SOURCE: Introduction to Pausanias: Description of Greece, translated by W. H. S. Jones, London: William Heinemann, 1918, pp. ix-xxv.

[In the following essay, Jones provides a brief overview of Pausanias's life, style, the scope of his work, and background on Greek religion and the names of Greek gods.]

Life of Pausanias

About Pausanias we know nothing except what we can gather from a few scattered hints in his own Tour of Greece. In book v. xiii. sect. 7 he mentions "the dwelling among us of Pelops and Tantalus," and "the throne of Pelops on Mount Sipylus." It is a fair inference that Pausanias was a native of Lydia. His date we can fix with tolerable certainty. In v. i. sect. 2 he says that two hundred and seventeen years had passed since Corinth was repeopled. Now Corinth was restored in 44 B.C., so that Pausanias was writing his fifth book in 174 A.D. Again, in VII. XX. sect. 6, he tells us that in his account of Attica he did not mention the Odeum of Herodes because it was not yet built at the time of writing; but we happen to know that it was built during the time of the Antonines. These emperors Pausanias knows as "the first Antonine" and "the second Antonine," and he mentions a war of the latter against the Germans and Sauromatae. This war began in 166 A.D., and the emperor triumphed in 176 A.D. He does not mention the death of "the second Antonine," which took place in 180 A.D.

Of the character of Pausanias we know very little. His work is that of a commonplace mind, which accepts the conditions of the period in which it finds itself as the best possible outcome of an unhappy past. Without being a scientific critic, Pausanias can reject the improbable or relate it with a caveat lector. He is transparently honest, with no axe to grind and no object to be gained by intentional inaccuracy. His book exhibits no enthusiasms, either of love or of hate, but throughout it there is manifest a quiet admiration for the beauties and glories of Greece.

The Style of Pausanias

The style of Pausanias is simple and unpretentious. The matter of the work does not lend itself to literary embellishment, and, with two exceptions, the narrative unfolds itself plain and unadorned. The first exception is that Pausanias, like other Hellenistic writers, often indulges in curiously verbose and tortuous expressions to represent very simple ideas; the second is his fondness for transpositions of words, which are sometimes so violent as to throw doubt upon the sense.

The translator is sometimes troubled by what appears to be carelessness in the use of prepositions. It is impossible, for example, to decide positively in many cases whether [hyper] means "above" or "beyond." Another source of ambiguity is the use of [epi] with the dative case, of which Pausanias is very fond. But [epi] with the dative may have, among others, the following meanings:—

1. In addition to;
2. Next to, close to, at, near;
3. On the top of;
4. In the case of.

Now in topographical descriptions the use of prepositions with local meanings should be very strict and precise, and it is rather unfortunate that Pausanias employs this construction of [epi] so frequently, as the translator is often uncertain which meaning to choose, and an error may make a serious change in the sense of a passage.

Another ambiguity, occurring several times in Pausanias, is of less account, as it does not seriously affect the sense, but it may be of some interest to grammarians. Pausanias is fond of using a past tense when in many cases the natural tense in English is the present. The reason is sometimes because the writer is thinking of the time when he visited a locality, or investigated a problem, sometimes because he places himself in the position of his readers. Occasionally the past tense appears to be of the "momentary" type. In each case the translator has to decide which course is the best—to use a past tense in English,¹ to use the present, or to paraphrase.

The Tour

The work of Pausanias is far from being a complete description of ancient Greece. Many points which a modern reader would be interested in are either passed over altogether or else dismissed in the fewest possible words. Geological features, scenery, the general appearance of cities and villages, the state of agriculture and of trade, the power and efficiency of the country—all these things, which nowadays are objects of concern to an author, occupy a very small part of the narrative of Pausanias. To some extent these omissions are due to the differences between ancient taste and modern taste. The Greeks, for example, and indeed ancient peoples generally, appreciated scenery less than we do. But the chief reason for the peculiar character of the Tour is that Pausanias wrote for a limited public, which took little interest in such matters as industrial and economic questions. The reader he has in mind is the tourist, who visited Greece for pleasure. It is interesting to observe that even in the second century A.D. there were not a few who travelled for the sake of sight-seeing. We have as evidence not only the work of Pausanias, but also the many references in it (some nineteen² in all) to the ciceroni… who conducted visitors over the various districts and showed them the sights, adding a running commentary of legend and gossip. Pausanias himself was one of these tourists, and he appears to have explored the country with some thoroughness.

A modern reader of Pausanias is disappointed because the information given is often so scanty, and of such a nature, that he cannot successfully visualize the place or object that is being described. This dryness of the narrative, this enumeration of sights without adequate description, indicates that Pausanias meant his work to be a guide-book to accompany the tourist on his travels and to show him what to look for; he had no intention of giving information which could be obtained by a glance on the spot.

I have spoken of the omissions of Pausanias; what kind of information is he careful to include? Towns, villages, roads, rivers, mountains and bays are given with some completeness. Fountains, and water supply³ generally, theatres and race-courses are often mentioned. But his main interest lies in sanctuaries, statues, tombs, and the legends connected therewith. We notice moreover that, like the tourist of modern days, he devotes his attention to superficial details rather than to truly artistic qualities. When describing a statue Pausanias will tell us that it is "worth seeing" for its size or grace, but he rarely gives a critical appreciation of it. Interspersed among the descriptions of places and buildings are myths and legends, scraps of folk-lore and history, oracles and prophecies—in fact, odds and ends of all sorts. Sometimes, particularly when Pausanias turns aside to history, these digressions are of great length,⁴ and seriously interrupt the main thread of the narrative. Peculiarities of ritual are regularly given when they might strike the visitor as odd. Pausanias has a voracious appetite for names. It may safely be said that he never omits to mention one if he can give it. Artists, builders, those who have dedicated votive offerings, figures in history and legend, catalogues and genealogies, appear in great profusion. To us these names are dull enough, but to Greek ears they came fraught with pleasing and romantic associations derived from the stories of childhood, from the national poetry and sagas, and from the hymns sung at religious festivals.

Pausanias appears to have gathered most of his topographical knowledge from his own travels, but he doubtless used in places the works of his predecessors, while his historical information is fairly reliable, being generally derived from good sources.

Summary of Books I and II

The regions described in the first two books of Pausanias are, roughly, Attica, Megaris, Corinth and Argolis. The chief places to which the reader is conducted are Sunium, Laurium, the Peiraeus, Athens and its neighbourhood, Marathon, Oropus, the islands Patroclus, Helena and Salamis, Eleusis, Megara, Nisaea and Megaris, Corinth, the Isthmus, Lechaeum, Cenchreae, Acrocorinthus, Sicyon, Titane, Phlius, Cleonae, Argos, Mycenae, Orneae, Tiryns, Epidaurus, Aegina, Troezen, Hermione and its neighbourhood. The way in which Pausanias describes a place can be seen from an analysis of the first five chapters of the second book. The origin of the name Corinth; the Isthmus and what is on it; the harbours of Corinth; the tombs on the way to Corinth from Cenchreae; the sights in Corinth itself—the sanctuary of Artemis Ephesia and the images of Dionysus, the temple of Fortune, the sanctuary of all the gods, the fountain and the statues by it, the market-place with its bronze Athena and the temple of Octavia above it—the road from the market-place to Lechaeum and the sights on it, the chariots of Phaëthon and the Sun, the bronze Heracles, Peirene, the enclosure of Apollo, the statues of Hermes, Poseidon, Leucothea and Palaemon; the baths and wells of Corinth; the road from Corinth to Sicyon with the temple of Apollo, the well of Glauce, the Odeum, and the tomb of Medea's children; the legend of Medea; the temple of Athena the Bridler and the legend of Bellerophontes; the other early kings of Corinth; the theatre and the Heracles of Daedalus; the sanctuary of Zeus Capitolinus; the old gymnasium and the temples of Zeus and of Asclepius; the Acrocorinthus, with enclosures of Isis and Serapis, altars to the Sun, Necessity and Force, temples of the Mother of the gods, the Fates, Demeter, Hera Bunaea and Aphrodite, the spring behind the last and the legend about it; the Teneatic gate and the sanctuary of Eileithyia; the burnt temple on the way to Sicyon. Pausanias then passes on to the Sicyonians and their city.

The general method of description seems to be to describe the road to some central spot, such as the market-place, and to make this a starting point. Pausanias first gives the chief objects of interest at his centre, and then, taking in turn the chief roads leading from it, describes the sights to be seen along each, returning after a while to the starting point to begin again with a fresh road.

He does not profess to give an exhaustive account. "From the beginning my narrative has picked out of much material the things that deserve to be recorded."⁵ Such is the rule governing his work; he commends himself for adopting it, and promises never to break it.⁶

Greek Religion

It will be seen that most of the sights noted by Pausanias had religious associations. Indeed, in the eyes of a Greek, everything that he could not explain, everything that puzzled or awed him, was of divine origin, and in those early and pre-scientific days the realm of the unexplained was a large one. A Greek instinctively personified the forces, powers and processes of nature, both of the animate and of the inanimate world, and this personification nearly always resulted in assigning to these aspects of nature human forms endowed with divine and miraculous characteristics, that is, in the creation of anthropomorphic gods and goddesses.

Greek religion is of disputed origin, or origins, but it is certainly a complex. It consists of several different kinds of belief, with some of which the reader of Pausanias ought to be familiar. Three of them, at least, must be briefly noticed.

First there is ancestor worship, the payment of divine honours to "heroes." These divinities were on a lower level than the "gods,"⁷ and some modern scholars plausibly conjecture that the worship of them was the native religion⁸ of the primitive inhabitants of the country, who were conquered just before the dawn of Greek history by a race from the North, who introduced the "gods." Be this as it may, the hero depended on his descendants for sustenance to enable him to enjoy such existence as fell to his lot, and it was therefore their bounden duty to pay him the traditional honours if they wished to keep his friendship.… The offerings to a hero were not burnt; the sweet savour ascending to heaven was for the "upper gods." The dead hero in the ground was nourished by drink and food, especially by the blood of victims, sent down to him through his grave. Usually the sacrifice was not shared in by the worshippers, but was all sacred to the hero.…

Early in Greek history, probably during the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., there spread through Greece a religious movement to which the name Orphism, a name derived from the Orpheus of legend, has been given. Orphism taught that man was a creature of sin and defilement, that the body was the prison of the soul, and that by ceremonial purification the soul could win a more blessed existence in the world to come. This movement found concrete expression in the "mysteries," initiation in which was sought by those who were depressed by a consciousness of sin or by the awful facts of life and death. Mysteries were associated with the worship of the dead and with various deities,⁹ but especially with Demeter and her worship at Eleusis. The ritual, if we may judge from the little we know about it,¹⁰ was trivial and absurd, but there can be no doubt that it did much to satisfy the emotional side of the religious instincts of the Greeks. Its modern analogue is perhaps the Salvation Army.¹¹

Thirdly, we have as a component of Greek religion nature-worship, the deification of physical forces and physical impulses. The instinct which created the fairies, brownies, elves and mermaids of our own legends gave to the Greeks that wonderful hierarchy,¹² with the nymphs and muses at one end and Zeus, the king of the gods, at the other. Round their names there gradually grew a matchless mythology, which was at once the inspiration and the theme of the best Greek art. Maintained by the state, although often helped by private gifts and benefactions, the more honourable of these cults, in spite of their obvious drawbacks, not only afforded an outlet for religious devotion, but also presented to the Greek mind idealised conceptions of man's activities and aspirations. Anthropomorphism, with all its defects,¹³ provides the worshipper with a deity that he can understand, to whom he can attribute, sometimes indeed his vices, but more often his noblest virtues, raised to a height they never attain in the actual, workaday world. A conception like that of Athena, once thoroughly established, grew; poets and sculptors purified and enriched it, and the religious consciousness of the worshipper, deepening ever from age to age, gave to it a fuller and nobler significance. It was to art that religion owed most; indeed, art exerted that purifying influence which is exerted on modern religions by the development of the moral sense. The grandeur of the Parthenon and the majesty of the Athena of Pheidias could not fail to awake in Athenian hearts loftier notions both of divinity and of womanhood.

The ritual that formed part of the worship of a "god" differed from the ritual of "hero" worship. The offering, or rather a part¹⁴ of it, was burnt, so as to send a sweet smell to the deity above; after the sacrifice, the rest of the victim formed part of a feast shared in by both worshippers and priest.

Even this brief summary of Greek religion must not entirely omit the ceremonies of riddance, ritual by which the Greeks tried to ward off evil influences which they did not attempt to personify. These rituals often had affinities to magic, and are perhaps the most primitive and degraded element in Greek belief. Probably the Thesmophoria and the Lithobolia (Stoning) were ceremonies of this type.

Finally, we have the cults that were imported late, those for example of Isis and Serapis, signs of the close connexion between Greece and Egypt, and also those of the Roman emperors, to whom every subject of the Roman empire was expected to pay his respects.

There were no sermons and few prayers in Greek worship. Its object was, not to edify the worshipper, but to persuade the god or goddess to grant a favour. The chief means employed of persuading the deity were burnt sacrifice, processions, dances and hymns.

It should be noticed that there was no priestly caste. Many of the priesthoods were held by girls or women, and, with very few exceptions, no ministers of the gods laid any claim to peculiar sanctity. There were indeed diviners, who were more skilled than ordinary men in interpreting omens or in discovering the intentions of heaven, but, on the whole, Greek religion was singularly free from priestcraft¹⁵ of any kind.

Surnames of Gods

Any reader of Pausanias will be struck by the number of epithets or surnames attached to the names of certain gods. The following is a list of the chief divinities he mentions with the number of surnames given to each:—

• Aphrodite 27
• Apollo 58
• Ares 4
• Artemis 64
• Asclepius 10
• Athena 59
• Core 6
• Demeter 26
• Dionysus 27
• Dioscuri 2
• Fortune 3
• Hera 18
• Heracles 11
• Hermes 15
• Muses 2
• Nymphs 10
• Pan 4
• Poseidon 18
• Sleep 1
• Zeus 67

Pausanias gives no surnames of Cronus, Hephaestus, Leto, Pluto, or of the Graces.

The mere number of epithets attached to a deity is a fair test of the power of his cult to appeal to the religious instinct. But a closer examination of them will enable a reader to appreciate passages in Pausanias which otherwise may be almost meaningless.

Many of the epithets merely refer to the city or place in which the cult was established. Thus Artemis was called Brauronian, Ephesian, Munychian and Tauric; Poseidon was Heliconian, Isthmian, Onchestian, Taenarian.

Other surnames are derived from the names of animals. In many cases, without a doubt, the deity was originally an animal, or at any rate manifested himself in the form of an animal; while in other cases the epithet merely refers to some legend about the deity. Examples are:—

• Apollo: Wolf-god.
• Apollo: Locust-god.
• Athena: Horse-goddess.
• Zeus: Cuckoo-god.
• Artemis: Goat-goddess.

Not a few surnames are taken from the names of plants sacred to the deity, for instance, Demeter Grass and Dionysus Ivy.

A great number of epithets refer to some mode in which the divine power manifests itself, or to an aspect or characteristic of the deity, either (a) general or (b) peculiar to a particular time or place. Thus Zeus was:—

• Lord of Thunderbolts.
• Lord of Dust.
• Cleanser.
• Gracious.
• Saviour.
• Apollo was:—
• Lord of Embarking.
• Lord of Streets.
• Healer.

Again, the surname may mark the supplanting of one deity by another, as Artemis supplanted Dictynna, the Goddess of Nets, Apollo Carneüs, and Hermes (apparently) a hero Aepytus. In other cases the epithet perpetuates some detail of a legend (Athena Trumpet), of a temple (Athena of the Bronze House), or even of a type of image (Athena Sharp-sighted). In a great number of cases the meaning can only be guessed at, or has been entirely lost.

Notes

¹ I have retained the past tense in I. vi. sect. 1, I. xii. sect. 2, I. xxix. sect. 10, and in I. xxxiii. sect. 3. … as referring to the time when Pausanias was making his inquiries, but it would perhaps be more natural to use the English present in all cases. The tense … reminds one of the colloquial English, "I am sending the photograph, because I thought you would like to see it."

² See I. xiii. sect. 8, xxxiv. sect. 4, xxxv. sect. 8, xli. sect. 2, xlii. sect. 4; II. ix. sect. 7, xxiii. sect. 6, xxxi. sect. 4; IV. xxxiii. sect. 6; V. vi. sect. 6, x. sect. 7, xv. sect. 10, xviii. sect. 6, xx. sect. 4, xxi. sect. 8 and 9, xxiii. sect. 6; VII. vi. sect. 5; IX. iii. sect. 3.

³ It was natural for a Greek writer to lay stress upon water, that precious necessity in southern lands. But other creature comforts for the traveller Pausanias ignores; he does not even inform his readers where a night's lodging could be obtained.

⁴ In a modern work they would either not appear at all, the reader being referred to other books, or they would be inserted as notes or appendices. The form of an ancient book and the difficulties of reference in ancient times account for many artistic defects in the old writers.

⁵ I. xxxix, sect. 3.

⁶ I. xi. sect. 1.

⁷ Sometimes a "hero" became a "god" in course of time. Instances of such a change are (probably) Asclepius and Heracles. See, e.g. Pausanias H. x.

⁸ One of the strongest pieces of evidence in support of this theory is derived from the methods of disposing of the dead. Archacology tells us that the primitive inhabitants buried their dead, and were therefore likely to conceive of them as living a ghostly existence underground near their family; the Achaeans of Homer, supposed to be the later conquerors, burned their dead, and therefore were likely to believe that the spirits of the departed left the scene of their earthly activities to take up their abode in a distant Hades.

⁹ Pausanias mentions, e.g., mysteries of Demeter, of the Great Gods, and of a hero Dryops.

¹⁰ The Greeks were careful not to divulge the holy secrets. We know however that they were acts, ritual and perhaps pantomime, rather than a liturgy of words.

¹¹ Any parallel is bound to be unfair and misleading, as the evangelicalism of religious bodies like the Salvation Army is pure and spiritual, and, unlike any form of Greek religion, is closely connected with a strict moral code. But there are certain close resemblances, only to be explained by the fact that religious emotion does not differ much from age to age and seeks to express itself by the same or similar channels.

¹² It is not implied that all o originated in nature-worship, but only that such worship is an important factor in this part of Greek religion. Although Greek religion has many aspects, it must not be thought that these are altogether separate and unconnected. The exact relations, however, that they bear to one another are largely a matter of conjecture.

¹³ These defects are largely due to the conservatism of religious traditions, which preserve and pass on to the future the ideals of a less developed, less moral, past.

¹⁴ The thigh-bones wrapped in fat.

¹⁵ Possibly there was most priestcraft in the oracles, especially that at Delphi, and in the mysteries.