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.
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. |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.
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. |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 |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 |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.
[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.
[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.