Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume II. — Context and Discussion

Topography and the Weight of Names

Pausanias rarely describes a landscape without anchoring it in a name story. The seven gates of Thebes each carry an etymology: Electris from Electra, sister of Cadmus; Neiste from the musical term nete, said to have been discovered there by Amphion; Homolois from the mountain where exiled Thebans once settled. These explanations are not uniform—some are attributed to 'the following circumstance,' others to 'another account'—revealing a compilatory method that preserves competing traditions without resolving them. The gate Ogygia is called 'the oldest-named,' while Homolois is 'the most recently named,' suggesting Pausanias is aware of historical layering within the city itself.

Ritual Violence and Its Substitutions

In the district of Potniæ, Pausanias records a temple of Dionysus 'Goat-killer,' linked to a story of drunken worshippers who killed the god's priest. The resulting plague was only cured, the Delphic oracle declared, by sacrificing a grown boy; later, a goat was accepted as substitute. This pattern—a transgression, a divine punishment, and a ritual substitution—recurs in the text. Nearby, a well is said to drive horses mad if they drink from it, a detail that blends natural observation with supernatural cause. Pausanias reports such marvels without endorsing them, often adding 'believe it who likes,' a phrase that distances him from the credulity he records.

The Cadmean Victory: A Battle's Legacy in Language

Describing the war between Argos and Thebes, Pausanias notes that the Thebans, though victorious, suffered such losses that their success was ever after called a 'Cadmean victory'—a phrase still used for a win that ruins the winner. The battle narrative is unusually detailed: the Argives, unfamiliar with siege warfare, attacked 'with more zeal than judgment,' were cut down from the walls, and then routed in a sally. Only Adrastus escaped. Pausanias calls this 'the most memorable of all the wars between Greeks in the days of the heroes,' a rare evaluative comment that underscores the moral ambiguity of the event. The term 'Cadmean victory' itself becomes a motif, linking the ancient battle to a proverbial warning about the cost of triumph.

Readers approaching this volume should attend to the interplay between Pausanias' descriptive eye and his antiquarian ear. He moves from a well that maddens horses to a gate named after a musical chord, from a plague averted by goat sacrifice to a battle that coined a proverb. The translator's notes and errata serve as a quiet reminder that this is a text reconstructed from manuscripts and inscriptions, each correction a small act of interpretation. To read Pausanias is to watch a second-century traveler assemble a Greece of stories, stones, and contested meanings.

There’s something tender about how Pausanias lingers over the wells that madden horses, the pillars birds avoid—he trusted the strangeness of place. Reading him, I kept thinking of El Toro — Edition Insights, which honors a different kind of local wonder, quietly, without needing to explain it away.