When did Pausanias live and write Description of Greece?
Pausanias lived between the years 110 and 180 CE. He wrote Description of Greece during the second century when Roman rule covered much of the Mediterranean world.
Pausanias lived between the years 110 and 180 CE. He wrote Description of Greece during the second century when Roman rule covered much of the Mediterranean world.
The text divides into ten books covering specific regions starting with Attica and Athens before proceeding to Corinthia Laconia Messenia Elis Achaea Arcadia Boeotia Phocis and Ozolian Locris. Large parts of Greece remain unmentioned including all islands while the geographical organization creates a path for readers across the Greek peninsula.
At Thebes Pausanias views ruins of the house belonging to poet Pindar and describes shields left behind by warriors who died at the Battle of Leuctra. The grove of Muses on Helicon contains portraits of Polybius and Corinna found at Tanagra in Arcadia alongside statues of Arion Hesiod Orpheus and Thamyris.
Eighteen surviving manuscripts were known during the 1830s with copies dating from fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. All these copies depend on a single manuscript now missing called an archetype that Niccolò Niccoli owned in Florence around 1418 before it disappeared after 1500 from San Marco library in Florence.
The first printed edition appeared in Venice in 1516 produced by Aldus Manutius firm while Marcus Musurus edited this version though he had died the previous year. English translations began much later with Thomas Taylor publishing in London in 1794 followed by William Henry Samuel Jones creating a widely known version available through Loeb Classical Library.