Past Perfect: In the Footsteps of Pausanias

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During the second-century A.D. reigns of the Roman emperors Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, Pausanias, a well-to-do Greek born in Asia Minor, wandered through Greece, the Aegean islands, Macedonia, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. He wrote down his impressions of cities and sites, producing the Guide to Greece—the sole surviving guidebook to come down to us from ancient times. Although few biographical details are known about his life, Pausanias’s writings indicate that he had a strong interest in the natural sciences (he was an avid bird-watcher), anatomy (his devotion to the healing god Asclepius suggests that he may have been a doctor) and religion (he believed in oracles, yet took some Greek myths with a grain of salt). For Pausanias, ruined sanctuaries, temples and tombs and their associated legends and myths were far more noteworthy than spectacular vistas. He was primarily interested in the monuments of classical Greece—most of which were still standing during his lifetime—and gave only scant attention to Roman achievements, although he was impressed by the emperor Trajan’s Forum and the rebuilt Circus Maximus in Rome. The accuracy of Pausanias’s descriptions of ancient Greek sites has been substantiated by modern excavations. As Sir James Frazer, British anthropologist, classical scholar and author of The Golden Bough, wrote of Pausanias over a century ago, “Without him the ruins of Greece would for the most part be a labyrinth without a clue, a riddle without an answer.”

(The following selections are taken from Pausanias: Guide to Greece; Volume 1, Central Greece [Penguin Classics, 1979], translated by Peter Levi.)

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Athens

The Acropolis has one way in; it offers no other, the whole acropolis is sheer and strong walled. The formal entrance has a roof of white marble, which down to my own times is still incomparable for the size and beauty of the stone … On the right of the formal entrance is the Shrine of Wingless Victory. You can see the sea from here and they say this is where Aigeus leapt to his death. The ship carrying the children to Crete started out with black sails, and Theseus, who was sailing to prove his courage against the Minotaur, promised his father he would use white sails for the voyage home provided he had overcome the monster; but in the loss of Ariadne he forgot this promise, so when Aigeus saw the ship coming in under black sails the old man thought his son was dead, and threw himself down and was killed …

As you go into the temple called the Parthenon [shown above], everything on the pediment has to do with the birth of Athene; the far side shows Poseidon quarrelling with Athene over the country. The statue [a modern re-creation housed in a replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee, is shown above] is made of ivory and gold. She has a sphinx on the middle of her helmet, and griffins worked on either side of it … Aristeas of Prokonnesos says in his poem that these griffins fight for gold with the Arimaspians, away beyond the north of Thrace, and the gold they guard grows out of the earth; the Arimaspians are born one-eyed, but the griffins are wild monsters like lions with wings and the beak of an eagle. This is enough about griffins; the statue of Athene stands upright in an ankle-length tunic with the head of Medusa carved in ivory on her breast. She has a Victory about eight feet high, and a spear in her hand and a shield at her feet, and a snake beside the shield; this snake might be Erichtonios. The plinth of the statue is carved with the birth of Pandora. Hesiod and others say Pandora was the first woman ever born, and the female sex did not exist before her birth …

The whole city and the whole country are sacred to Athene; whatever other gods of traditional worship there are in country towns, they worship Athene there just as much. But the holiest of all the images which was universally recognized for many years before the Athenians came together out of their country towns, is Athene’s statue on what is now the akropolis, though then it was the whole city. Rumor says it fell from heaven. Whether this is true or not, I shall not argue about it.

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Corinth

In the marketplace, where most of the sanctuaries are, is Ephesian Artemis, and some wooden idols of Dionysos gilded except for their faces … In the middle of the marketplace is a bronze Athene; the Muses are represented on the plinth. Over beyond the market-place is a Shrine of Octavia the sister of Augustus, the Roman emperor after Caesar, who founded modern Corinth.

As you leave the marketplace on the road for Lechaion you pass through a formal entrance with gilded chariots on it, one carrying Phaithon, the other his father the Sun. A little further than the formal entrance is a bronze Herakles on your right as you go out of town, and behind him is the entrance to the water of Peirene [shown below]. They say of it that Peirene was a human being who by her weeping became a water-spring: she was wailing for Kenchrias her son whom Artemis killed by accident. The spring has been ornamented with white stone and chambers constructed like grottoes, from which the water runs out to the basin in the open air …

Mycenae

If you go back to the Tretos and take the Argos road again, the ruins of Mycenae are on your left … There are parts of the ring-wall left, including the Gate with Lions [above] standing on it. They say that this is the work of Kyklopes, who built the wall of Tiryns for Proitos. In the ruins of Mycenae is a water-source called Perseia, and the underground chambers of Atreus and his sons where they kept the treasure-houses of their wealth. There is the grave of Atreus and the graves of those who came home from Troy, to be cut down by Aigisthos at his supper-party. The Spartans round Amyklai dispute the tomb of Kassandra; but another tomb is Agamemnon’s, another holds Eurymedon the charioteer, and a single grave holds Teledamos and Pelops, Kassandra’s twin babies whom Aigisthos slaughtered with their parents; another is the tomb of Elektra, whom Orestes married to Pylades. Hellanikos has also written about Pylades having two sons by Electra, Medon and Strophios. Klytaimnestra and Aigisthos were buried a little further from the wall. They were not fit to lie inside, where Agamemnon and the men murdered with him are lying.

Delphi

There are a lot of different stories about Delphi, and even more about Apollo’s oracle. They say that in the most ancient times the oracle belonged to Earth, and Daphnis was its prophetess whom Earth appointed; she was one of the nymphs on the mountain … No record goes back to any other man, only to prophetic women. They say that the most ancient shrine of Apollo was built of sweet bay, with branches brought from the bay-grove at 043Tempe. This shrine must have been in the form of a hut. The Delphians say the second shrine was made by bees out of bees’ wax and feathers, and sent by Apollo from the remote North …

The city of Delphi is a steep slope from top to bottom, and the sacred Precinct of Apollo [above] is no different from the rest of it. This is huge in size and stands at the very top of the city, cut through by a network of alleyways. I shall record those of the dedications that seemed to me most memorable …

The bronze horses and captive women from Tarentum come from the spoils of the Messapians, their barbarous neighbours; they were made by Ageladas of Argos. Tarentum was a Spartan colony founded by Phalanthos. Phalanthos was on his way to colonize when an oracle came from Delphi: when he felt rain from a clear sky he would get his country and his city. For the present he neither worked out this prophecy on his own nor took it to an interpreter, but steered his fleet for Italy. He was able to beat the savages but not to take a city or subdue territory, and then he remembered the oracle, supposing the god had offered him impossible conditions, since it never rained out of a clear, open sky. He was deeply depressed, and his wife, who had followed him from home, had his head on her lap and was picking off his lice and weeping for love to see all her husband’s plans coming to nothing. Her tears dropped generously, and drenched Phalanthos’s head, and he understood the oracle, because his wife’s name was Aithra [‘Clear Sky’] so the very next night he took Tarentum, the greatest and most prosperous of the barbarous cities of the coast …

Near the Tarentine dedication is the Treasure-House of Sikyon, though you will see no money either here or in any other treasure-house. The Knidians have brought statues to Delphi of Triopas, founder of Knidos, standing by his horse, Leto, and Apollo and Artemis shooting arrows at Tityos, whose body is already wounded.

These stand by the Treasure-House of Sikyon. The Siphnians also built a Treasure-House, and this is why: the island of Siphnos yielded gold-mines, and the god commanded them to bring a tithe of the produce to Delphi, so they built a treasure-house and brought the tithe. When out of insatiable greed they gave up this tribute, the sea flooded in and obliterated the mines …

What the Delphians call the navel [shown above] is made of white stone: the Delphians maintain, and Pindar writes to the same effect in one of his odes, that this is the center of the entire earth.

During the second-century A.D. reigns of the Roman emperors Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, Pausanias, a well-to-do Greek born in Asia Minor, wandered through Greece, the Aegean islands, Macedonia, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. He wrote down his impressions of cities and sites, producing the Guide to Greece—the sole surviving guidebook to come down to us from ancient times. Although few biographical details are known about his life, Pausanias’s writings indicate that he had a strong interest in the natural sciences (he was an avid bird-watcher), anatomy (his devotion to the healing god Asclepius suggests that he may have […]