the books were written in the order in which they now stand. Hence books six to ten cannot have been composed earlier, and may have been composed a good deal later, than 174 A.D., the year in which our author was engaged on his fifth book. Thus the composition of the work extended over a period of at least fourteen years and probably of many more. That Pausanias spent a long time over it might be inferred from a passage in which he explains a change in his religious views. When he began his work, so he tells us, he looked on some Greek myths as little better than foolishness, but when he had got as far as his description of Arcadia he had altered his opinion and had come to believe that they contained a kernel of deep wisdom under a husk of extravagance. Such a total change of attitude towards the religious traditions of his country was more probably an affair of years than of weeks and months. That the first book was not only written but published before the others seems clear. [Sidenote: The first book written and published before the rest.] Amongst the proofs of this the strongest is the writer’s statement in the seventh book, that when he wrote his description of Athens the Music Hall of Herodes Atticus had not yet been built. This implies that when he wrote the seventh book the first was already published; otherwise he could easily have incorporated a notice of the Music Hall in its proper place in the manuscript. Again, in the eighth book he expressly corrects a view which he had adopted in the first; this also he might have done in the manuscript of the first book if he still had it by him. In other places he tacitly adds to statements and descriptions contained in the first book. Further, the narrative of the Gallic invasion in the first book is superseded by the much fuller narrative given in the tenth book, and would hardly have been allowed to stand if it had been in the author’s power to cut it out. More interesting are the passages in which we seem to discover references to criticisms which had been passed on his first book. Thus in the third book he repeats emphatically the plan of work which he had laid down for himself in the first, adding that the plan had been adopted after mature deliberation, and that he would not depart from it. This sounds like a trumpet-blast of defiance to the critics who had picked holes in the scheme of his first book. Elsewhere he seems conscious that some of their strictures were not wholly undeserved. In speaking of the descendants of Aristomenes he is sorely tempted to go into the family history of the Diagorids, but pulls himself up sharply with the remark that he passes over this interesting topic “lest it should appear an impertinent digression.” Clearly the arrows of the reviewers had gone home. The tedious historical dissertations with which he had sought to spice the plain fare of Athenian topography were now felt by the poor author himself to savour strongly of impertinent digressions.