasury of

the Spinatians containing two marble statues of boys, a sanctuary of

Demeter Hermuchus, and a curious custom of offering to Latona at the

festival of the Theoxenia the largest leek that was to be found.

All these are mentioned by Polemo as things existing or customs

practised within that portion of Greece which Pausanias has described.

When we remember that the mention of them occurs in a few brief

fragments, which are all that remain to us of the voluminous works of

Polemo, we can imagine what a multitude of things must have been

described by Polemo, which are passed over in total silence by

Pausanias.

[Sidenote: Result of

comparison

between

Polemo and

Pausanias.]

To sum up the result of this comparison of Polemo with Pausanias, we

find that both writers mention some of the same things and record some

of the same traditions, but that this agreement never amounts to a

verbal coincidence; that Polemo mentions many things which are not

noticed by Pausanias; and that Pausanias repeatedly adopts views which

differ from or contradict views expressed by Polemo. Thus there is

nothing in the remains of Polemo to show that Pausanias, treading as he

so often did in Polemo’s footsteps, copied the works of his predecessor;

on the contrary, the very frequent omission by Pausanias of things

mentioned by Polemo, and the not infrequent adoption by him of opinions

which contradict those of Polemo, go to prove either that he was

unacquainted with Polemo’s writings, or that he deliberately disregarded

and tacitly controverted them.

[Sidenote: Theory

that

Pausanias

copied

from

Polemo

or from

writers of

Polemo’s

date.]

Yet in recent years it has been maintained that Pausanias slavishly

copied from Polemo the best part of his descriptions of Athens, Olympia,

and Delphi, and a good deal besides, and that he described these places

substantially not as they were in his own age but as they had been in

the time of Polemo, about three hundred years before; for it is a part

of the same theory that Pausanias had travelled and seen very little in

Greece, had compiled the bulk of his book from the works of earlier

writers, and had added only a few hasty jottings of his own to give the

book a modern air.

As to the proposition that Pausanias borrowed largely from Polemo it is

not needful to say any more. We have seen that it has no foundation in

the existing remains of Polemo. Whether it would be established or

refuted by the lost works of Polemo we cannot say. It will be time to

consider the question when these lost works are found, if that should

ever be.

[Sidenote: Theory that

Pausanias

did not

describe

Greece as

it was in

his own

time.]

On the other hand, the proposition that Pausanias described Greece not

as it was in his own time, but as it had been in an earlier age, while

it is of wider scope than the former is also more susceptible of

verification. It could be established very simply by proving that he

spoke of things as existing which from other sources are known to have

ceased to exist before his time. It could not, of course, be established

merely by showing that he mentions little or nothing of later date than

say the age of Polemo, about 170 B.C., unless it could be further shown

that the things he mentions had ceased to exist between that age and his

own. For obviously all the things he notices might have existed in 170

B.C. and still be in existence when he wrote, and in describing them he

would be as truly describing the Greece of his own time as a writer of

the present day who, professing to record the most notable things in

Athens at the end of the nineteenth century A.D., should choose to

mention no building or statue later than the time of Pausanias, or even

of Polemo himself. Thus all the attempts that have been made to

invalidate the testimony of Pausanias as to the state of Greece in the

second century A.D. by demonstrating merely that the things he describes

were in existence in the second century B.C. must be dismissed as

irrelevant. Even if the premises be admitted, the conclusion which it is

sought to establish would not follow from them. It remains, therefore,

to examine the evidence which has been thought to prove that some of the

things mentioned by Pausanias as existing had ceased to exist before his

time. If this were indeed proved, then the proposition that he did not

describe Greece as it was in his own time would be proved also, and we

should be sure that his descriptions were borrowed either wholly or in

part from earlier writers, even if we could not hazard any guess as to

who these writers were.

[Sidenote: His description

Piraeus.]

In the first place, then, it has been maintained that the description

which Pausanias gives of the state of Piraeus did not apply to his own

time. His account of the ship-sheds, the two market-places, the

sanctuaries, the images, and so on, implies, it is said, that the port

was in a fairly thriving state when he wrote about the middle of the

second century A.D., and this cannot have been the case since Piraeus

was burnt by Sulla in 86 B.C., and still lay in a forlorn condition when

Strabo wrote in the age of Augustus. This remarkable criticism entirely

overlooks the fact that between the destruction of Piraeus by Sulla and

the time of Pausanias more than two hundred years had elapsed, during

the greater part of which Greece had enjoyed profound peace and had been

treated with special favour and indulgence by the Roman emperors. Is it

beyond the bounds of possibility that during these two centuries the

blackened ruins should have been cleared away? that new buildings should

have sprung up, and population should have gathered once more around the

harbour? Does the Palatinate, we may ask by analogy, remain to this day

the wilderness to which it was reduced by the armies of Louis XIV. two

centuries ago? But such questions need no answer. In the case of

Piraeus, fortunately, we are not left merely to balance probabilities or

improbabilities against each other. We have positive evidence of a great

revival of the port after its destruction by Sulla. A single inscription

of the first century B.C. or the second century A.D. testifies to the

existence of the dockyards, the colonnades, the Exchange, the government

buildings, the sanctuaries. Another, contemporary with Pausanias, proves

that Roman merchants were then settled in the port. A third deals with

the regulation of traffic in the market. Portraits of Roman emperors

found on the spot speak of gratitude for imperial favour, and remains of

Roman villas and Roman baths bear witness to the return not merely of

prosperity but of wealth and luxury. In short, if Pausanias had

described Piraeus as lying in ruins, as his critic thinks he should have

done, he might have described it as it was in the early part of the

first century B.C., but he certainly would not have described it as it

was in his own time two hundred years later.

[Sidenote: His description

Arcadia.]

Again, it has been argued that Pausanias copied his description of

Arcadia from much older writers because, it is said, he pictures the

country as in a flourishing state, whereas Strabo says that most of the

famous cities of Arcadia had either ceased to exist or had left hardly a

trace of themselves behind. How little the testimony of Strabo is worth

when he speaks of the interior of Greece is shown by his famous

statement that not a vestige of Mycenae remained. Contrast this

statement with the brief but accurate description which Pausanias gives

of the walls and the lion-gate of Mycenae as they were in his day and as

they remain down to this; then say whether the testimony of Strabo is to

outweigh that of Pausanias on questions of Greek topography. In fact it

is generally recognised that Strabo had visited very few parts of

Greece, perhaps none but Corinth. We may therefore well hesitate to

confide in his vague sweeping assertion as to the desolation of Arcadia.

A simple fact suffices to upset it. Coins of the Roman period prove that

seven out of the eleven cities, which he says had ceased to exist or had

left hardly a trace behind, were still inhabited and doing business long

after the agreeable, but not too scrupulously accurate, geographer had

been gathered to his fathers. Nor, again, is it true to say that

Pausanias describes Arcadia as if it were in a prosperous state. On the

contrary, the long array of ruined or shrunken cities, deserted

villages, and roofless shrines, which he has not failed to chronicle,

leave on the reader, as they left on the writer himself, a melancholy

impression of desolation and decay. The only two cities which from his

description we should gather to have been in a tolerably thriving

condition are Tegea and Mantinea. As to the former we have the precious

testimony of Strabo himself that “it kept pretty well together.” As to

Mantinea, if we cannot trust the evidence of Pausanias, we can surely

trust the architectural and inscriptional evidence which proves that in

the Roman period the theatre was rebuilt, and that not many years before

Pausanias was born Roman merchants resided in the city, great

reconstructions were carried out in the market-place, a marble colonnade

added to it, banqueting-halls and treasuries built, a bazaar surrounded

with workshops erected, and a semicircular hall reared which, in the

words of an inscription referring to it, “would by itself be an ornament

of the city.” The remains of these buildings, together with the ancient

walls and gates of the city almost in their entire extent though not to

their full height, were visible down to the year 1890 A.D. at least.[5]

All this in a city which, if we were to believe Strabo, had vanished

from the earth before his time leaving little or no traces of it behind.

So much for the comparative value of the testimony of Strabo and

Pausanias with regard to Arcadia.

-----

Footnote 5:

When I last visited Mantinea, in October 1895, most of the ruins about

the market-place, which were excavated by the French some ten years

ago, had again disappeared beneath the soil.

-----

[Sidenote: Grove of

Poseidon at

Onchestus.]

Again, in Boeotia our author is accused of describing things that were

not as if they were, and the witness for the prosecution is again

Strabo. Pausanias says that the grove of Poseidon at Onchestus existed

in his time. Strabo says that there were no trees in it. Where is the

inconsistency between these statements? Strabo wrote in the reign of

Augustus; Pausanias wrote in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Did trees

cease to grow after the time of Strabo?

[Sidenote: Limnae

and

Thuria in

Messenia.]

Further, Pausanias has been reproached with not knowing that Limnae in

Messenia belonged to the Messenians in his time. This is a strange

reproach. He treats of Limnae under Messenia, and does not say that it

belonged to anybody but the Messenians. What more could he do? Was it

needful for him to say of every place in Messenia that it belonged to

the Messenians? of every town in Arcadia that it belonged to the

Arcadians? of every temple in Athens that it belonged to the Athenians?

The ground of the offence is Pausanias’s statement that the neighbouring

town of Thuria in Messenia had been bestowed by Augustus on the

Lacedaemonians. The truth of this statement is not disputed. It is

confirmed by coins which prove that in the reign of Septimius Severus,

long after the time of Pausanias, Thuria continued to belong to the

Lacedaemonians. But the critics have assumed quite gratuitously that

along with Thuria the emperor Augustus transferred Limnae also to the

Lacedaemonians, and that Pausanias believed Limnae to belong to them

still in his time, although we know from the evidence of Tacitus and of

boundary stones that in his time Limnae belonged to Messenia. Both these

assumptions are baseless. We have no reason to suppose that Augustus

gave Limnae to the Lacedaemonians, none to suppose that Pausanias

believed it to belong to them. On the contrary, we have, as I have just

pointed out, the best of grounds for supposing that he held it to belong

to Messenia. The truth is, the critics have confused two distinct,

though neighbouring districts, and have shifted the burden of this

confusion to the shoulders of the innocent Pausanias, in whose work not

a shadow of it can be detected.

Studies in Greek Scenery, Legend and History Selected from His Commentary on Pausanias' 'Description of Greece,' · 第 8 / 11 章

There is one side, however, of Greek religion as to which Pausanias