Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I. — John Shaqi
Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
History
Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.
Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
Greece -- Antiquities; Greece -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
done well, in his account of the capture of Scyrus by Achilles, to have
said not a word about what others relate, of Achilles having lived
at Scyrus among the maidens, which Polygnotus has painted; who has
also painted Odysseus suddenly making his appearance as Nausicaa and
her maids were bathing in the river, just as Homer has described it.
And among other paintings is Alcibiades, and there are traces in the
painting of the victory of his horses at Nemea. There too is Perseus
sailing to Seriphus, carrying to Polydectes the head of Medusa. But I
am not willing to tell the story of Medusa under ‘Attica.’ And, among
other paintings, to pass over the lad carrying the waterpots, and the
wrestler painted by Timænetus, is one of Musæus. I have read verses in
which it is recorded that Musæus could fly as a gift of Boreas, but
it seems to me that Onomacritus wrote the lines, and there is nothing
certainly of Musæus’ composition except the Hymn to Demeter written
for the Lycomidæ. And at the entrance to the Acropolis is a Hermes,
whom they call Propylæus, and the Graces, which they say were the
work of Socrates the son of Sophroniscus, whom the Pythian priestess
testified to have been the wisest of men, a thing which was not said to
Anacharsis, though he went to Delphi on purpose.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Now the Greeks among other things say that they had the seven wise
men. And among these they include the Lesbian tyrant and Periander the
son of Cypselus: and yet Pisistratus and his son Hippias were far more
humane and wise than Periander, both in war and in all that appertained
to citizen life, until Hippias because of the death of Hipparchus acted
with great cruelty, especially to a woman called Leæna, (_Lioness_).
For after the death of Hipparchus, (I speak now of what has never
before been recorded in history, but yet is generally believed by
the Athenians), Hippias tortured her to death, knowing that she had
been Aristogiton’s mistress, and thinking that she could not have been
ignorant of the plot against Hipparchus. In return for this, when
the Pisistratidæ had been deposed from the kingdom, a brazen lioness
was erected by the Athenians to her memory, and near her a statue of
Aphrodite, which they say was a votive offering of Callias, designed by
Calamis.
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