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
of them did with the same subjects on which he touched in his
_Description of Greece_. Yet the existing fragments of Polemo hardly
justify us in supposing that Pausanias was acquainted with the writings
of his learned predecessor. Certainly they lend no countenance to the
view that he borrowed descriptions of places and monuments from them.
This will appear from an examination of those fragments of Polemo which
deal with subjects falling within the scope of Pausanias’s work. We
shall look, first, at the things mentioned by both writers, and, second,
at the things mentioned by Polemo alone. The fragments are numbered as
in the editions of L. Preller and Ch. Müller, to which the reader is
referred for the Greek text.
First, then, let us take the things mentioned by both Polemo and
Pausanias.
[Sidenote: Polemo
and
Pausanias
compared.]
Fragment ii. In his description of the Acropolis at Athens, Polemo
mentioned a sculptor Lycius, son of Myron. So does Pausanias 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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