358 PTOLEMY AND LATER GEOGRAPHERS. [CHAP,
knowledge, the objects which chiefly attracted his attention
sanias' WCre ^1C C^CS W^ ^®* PU^C Buildings, and the
Researches in temples and other holy places which were found
Greece* at short intervals from one another throughout the
whole country. With the view of investigating these he travelled
far and wide in Greece, collecting information everywhere on
the spot, and carefully noting down his own observations. As
might be expected, he devoted himself with especial
tio^o?C8Cnp" enthusiasm to the examination of the great centres
Olympia and of antiquarian and mythological interest, such as
Olympia and Delphi; and the excavation of these
two sites in our own day, which in the one case has been already
accomplished, and in the other is now in progress, has afforded
ample opportunities of testing the accuracy of his enquiries.
With regard to this point it is not too much to say that the
descriptions which he drew up for the information of his con-
temporaries have proved a satisfactory guide to modern explorers.
At Olympia, to which place alone Pausanias devotes forty
chapters of his work, the correspondences are hardly less than
marvellous. To exemplify this by a single instance—at the
north-eastern angle of the Aitis, or sacred enclosure, the founda-
tions of the Treasuries, which he describes, are still remaining,
and in front of them the bases of the Zanes, or statues of Zeus,
the expense of erecting which was defrayed by the fines levied
upon athletes who had transgressed the laws of the Olympic
contests \ and, in addition to this, between the extremity of the
line which these formed and the Hall of Echo, exactly where he
places it, a vaulted passage of some length has been found, which
was the private entrance to the Stadium. And not only has his
account of the position of the various buildings and of their
architectural and ornamental details been verified, but the dedi-
cations on the bases of some of the statues are found to be
almost in the same words which Pausanias has used in speaking
of them. In like manner, at Delphi the Treasuries of the
Athenians, the Sicyonians, and the Siphnians, which have been
discovered at the sides of the Sacred Way that ascended in
zigzags the steep slope by which the temple was approached from
below, are all mentioned by our author.