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 |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.
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.
Measurements
of
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.
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.
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.