11.09.2011

Pausanias and Athens

Only the Athenians met all their obligations. They stood against the Persians, twice against the Macedonians, and against the Gauls, and, he says, they were also the leaders in the last three crises–which is correct for the battles against Philip and Antipater (I.25.3), but not for the repulsion of the Gauls. The Athenians did fight against them, and they fought bravely, but the Aetolians were the leaders. Nevertheless, as Pausanias sees it, the Athenians were the only Greeks who never failed Greece. (Christian Habicht Pausanias' Gude to Ancient Greece, p.108)

p.s. An interesting quote from the correspondence between Frazer and Housman can be found in an Appendix on the scholarly reception of Pausanias:

"He [Wilamowitz] has always seemed to me a sophist with an infallible instinct for getting hold of a stick by the wrong end. I do not forget how, with the stick (wrong end up, as usual), he belaboured my poor old friend Pausanias and no doubt many a better man." (letter from Sir J.G. Frazer to A.E. Housman, October 1927, quoted in Christian Habicht Pausanias' Gude to Ancient Greece, p.174)

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