Pausanias - Guide to Greece: Central Greece

Any commentary on Pausanias, even the thinnest, must rest on a huge structure of other peoples knowledge; no one could possibly be his own expert in everything Pausanias talked about. It is inevitable that in some field or other, perhaps in many, one will have missed important recent or old contributions to the understanding of what Pausanias wrote. If I have made mistakes of this kind (as I am bound to have done) I would be most grateful to hear of them, and in the cause of public utility to correct them either in a future edition of this book or at least in a much fuller commentary on which I am now working.

I would like to thank friends and colleagues for tolerance and for assistance. I owe more than I can express to the kindness and encouragement of Professor E. R. Dodds and Professor Eduard Fraenkel. Without their blessing I should not have undertaken this or any other work on a classical author. This book owes its existence also to the friendly interest of Professor Martin Robertson and Mr John Boardman, and most of all to the delightful and inspiring conversation and sympathetic friendship of Miss Nancy Sandars.

It is hard to know how to thank ones friends whom one feels one ought always to be thanking, but over this book I do owe particular thanks to Mr John Newberry for his drawings, to Mr Philip Sherrard and to Canon Francis Bartlett, to Mr Cyril Connolly, Mr and Mrs Watson, Mr George Pavlopoulos, Mr Takis Loumiotis, and to Sir Maurice Bowra. Within the charmed circle of Campion Hall, links are too close for thanks to be permitted. Finally I should like to express my sincere thanks to the members of the British School of Archaeology in Athens in 19657 for many constant pleasures and for constant and most practical help and advice, particularly to Mr Geoffrey Waywell, Miss Jeffery and Lord William Taylour.

Campion Hall, Oxford September 1966

These corrections, which recent work has made necessary, are referred to in footnotes to the text.

1. The Kings Colonnade and the Colonnade of Zeus were believed until 1970 to be identical, since Pausanias had seemed to name one not two, and since the Colonnade of Zeus, which was found at the north-west corner of the Agora site, with one end chopped off by the railway, seemed to leave no room for another building. But now that the Kings Colonnade has been found, it becomes likely that Pausaniass second colonnade, behind Zeus and Hadrian, is the Colonnade of Zeus. It is possible that he leaves out its old name simply because it had been, as we know, re-adapted for the worship of the Roman emperors. Here Sokrates used to sit, and, since preliminary hearings for judgement at the Areopagos could take place here, this might be where St Paul makes his famous speech in the Acts of the Apostles. For a rigorous discussion of what evidence there is, cf. T. D. Barnes, in Journal of Theological Studies, 1969, .

2. Stories of battles between companies of three hundred are rather suspect. Just as the holding of Thermopylai against the Gauls is a literary as much as an actual reflection of the battle with the Persians, and just as the story of the Gaulish defeat at Delphi is based on a Persian wars story, forces of three hundred relate suspiciously closely to the force at Thermopylai under Leonidas. The Roman story of the three hundred Fabii all but one of whom were killed belongs to the same group (one of the earliest Roman historians was a Fabius who wrote in Greek). It is as hard to sort out the real events from the form in which we are told about them as it is to sort out the development of an epic. Can there have been a saga of three hundred dead heroes before Thermopylai?

3. There was or had once been something to see. On a tributary of the Inachos above Argos called the Kephisos (Aelian, Var. hist. 2, 33, and Strabo 9, 16, Meinekes footnote), there was a sanctuary of Aphrodite , 10 (5)).

4. LIGOURIO and its whole area are rich in antiquities; Asklepios is called Ligeotes in an inscription, and this could possibly refer to the ancient name of a site at