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?
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.
Temple of
Apollo at
Delphi.
Lastly, it has been assumed that Pausanias’s account of the temple of Apollo at Delphi is irreconcileable with the remains of the building and with inscriptions relating to it which have recently been discovered by the French at Delphi. The combined evidence of architecture and inscriptions proves conclusively that the temple built by the Alcmaeonids in the sixth century B.C. was afterwards destroyed, probably by an earthquake, and that it was rebuilt in the fourth century B.C. Yet Pausanias, it is said, describes the temple of the sixth century B.C. as if it still existed in his time. Let us look at the facts in the light of the French discoveries. Observe, then, that Pausanias mentions the Gallic shields hanging on the architrave of the temple. These shields were captured in 279 B.C. Hence the temple which he describes cannot have been the old one built in the sixth century B.C., since that temple, as we now know, was afterwards destroyed and rebuilt in the fourth century B.C. But did Pausanias believe it to be the old one? There is nothing to show that he did, but on the contrary there is a good deal to show that he did not. In the first place, he does not say that the temple was built by the Alcmaeonids. He says it was built for the Amphictyons by the architect Spintharus. The date of Spintharus is otherwise unknown, but we have no reason to suppose that he lived in the sixth rather than in the fourth century B.C. In the second place, Pausanias tells us that the first sculptures for the gables of the temple were executed by Praxias, a pupil of Calamis, but that as the building lasted some time, Praxias died before it was finished, and the rest of the sculptures were executed by another artist. Now we have the evidence of Pausanias himself that the sculptor Calamis was at work as late as 427 B.C. His pupil Praxias may therefore easily, at least in the opinion of Pausanias, have been at work at the end of the fifth century B.C. or in the early part of the fourth century B.C., and this is precisely the time when, if we may judge from the historical and inscriptional evidence, the old temple was destroyed and preparations at least for rebuilding it were being made. At all events, Pausanias cannot possibly have supposed that the pupil of a man who was at work in 427 B.C. can have executed sculptures for a temple that was built in the sixth century B.C. In short, neither was the temple which Pausanias describes the temple of the sixth century B.C. nor can he possibly have supposed it to be so. The temple he describes was in all probability the temple of the fourth century B.C. His statement that the temple was long in building is amply confirmed by the inscriptions, which prove that the process of reconstruction dragged on over a period of many years.
Thus in every case an analysis of the evidence adduced to prove that Pausanias described a state of things which had passed away before his time, reveals only some oversight or misapprehension on the part of his critics. We might take it, therefore, without further discussion that he described Greece as it was in his own age. But if any reader is still sceptical, still blinded by the phantom Polemo, let him turn to Pausanias’s description of new Corinth |New
Corinth.| and read it with attention. Here was a city built in 44 B.C., more than a century after the time of Polemo, upon whom Pausanias is supposed by some to have been slavishly dependent. Yet he describes the city minutely and in topographical order, following up each street as it led out of the market-place. Amongst the many temples he mentions in it is one of Octavia and another of Capitolian Jupiter; among the many waterworks is the aqueduct by which Hadrian, the author’s contemporary, brought the water of the Stymphalian Lake to Corinth. And his description of the city with its temples, images, fountains, and portals is amply borne out by coins of the Imperial age. In the face of this single instance it is impossible to maintain that Pausanias must needs have borrowed most of his descriptions from writers who lived before 170 B.C. If he could describe Corinth so well without their aid, why should he not have described Athens, Olympia, and Delphi for himself? Nor does his power of description fail him when he comes down to works which were produced in his own lifetime. Not to mention his many notices of the works of Hadrian, such as the Olympieum at Athens with its colossal image of gold and ivory, and the library with its columns of Phrygian marble, its gilded roof, its alabaster ornaments, its statues and paintings, he has given us a minute account of the images dedicated by his contemporary Herodes Atticus in the temple of Poseidon at the Isthmus. |Images
dedicated
by Herodes
Atticus
at the
Isthmus.| He describes the images of Amphitrite and Poseidon, made of gold and ivory, standing erect in a car drawn by gilt horses with ivory hoofs; the image of Palaemon, also made of gold and ivory, standing on a dolphin; the two Tritons beside the horses, each of them made of gold from the waist upward and of ivory from the waist downward; and the reliefs on the pedestal of the images, comprising a figure of the Sea holding up the infant Aphrodite, with Nereids and the Dioscuri on either side. If he could describe in such detail the work of an obscure contemporary artist whom he does not condescend to mention, what reason have we to think that he could not describe for himself the famous images by the great hand of Phidias, the image of the Virgin at Athens and the image of Zeus at Olympia? In short, if Pausanias copied his descriptions from a book, it must have been from a book written in his own lifetime, perhaps by another man of the same name. The theory of the copyist Pausanias reduces itself to an absurdity.
Pausanias
and the
existing
monuments.
The best proof that Pausanias has pictured for us Greece as it was in his own day and not as it had ceased to be long before, is supplied by the monuments. In all parts of the country the truthfulness of his descriptions has been attested by remains of the buildings which he describes, and wherever these remains are most numerous, as for example at Olympia, Delphi, and Lycosura, we have most reason to admire his minute and painstaking accuracy. That he was infallible has never been maintained, and if it had been, the excavations would have refuted so foolish a contention, for they have enabled us to detect some errors into which he fell. For example, he mistook the figure of a girl for that of a man in the eastern gable of the temple of Zeus at Olympia; he misinterpreted the attitude of Hercules and Atlas in one of the metopes of the same temple; he affirmed that the colossal images at Lycosura were made of a single block of marble, whereas we know that they were made of several blocks fitted together; and he described the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea as the largest in Peloponnese, though in fact it was much smaller than the temple of Zeus at Olympia. These and similar mistakes, like the slips he sometimes made in reading inscriptions, do not lend any colour to an imputation of bad faith. All they show is that he shared the common weaknesses of humanity, that his eye sometimes deceived him, that his attention sometimes flagged, that occasionally he may have lent too ready an ear to the talk of the local guides. If these are sins, they are surely not unpardonable. Those who have followed in his footsteps in Greece and have formed from personal experience some idea, necessarily slight, of the magnitude of the task he set himself and of the difficulties he had to overcome in accomplishing it, will probably be the readiest to make allowance for inevitable imperfections, will be most grateful to him for what he has done, and least disposed to censure him for what he has left undone. Without him the ruins of Greece would for the most part be a labyrinth without a clue, a riddle without an answer. His book furnishes the clue to the labyrinth, the answer to many riddles. It will be read and studied so long as ancient Greece shall continue to engage the attention and awaken the interest of mankind; and if it is allowable to forecast the results of research in the future from those of research in the past we may venture to predict that, while they will correct the descriptions of Pausanias on some minor points, they will confirm them on many more, and will bring to light nothing to shake the confidence of reasonable and fair-minded men in his honour and good faith.
II. Oropus.—The plain of Oropus extends along the shore for about five miles; inland it narrows to a point, two or three miles from the shore, where the Asopus issues from a beautiful defile. At this inner angle of the plain stand the modern villages of Oropo and Sykamino on opposite sides of the river. But the territory of Oropus included some at least of the low hills which environ the plain, for the hills of Oropus were at one time divided between two Attic tribes. Moreover, the sanctuary of Amphiaraus, which belonged to Oropus, stands in hilly ground to the east of the plain. The whole of this district, lying between the Euripus and the northern declivities of Mount Parnes, is of great natural beauty. It is an undulating and richly wooded country, where the road runs between soft green hills and knolls, with charming and varied prospects across the winding waters of the Euripus to the blue mountains of Euboea, among which the lofty Delph may be seen glistering white with snow even in the hot days of summer. The traveller who comes direct from the monotonous and sterile plain of Athens is struck, on emerging from the wooded pass of Decelea, by the contrast between the scene which he has left behind and that which is suddenly unrolled at his feet. In antiquity this road, which went by Aphidna and could be traversed on foot in a day, was noted for the number and excellence of its inns, a distinction which it certainly does not enjoy now.