“Pausanias est un homme qui ne manque ni de bon sens ni de bonne foi, mais qui croit ou au moins voudrait croire à ses dieux.” —Champagny.
LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS,
YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
1886.
CHISWICK PRESS:—C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.
PREFACE.
Of Pausanias personally we know very little, but that he lived during the Reign of the Antonines, and travelled all round Greece, and wrote his famous Tour round Greece, or Description of Greece, in 10 Books, describing what he had seen and heard. His chief merit is his showing to us the state of the works of art still remaining in his day in the Greek cities, which have since been swept away by the various invasions that have devastated that once happy land. “When Pausanias travelled through Greece, during the age of the Antonines, about 1690 years ago, he found every city teeming with life and refinement; every Temple a Museum of Art; and every spot hallowed by some tradition which contributed to its preservation. The ruthless destruction of these works of art, in subsequent ages, has reduced them to a small number; and the Traveller now pauses, with a melancholy interest, to reflect upon the objects described by Pausanias, but which no longer exist.”[1]
Pausanias’ Description of Greece is also full of various information on many topics. It is for example a mine of Mythology. For its various matter it has been happily compared to a “County History.” There is often a quiet vein of humour in Pausanias, who seems to have been almost equally a believer in Providence and in Homer.
I have translated from Schubart’s Text in the Teubner Series, (1875), but have taken the liberty always, where the text seemed hopeless, to adopt a reading that seemed preferable from any other source. I have constantly had before me the valuable edition of Siebelis, (Lipsiæ, 1827), to whom I am much indebted, especially for his Illustrations, still veracity obliges me to state that occasionally he too gives one reason to remember the famous lines of a well-known Rector of Welwyn in the Eighteenth Century.
“The commentators each dark passage shun,