PolemoandPausaniascompared.
Fragment ii. In his description of the Acropolis at Athens, Polemo mentioned a sculptor Lycius, son of Myron. So doesPausanias in his description of the Acropolis.
Fragment iii. In his description of the Acropolis, Polemo mentioned a decree forbidding women of loose character to take the names of any of the great quadriennial festivals. Pausanias mentions no such decree, but among the paintings which he describes in the Propylaea is one of Alcibiades “containing emblems of the victory won by his team at Nemea.” Now we know from other writers that in this picture Alcibiades was portrayed reclining in the lap of Nemea. The model who sat for the personification of Nemea was probably a woman of the sort who were forbidden by the decree to take the name of a quadriennial festival, and the sight of the picture may have led Polemo to mention the decree. If this was so—and the reasoning though a little circuitous is plausible—it becomes probable that Polemo saw and described the picture of Alcibiades to which Pausanias refers. The probability is strengthened, almost to the point of certainty, by our knowledge that Polemo did describe the paintings in the Propylaea, though no details of his description have survived.
Fragment iv. In his description of the Acropolis, Polemo mentioned that Thucydides was buried at the Melitian gate. So does Pausanias in his description of the Acropolis.
Fragment vi. In his description of the pictures in the Propylaea, which probably formed part of his treatise in four books on the Acropolis, Polemo mentioned three Athenian festivals at which torch-races were held, namely the Panathenian festival, the festival of Hephaestus, and the festival of Prometheus. Pausanias in his description of the Academy mentions that torch-races were run from an altar of Prometheus in the Academy to the city.
Fragment x. Polemo told the story of the capture of Aphidna in Attica by the Dioscuri, and mentioned that in the affair Castor was wounded by king Aphidnus in the right thigh. Pausanias repeatedly refers to the capture of Aphidna by the Dioscuri, but he expresses a belief that the place was taken without fighting, and he gives reasons for thinking so.
Fragment xi. In one of his works which is cited asThe Greek HistoryPolemo mentioned that Poseidon contended with Hera for the possession of Argos and was worsted, and that the two deities did not exhibit tokens in support of their claims as they did at Athens. Pausanias in his description of Argolis twice mentions the defeat of Poseidon in his dispute with Hera for the possession of the land, but he says nothing about the absence of tokens.
Fragment xii. According to Polemo, the Argives related how the first corn sown inArgolis had been fetched by Argus from Libya. According to Pausanias, they asserted that they had received the first corn from Demeter.
Fragment xviii. In his work on the votive offerings at Lacedaemon, Polemo mentioned “a chapel of Cottina, close to Colone, where is the sanctuary of Dionysus, a splendid edifice known to many in the city.” Pausanias in his description of Sparta mentions “the place named Colona, and a temple of Dionysus Colonatas.”
Fragment xxii. Polemo mentioned at Olympia the old temple of Hera, the temple of the Metapontines, and the temple of the Byzantines. Pausanias describes all three buildings, but he designates the two latter correctly as treasuries, not temples.
Fragment xxiii. Polemo related that for a time a race had been run at Olympia between carts drawn by mules, but that after thirteen victories had been won the race was abolished in Ol. 84. He further said that the name for a mule-cart (apene) was a Tegean word. Pausanias mentions that the race between mule-carts at Olympia was instituted in Ol. 70 and abolished in Ol. 84. He says nothing about the name for a mule-cart being Tegean.
Fragment xxiv. Polemo said that Athena was wounded by Ornytus. Pausanias says thatshe was wounded by Teuthis, but that some people called her assailant Ornytus.
Fragment xxvii. In his work on the treasuries at Delphi, Polemo mentioned the Sicyonian treasury. So does Pausanias in his description of Delphi.
Fragment xxix. Polemo told how the Delphians honoured the wolf because a wolf had discovered a sacred jewel of gold that had been stolen from Delphi and buried on Mount Parnassus. Pausanias says that the Delphians dedicated a bronze figure of a wolf in the sanctuary of Apollo, because a man who had stolen some sacred treasures and hidden them in the forest on Parnassus was killed by a wolf, which then went daily to the city and howled, till people followed it and so found the stolen treasure.
Fragment xxxii. Polemo told how Palamedes invented dice to amuse the Greek army before Troy when they were distressed by famine. Pausanias says simply that dice were an invention of Palamedes.
Fragment xli. Polemo said that at Athens there were three images of the Furies, two made by Scopas out of the stone calledluchneus(probably Parian marble), and the middle one made by Calamis. Pausanias notices the images of the Furies without mentioning their number, their material, or the artists who made them.
Fragment xlii. In speaking of wineless libations Polemo remarked on the scrupulousness of the Athenians in matters of ritual. Pausanias observes, in different connexions, that the Athenians were more pious and more zealous in religious matters than other people.
Fragment xliv. Polemo said that Lais was born at Hyccara in Sicily and was murdered in Thessaly, whither she had gone for love of a Thessalian named Pausanias; and he described her grave beside the Peneus with the epitaph and the urn on the tombstone. Pausanias says that Lais was a native of Hycara (sic) in Sicily and that her grave was at Corinth, where it was surmounted by the figure of a lion holding a ram in its paws. He adds that in Thessaly, whither she had gone for the love of a certain Hippostratus, there was another tomb which claimed to be hers.
Fragment xlviii. Polemo said that copies of the laws of Solon were kept in the Prytaneum engraved on square wooden tablets which revolved on pivots in such a way that when the tablets were turned at an angle they seemed to be triangular. Pausanias says briefly that the laws of Solon were inscribed in the Prytaneum.
Fragment lv. Polemo said that wrestling was invented by Phorbas. Pausanias says that it was invented by Theseus.
Fragment lxxviii. Polemo mentioned thesanctuary of Hercules at Cynosarges. So does Pausanias.
Fragment lxxxiii. Polemo described two pools in Sicily, beside which the Sicilians took their most solemn oaths, perjury being followed by death. Pausanias describes how people threw offerings into the craters of Etna and watched whether the offerings sank or were ejected by the volcanic fires. Some modern writers have supposed that Pausanias meant to describe the place and the oath described by Polemo, but that he mistook the water for fire and the offering for an oath. The supposition is very unlikely.
Fragment lxxxvi. Polemo mentioned the Tiasa, a river near Sparta. So does Pausanias.
No evidencethatPausaniascopiedPolemo.
These are, I believe, all the existing fragments of Polemo in which he mentions the same things as Pausanias. Not one of them supports the theory that Pausanias copied from Polemo. In some of them the writer mentions the same places, buildings, and works of art that are mentioned by Pausanias. But this was almost inevitable. When two men describe the same places correctly they can hardly help mentioning some of the same things. In no case does the coincidence go beyond a bare mention. Again, Polemo sometimes referred to the same myth or legend as Pausanias; but this is no proof that Pausanias copied fromPolemo. A multitude of myths and legends were the commonplaces of every educated Greek, whether he had read Polemo or not. The passage of Polemo as to the race between mule-carts at Olympia agrees in substance, not in language, with the corresponding passage of Pausanias. Both writers, it may be assumed, derived their information from the best source, the Olympic register, which, as we have seen, was published and accessible to all. The Delphian story of the wolf that disclosed the stolen treasure may have been narrated by both writers in the same way, though from the abridged form in which Polemo’s version is reported by Aelian we cannot be sure of this. No doubt the story was told in much the same way by the Delphian guides to all visitors, who may have been surprised to find a statue of a wolf dedicated to Apollo, the old mythical relationship of the god with wolves having long fallen into the background. Again, Polemo, like Pausanias, remarked on the scrupulous piety of the Athenians. So, too, for that matter did St. Paul, but nobody suspects him of having borrowed the remark from Polemo. The mention of the sculptor Lycius, of the grave of Thucydides, and of the torch-race by the two writers proves nothing as to the dependence of the one on the other. Some of the fragments of Polemo show that he described inminute detail things which Pausanias has merely mentioned. Finally, in a number of the fragments Polemo makes statements which are explicitly or implicitly contradicted by Pausanias. This proves that if Pausanias was acquainted with the works of Polemo, he at least exercised complete freedom of judgment in accepting or rejecting the opinions of his predecessor. Another proof of his independence is furnished by his speaking of the treasuries at Olympia as treasuries, whereas Polemo had designated the same buildings less correctly as temples.
Thingsmentionedby Polemobut not byPausanias.
Second, let us take the things mentioned by Polemo, but not by Pausanias. They include at Munychia the worship of the hero Acratopotes; at Athens a picture of the marriage of Pirithous, an inscription relating to the sacrifices offered to Hercules at Cynosarges, and cups dedicated by a certain Neoptolemus, apparently on the Acropolis; in Attica a township called Crius; at Sicyon the Painted Colonnade (to which Polemo seems to have devoted a special treatise), pictures by the painters Aristides, Pausanias, and Nicophanes, a portrait of the tyrant Aristratus partly painted by Apelles, and an obscene worship of Dionysus; at Phlius a colonnade called the Colonnade of the Polemarch and containing a painting or paintings by Sillax of Rhegium; at Argos a sanctuaryof Libyan Demeter; at Sparta a chapel and bronze statue of Cottina, a bronze ox dedicated by her, a sanctuary of Corythallian Artemis, a festival calledkopis(described by Polemo in detail), and the worship of two heroes Matton and Ceraon; at Olympia a hundred and thirty-two silver cups, two silver wine-jugs, one silver sacrificial vessel, and three gilt cups, all preserved in the treasury of the Metapontines, a cedar-wood figure of a Triton holding a silver cup, a silver siren, three silver cups of various shapes, a golden wine-jug, and two drinking-horns, all preserved in the treasury of the Byzantines, thirty-three silver cups of various shapes, a silver pot, a golden sacrificial vessel, and a golden bowl, all preserved in the temple of Hera, and a statue of a Lacedaemonian named Leon who won a victory in the chariot-race; at Elis the worship of Gourmand Apollo; at Scolus in Boeotia the worship of Big-loaf Demeter; at Thebes a temple of Aphrodite Lamia, a statue of the bard Cleon (about which Polemo told an anecdote), and games held in honour of Hercules; and finally at Delphi a golden book of the poetess Aristomache in the Sicyonian treasury, a treasury of the Spinatians containing two marble statues of boys, a sanctuary of Demeter Hermuchus, and a curious custom of offering to Latona at the festival of the Theoxenia the largest leek that was to be found.
All these are mentioned by Polemo as things existing or customs practised within that portion of Greece which Pausanias has described. When we remember that the mention of them occurs in a few brief fragments, which are all that remain to us of the voluminous works of Polemo, we can imagine what a multitude of things must have been described by Polemo, which are passed over in total silence by Pausanias.
Result ofcomparisonbetweenPolemo andPausanias.
To sum up the result of this comparison of Polemo with Pausanias, we find that both writers mention some of the same things and record some of the same traditions, but that this agreement never amounts to a verbal coincidence; that Polemo mentions many things which are not noticed by Pausanias; and that Pausanias repeatedly adopts views which differ from or contradict views expressed by Polemo. Thus there is nothing in the remains of Polemo to show that Pausanias, treading as he so often did in Polemo’s footsteps, copied the works of his predecessor; on the contrary, the very frequent omission by Pausanias of things mentioned by Polemo, and the not infrequent adoption by him of opinions which contradict those of Polemo, go to prove either that he was unacquainted with Polemo’s writings, or that he deliberately disregarded and tacitly controverted them.
TheorythatPausaniascopiedfromPolemoor fromwriters ofPolemo’sdate.
Yet in recent years it has been maintained that Pausanias slavishly copied from Polemo the best part of his descriptions of Athens, Olympia, and Delphi, and a good deal besides, and that he described these places substantially not as they were in his own age but as they had been in the time of Polemo, about three hundred years before; for it is a part of the same theory that Pausanias had travelled and seen very little in Greece, had compiled the bulk of his book from the works of earlier writers, and had added only a few hasty jottings of his own to give the book a modern air.
As to the proposition that Pausanias borrowed largely from Polemo it is not needful to say any more. We have seen that it has no foundation in the existing remains of Polemo. Whether it would be established or refuted by the lost works of Polemo we cannot say. It will be time to consider the question when these lost works are found, if that should ever be.
Theory thatPausaniasdid notdescribeGreece asit was inhis owntime.
On the other hand, the proposition that Pausanias described Greece not as it was in his own time, but as it had been in an earlier age, while it is of wider scope than the former is also more susceptible of verification. It could be established very simply by proving that he spoke of things as existing which from other sources are known to have ceased to exist before his time. It could not, of course,be established merely by showing that he mentions little or nothing of later date than say the age of Polemo, about 170B.C., unless it could be further shown that the things he mentions had ceased to exist between that age and his own. For obviously all the things he notices might have existed in 170B.C.and still be in existence when he wrote, and in describing them he would be as truly describing the Greece of his own time as a writer of the present day who, professing to record the most notable things in Athens at the end of the nineteenth centuryA.D., should choose to mention no building or statue later than the time of Pausanias, or even of Polemo himself. Thus all the attempts that have been made to invalidate the testimony of Pausanias as to the state of Greece in the second centuryA.D.by demonstrating merely that the things he describes were in existence in the second centuryB.C.must be dismissed as irrelevant. Even if the premises be admitted, the conclusion which it is sought to establish would not follow from them. It remains, therefore, to examine the evidence which has been thought to prove that some of the things mentioned by Pausanias as existing had ceased to exist before his time. If this were indeed proved, then the proposition that he did not describe Greece as it was in his own time would be proved also, and weshould be sure that his descriptions were borrowed either wholly or in part from earlier writers, even if we could not hazard any guess as to who these writers were.
His descriptionofPiraeus.
In the first place, then, it has been maintained that the description which Pausanias gives of the state of Piraeus did not apply to his own time. His account of the ship-sheds, the two market-places, the sanctuaries, the images, and so on, implies, it is said, that the port was in a fairly thriving state when he wrote about the middle of the second centuryA.D., and this cannot have been the case since Piraeus was burnt by Sulla in 86B.C., and still lay in a forlorn condition when Strabo wrote in the age of Augustus. This remarkable criticism entirely overlooks the fact that between the destruction of Piraeus by Sulla and the time of Pausanias more than two hundred years had elapsed, during the greater part of which Greece had enjoyed profound peace and had been treated with special favour and indulgence by the Roman emperors. Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that during these two centuries the blackened ruins should have been cleared away? that new buildings should have sprung up, and population should have gathered once more around the harbour? Does the Palatinate, we may ask by analogy, remain to this day the wilderness to which itwas reduced by the armies of Louis XIV. two centuries ago? But such questions need no answer. In the case of Piraeus, fortunately, we are not left merely to balance probabilities or improbabilities against each other. We have positive evidence of a great revival of the port after its destruction by Sulla. A single inscription of the first centuryB.C.or the second centuryA.D.testifies to the existence of the dockyards, the colonnades, the Exchange, the government buildings, the sanctuaries. Another, contemporary with Pausanias, proves that Roman merchants were then settled in the port. A third deals with the regulation of traffic in the market. Portraits of Roman emperors found on the spot speak of gratitude for imperial favour, and remains of Roman villas and Roman baths bear witness to the return not merely of prosperity but of wealth and luxury. In short, if Pausanias had described Piraeus as lying in ruins, as his critic thinks he should have done, he might have described it as it was in the early part of the first centuryB.C., but he certainly would not have described it as it was in his own time two hundred years later.
His descriptionofArcadia.
Again, it has been argued that Pausanias copied his description of Arcadia from much older writers because, it is said, he pictures the country as in a flourishing state, whereasStrabo says that most of the famous cities of Arcadia had either ceased to exist or had left hardly a trace of themselves behind. How little the testimony of Strabo is worth when he speaks of the interior of Greece is shown by his famous statement that not a vestige of Mycenae remained. Contrast this statement with the brief but accurate description which Pausanias gives of the walls and the lion-gate of Mycenae as they were in his day and as they remain down to this; then say whether the testimony of Strabo is to outweigh that of Pausanias on questions of Greek topography. In fact it is generally recognised that Strabo had visited very few parts of Greece, perhaps none but Corinth. We may therefore well hesitate to confide in his vague sweeping assertion as to the desolation of Arcadia. A simple fact suffices to upset it. Coins of the Roman period prove that seven out of the eleven cities, which he says had ceased to exist or had left hardly a trace behind, were still inhabited and doing business long after the agreeable, but not too scrupulously accurate, geographer had been gathered to his fathers. Nor, again, is it true to say that Pausanias describes Arcadia as if it were in a prosperous state. On the contrary, the long array of ruined or shrunken cities, deserted villages, and roofless shrines, which he has not failedto chronicle, leave on the reader, as they left on the writer himself, a melancholy impression of desolation and decay. The only two cities which from his description we should gather to have been in a tolerably thriving condition are Tegea and Mantinea. As to the former we have the precious testimony of Strabo himself that “it kept pretty well together.” As to Mantinea, if we cannot trust the evidence of Pausanias, we can surely trust the architectural and inscriptional evidence which proves that in the Roman period the theatre was rebuilt, and that not many years before Pausanias was born Roman merchants resided in the city, great reconstructions were carried out in the market-place, a marble colonnade added to it, banqueting-halls and treasuries built, a bazaar surrounded with workshops erected, and a semicircular hall reared which, in the words of an inscription referring to it, “would by itself be an ornament of the city.” The remains of these buildings, together with the ancient walls and gates of the city almost in their entire extent though not to their full height, were visible down to the year 1890A.D.at least.[5]All this in a city which, if we were to believe Strabo, had vanished from theearth before his time leaving little or no traces of it behind. So much for the comparative value of the testimony of Strabo and Pausanias with regard to Arcadia.
5. When I last visited Mantinea, in October 1895, most of the ruins about the market-place, which were excavated by the French some ten years ago, had again disappeared beneath the soil.
5. When I last visited Mantinea, in October 1895, most of the ruins about the market-place, which were excavated by the French some ten years ago, had again disappeared beneath the soil.
Grove ofPoseidon atOnchestus.
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?
LimnaeandThuria inMessenia.
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 notdisputed. 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 ofApollo atDelphi.
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 thatthe temple built by the Alcmaeonids in the sixth centuryB.C.was afterwards destroyed, probably by an earthquake, and that it was rebuilt in the fourth centuryB.C.Yet Pausanias, it is said, describes the temple of the sixth centuryB.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 279B.C.Hence the temple which he describes cannot have been the old one built in the sixth centuryB.C., since that temple, as we now know, was afterwards destroyed and rebuilt in the fourth centuryB.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 centuryB.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 thesculptures were executed by another artist. Now we have the evidence of Pausanias himself that the sculptor Calamis was at work as late as 427B.C.His pupil Praxias may therefore easily, at least in the opinion of Pausanias, have been at work at the end of the fifth centuryB.C.or in the early part of the fourth centuryB.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 427B.C.can have executed sculptures for a temple that was built in the sixth centuryB.C.In short, neither was the temple which Pausanias describes the temple of the sixth centuryB.C.nor can he possibly have supposed it to be so. The temple he describes was in all probability the temple of the fourth centuryB.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. Wemight 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|NewCorinth.|and read it with attention. Here was a city built in 44B.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 170B.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 worksof 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.|Imagesdedicatedby HerodesAtticusat theIsthmus.|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.
Pausaniasand theexistingmonuments.
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.