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
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.
[Sidenote: Theory
that
Pausanias
copied
from
Polemo
or from
writers of
Polemo’s
date.]
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.
[Sidenote: Theory that
Pausanias
did not
describe
Greece as
it was in
his own
time.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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