lived in the Augustan age, was a native of Amasia, a city of Pontus, on the banks of the Iris, where the famous tombs of the kings of that country still remain. His work, which is comprised in seventeen books, is a treatise on universal geography, and for such a task he was especially qualified by his comprehensive mind, vast learning, and extensive travels. So great was the estimation in which he was held in ancient times, that by the later Greeks he is regularly spoken of as the Geographer. He availed himself of all the materials that were at his command at that time, and drew largely from other writers, especially from Eratosthenes, whose works are now lost, but who must have been a man of even superior ability, and, notwithstanding that he preceded Strabo by more than two centuries, seems to have been better acquainted with mathematical geography. By the use of these, confirmed by his own careful observation and inquiry, he communicated to the men of his time a knowledge of the world which was not enlarged for several centuries.24 Unfortunately, the 8th, 9th, and 10th books, which are devoted to Greece, are the least satisfactory part of his work. This arises from two causes. In the first place, he had himself seen but little of the country: had he penetrated but a short distance into the Peloponnese he would not have stated that no remains of Mycena were in existence, 25 whereas they have subsequently 24 Niebuhr, Lectures on Ethnography and Geography, i. 21. 25 viii. 6, § 10.

been described by Pausanias, and are still visible. As his object in writing was to make his book readable, he endeavours all through to compress his information within a moderate compass, and he may have been influenced by the idea that Greece had already been sufficiently described. Leake believes that he visited especially the coasts of Greece, because the distances he gives by sea are more accurate than those in the interior,26 but this is probably to be accounted for by his having followed in the former the measurements of Eratosthenes. As it is, he falls into serious errors. We have already seen that he places Sunium almost as far south as Malea; he is also very far out in his conception of the position of the Isthmus, for he measures the breadth of the Peloponnese by drawing a line to that point from Cape Chelonatas in the west of Elis,27 showing thereby that he regarded it as being to the extreme east of the country. Both these facts imply that he had an erroneous notion of the points of the compass in Greece. But a second, and certainly not less influential, cause of want of thoroughness in his description of this country, is the antiquarian point of view from which he regards it. As soon as he sets foot on Greek soil his method seems to change, and from delineating scientific and historical geography he turns to the discussion of passages of Homer. This, no doubt, was partly owing to the spirit of the age,

26 Leake, Athens and the Demi of Attica, i. 32.

27 viii. 2, § 1.

for the men of that time had thoroughly accustomed
themselves to look upon Greece as interesting only in
the past, and as possessing no present importance.28
But at the same time he was completely enslaved by
his veneration for Homer, so that he devotes a large
part of the long introduction to his work to combating
the views of Eratosthenes, who had ventured to de-
preciate the authority of the great poet as a teacher
of general geography, and had limited the accuracy of
his information to Hellenic lands. Hence, when he
comes to Greece itself, Homer becomes his text-book,
and the examination of his geographical statements
is his principal occupation. Still, we must not ignore
the amount of valuable information which he has
handed down to us; and he has all the merit of a
critical writer. His etymologies of the names of places,
when he ventures upon them, are often worthy of
respect; thus his derivation of the river-name Crathis
from κεράννυμι oι κίρνημι, “ to mix”—ἀπὸ τοῦ κίρνασθαι τὴν

ivouaclav xwv, as he says 29-is probably right. He
ὀνομασίαν ἔχων,
equally shows his penetration and good sense here
and there in his interpretation of myths; we shall
have to refer subsequently to his explanation of the
story of the contest of Hercules and the Achelous for
the possession of Deianeira.30

In presenting to you the other great geographer of
Greece, Pausanias, I introduce you to a very quaint Pausanias.

тя

figure. He is the thorough archeologist. What Anthony-a-Wood was to Oxford, what Ambrosio Morales was to Spain, that Pausanias was to Greece. If I was required to describe him in few words, I would say, "Take Herodotus, and eliminate all his wit (using that term in its widest sense), and you will have Pausanias." He has all, and more than all, the diodamovía of his great predecessor; in speaking of the mysteries he uses almost the same expressions of awe; he echoes his sentiments about the nemesis that attends on overweening prosperity, when contrasting the deserted condition of Megalopolis with the great hopes with which it was founded;31 he regards the wickedness of the times as the reason why the men of his age never were changed into gods;32 he retains all the old reverence for the oracles, saying that he cannot doubt the truth of the story of the Alpheius passing under the sea, because it had been confirmed by the god at Delphi.33 His appetite for relics is astonishing. At Aulis he is shown some of the wood of the plane-tree mentioned by Homer in connection with the augury of Calchas; 34 in the temple of Minerva Alea at Tegea he carefully noted down the skin of the Caledonian boar, which he tells us was quite worn away by time, and had lost all its bristles; 35 at Delphi he sees a stone, which was reported to have been the one given to Cronos to

31 viii. 33, § 1. 32 viii. 2, § 5. 33 v. 7, § 3.
35 viii. 47, § 2.

34 ix. 19, § 7.

swallow in the place of his son ;36 at Sparta he finds hanging from the roof of a temple the egg to which Leda was said to have given birth.37 With regard to this last, it would be interesting to know whether it was broken or entire. He also possesses, though in a very inferior degree, Herodotus' quaint power of observation; and this leads him into numerous digressions, which, though but slightly connected with the subject on hand, often contain valuable information. Thus he describes the meteorological and other phenomena that have accompanied earthquakes in Greece; 38 he mentions the peculiar colours of springs in various parts of the world; 39 he discusses the question why oil should be required to preserve ivory statues in some places, and water in others, according to the climate.40 He takes a peculiar interest in trees, noticing, among other points, the immense height of the cypresses at Psophis,11 and the girth of the plane-trees near Pharæ, within the trunks of which banquets used to be held ;42 and in a digression he mentions the relative ages of the oldest trees existing in the Greek sanctuaries.43 He is a thoroughly uncritical writer, and hence the etymologies which he introduces are of the most far-fetched and unreasonable description: he derives the name of the river Balyra in Messenia from Báλλs λúgav, because Tha