354 PTOLEMY AND LATER GEOGRAPHERS. [CHAP.

yet his book, which he calls an Itinerary of Greece, demands more
than a passing notice, inasmuch as it stands alone in antiquity
as a topographical description of a country. It is true that his
topography is mainly confined to cities and sacred places, and
the principal objects on the routes which connected them with
one 'another \ and that features of the country, such as mountains
and rivers, obtain recognition only so far as they have legends
or memories of historical occurrences attached to them: but
in a country like Greece, which was thickly sown with towns,
the data which are thus provided are of inestimable value for
purposes of map-making.

The period at which Pausanias wrote was eminently suitable
for the work which he undertook, for at no time in all probability
had the monuments of Greece been so numerous and in such
good preservation as they were in the middle of the second
century of our era. Here and there, indeed, he speaks of
temples as being in a ruinous condition, but the decay which
this implies was probably not greater than that which appears in
the deserted monasteries in our own country at the present day;
and this was counterbalanced by the work of restoration, which
had been carried out on a large scale through the munificence
of the emperor Hadrian in the early part of that century.
In Pausanias himself we may trace a resemblance, faint in-
*n co^our an<^ inferior in all its features, to

bianceto Herodotus. In the religious, or rather supersti-
Herodotus. . . . . . . . ° , . ,
tious awe with which he regards questions and
objects connected with the worship of the gods, he even sur-
passes his great predecessor. In like manner as Herodotus
moralises on the nemesis which attends on overweening pros-
perity, Pausanias draws attention to the transitoriness of human
greatness as illustrated by the decadence of a large number of
the great cities of the world— a topic which he introduces in
connection with the desolate condition of Megalopolis in Arcadia
in his time, in contrast with the proud hopes with which it was
originally founded by Epaminondas1. The mysteries and the
oracles inspire him with unbounded reverence. He is gifted
also with something of the same quaint power of observation
1 Pausan. 8. 33-