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
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. We might 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 [Sidenote: New Corinth.] and read
it with attention. Here was a city built in 44 B.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 170 B.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 works of
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. [Sidenote:
Images dedicated by Herodes Atticus at the Isthmus.] 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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