Author Description

Excerpt from Pausanias's Description of Greece, Vol. 1 of 6 In this work my aim has been to give a faithful and idiomatic rendering of Pausanias and to illustrate and supplement his description of Greece by the remains of antiquity and the aspect of the country at the present day. The translation has been made on the whole from the last complete recension of the text, that of J. H. C. Schubart (Leipsic, 1853-1854). All departures from that recension are recorded in the Critical Notes, in which I have also essayed to put together the more important suggestions that have been made for the improvement of the text since Schubart's edition was published. The materials for an illustrative commentary have been accumulated in great abundance by travellers, scholars, and antiquaries, and my task has been chiefly the humble one of condensing and digesting these copious but scattered materials into a moderate compass and a convenient form. But I have also embodied the notes of several journeys which I made in Greece for the sake of this work in 1890 and 1895. At the outset of a book which deals so largely with archaeological matters, it is proper I should confess to being an expert in none of the branches of archaeology. If, nevertheless, I have presumed to comment on Pausanias, my excuse is that a commentary was needed and that at the time when, more than thirteen years ago, I undertook to write it no one else, so far as I knew, had announced an intention of doing so. It was not till I had gone too far to recede that I heard of a new critical and explanatory edition on which two highly competent scholars, Professors Hitzig and Blumner of Zurich, were engaged. Had I learned of their enterprise sooner I should probably have abandoned mine or contented myself with publishing a translation only. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reprod