Studies in Greek Scenery, Legend and History: Selected from His Commentary on Pausanias' 'Description of Greece,'Frazer, James George
History
Studies in Greek Scenery, Legend and History: Selected from His Commentary on Pausanias' 'Description of Greece,'
Frazer, James George
Greece -- Antiquities; Greece -- Description and travel
across the Atlantic.
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Footnote 1:
“Antoninus the Second,” he tells us (viii. 43. 6), “inflicted
punishment on the Germans, the most numerous and warlike barbarians in
Europe.”
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[Sidenote: His preference
for the
older over
the later
art.]
When we examine Pausanias’s choice of monuments we find that, like his
account of the country and people, it was mainly determined by two
leading principles, his antiquarian tastes and his religious curiosity.
In the first place, the monuments described are generally ancient, not
modern; in the second place, they are for the most part religious, not
profane. His preference for old over modern art, for works of the fifth
and fourth centuries B.C. over those of the later period, was well
founded and has been shared by the best judges both in ancient and
modern times. Cicero, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Quintilian, and our
author’s own contemporary, Lucian, perhaps the most refined critic of
art in antiquity, mention no artist of later date than the fourth
century B.C. The truth is, the subjugation of Greece by Macedonia struck
a fatal blow at Greek art. No sculptor or painter of the first rank was
born after the conquest. It seemed as if art were a flower that could
only bloom in freedom; in the air of slavery it drooped and faded. Thus
if Pausanias chose to chronicle the masterpieces of the great age of art
rather than the feebler productions of the decadence, we can only
applaud his taste. Yet we may surmise that his taste was here reinforced
by his patriotism. For he was more than a mere antiquary and
connoisseur. He was a patriot who warmly sympathised with the ancient
glories of his country and deeply mourned its decline. He recognised
Athens as the representative of all that was best in Greek life, and he
can hardly find words strong enough to express his detestation of the
men who by weakening her in the Peloponnesian war directly prepared for
the conquest of Greece by Macedonia. The battle of Chaeronea he
describes repeatedly as a disaster for the whole of Greece, and of the
conqueror Philip himself he speaks in terms of the strongest
reprobation. The men who had repelled the Persians, put down the
military despotism of Sparta, fought against the Macedonians, and
delayed, if they could not avert, the final subjugation of Greece by
Rome were for him the benefactors of their country. He gives a list of
them, beginning with Miltiades and ending with Philopoemen, after whom,
he says, Greece ceased to be the mother of the brave. And as he mentions
with pride and gratitude the men who had served the cause of freedom, so
he expresses himself with disgust and abhorrence of the men who had
worked for the enslavement of Greece to Persia, to Macedonia, and to
Rome. His style, generally cold and colourless, grows warm and animated
when he tells of a struggle for freedom, whether waged by the Messenians
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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