Studies in Greek Scenery, Legend and History / Selected from His Commentary on Pausanias' 'Description of Greece,'

by James George Frazer

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.

The Elean
register.

An historical document of which Pausanias made much use was the Elean register of Olympic victors. He often refers to it. We need not suppose that he consulted the original documents in the archives at Elis. The register had been published many centuries before by Hippias of Elis, 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.).

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.

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.

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.