Pausanias

'The most famous of sanctuaries of Asclepius had their origin from Epidaurus’, Pausanias writes in his Hellados Periegesis (‘Description of Greece’). All across the Aegean and beyond, word of the salutary reputation of Epidaurian divinity had spread. And as tales of Epidaurus’ sanctuary of Asclepius travelled the lands and crossed the seas, so did the urge to ensure that the Epidaurian success formula was, as we say, coming soon to a place near you. So we know Epidaurus had managed to make a name for itself: all the way from the Argolid Peninsula to Asia Minor and the shores of Northern Africa. But what exactly had led to its rise in prominence? What about Epidaurus allowed for it to transcend its local cult-status? And how did its celebrated reputation and meaning change across places and time? What, in other words, is the story of what is often simply referred to as the sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus?

At the beginning of the lyrical parodos of the "Agamemnon", the old men of the chorus declare to possess the authority to speak on behalf of the Achaean army and its king. Once their account of the events at Aulis has reached its emotional peak in the instant preceding Iphigenia's death on the altar of Artemis, the old men give up their authority to narrate. Instead, they choose to be silent. The present article examines this change of plan in light of the previous appearances, in epic and lyric poetry, of the myth of Iphigenia's sacrifice.

In apertura della parodo lirica dell'"Agamennone", il coro di anziani dichiara di essere in possesso dell'autorità per farsi portavoce dell'esercito acheo e del suo re. Una volta che il racconto degli eventi di Aulide, oggetto del canto d'ingresso, è arrivato al suo momento di massima tensione, quello che precede la morte di Ifigenia sull'altare di Artemide, i coreuti rinunciano all'autorità di narrare e scelgono invece il silenzio. L'articolo indaga questo slittamento sulla base delle precedenti attestazioni letterarie (epiche e liriche) del sacrificio di Ifigenia.

For centuries scholars have grappled with the fact that many of the Shakespearean characters are members of the Bassano family, but few have considered them as serious candidates for the dramatists of the Shakespearean works, until I released Shakespeare Exhumed: The Bassano Chronicles in 2013. In the lead up to the release of Genesis of the Shakespeare Works in early 2017, I thought it was time to release a paper containing some of my research into the Bassano family gathered over the last 14 years while forensically examining many thousands of relevant documents throughout the world.

PROLOGUE
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What does it mean when a man’s name is remembered thousands of years after his death?
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By the completion of this story, perhaps long before, you will learn many answers to that question...
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In stadiums routinely packed with tens of thousands, the Crotonian wrestler would enter the arena, then walk the entire oval, amazingly carrying a full-grown bull on his back. As he paced the track, the imposingly muscular strongman welcomed his cheering fans to slap the loins and tug the tail of his colossal bovine pet.

Esteemed for his unfathomable prowess, he was called
by the ancients, Milo1. Born in Croton2, Italy, in 559 BC, he had been predicted by prognosticators to arrive as the mortal son of Zeus, with a direct lineage to the mighty Hercules.

Through progressive adaptations in adherence to various unorthodox conditioning methodologies, Milo of Croton became the most dominant Olympian3 Wrestler of all time, one who went on to crown a martial career as a revered military Commander.

Alloys that went under the name of Corinthian Bronze were highly prized in the Roman Empire at the beginning of the Christian era, when Corinthian Bronze was used to embellish the great gate of Herod's Temple in Jerusalem. From the ancient texts it emerges that Corinthian Bronze was the name given to a family of copper alloys with gold and silver which were depletion gilded to give them a golden or silver lustre. An important centre of production appears to have been Egypt where, by tradition, alchemy had its origins. From an analysis of the earliest alchemical texts, it is suggested that the concept of transmutation of base metals into gold arose from the depletion gilding process.

Classical and Oriental sources tell of a precious metal called Corinthian bronze. They agree that it was an alloy of copper, gold, and silver. Together they describe various stages in its manufacture-heat treatment, quenching, leaching, and burnishing. In addition, the Leiden papyrus X attests to a process of depletion gilding, whereby an alloy containing gold could acquire a golden surface hue. The process that can be pieced together from all these sources turns out to be essentially identical with that re- constructed by H. Lechtman and D.A. Scott for the tum- baga of the pre-Columbian cultures of South America. Experimental reconstruction produced a golden hue even in an alloy containing as little as 15% (by volume) of gold. Silver was found to be a necessary constituent for the gilding process. Some recent scholarship has suspected the accuracy of the ancient accounts, supposing instead that Corinthian bronze simply meant all bronze from Corinth, or alternatively a high-tin bronze invented in Corinth. In fact, however, Corinthian bronze was characterized by the admixture of precious metals and a special process of manufacture, exactly as specified in the ancient sources.

La découverte de fossiles de dinosaures et d’animaux préhistoriques ne date pas de l’époque contemporaine. Répandue dans l’Antiquité, notamment en Grèce, elle a suscité de multiples interrogations, engendré des fantasmes et donné naissance à des créatures imaginaires ou extraordinaires. Parmi celles-ci, se trouvent entre autres les gryphons, les héros, caractérisés également par une taille démesurée, ou encore les Géants.

From Homer’s Iliad to the Athenian funeral oration and beyond the “‘beautiful death” was the name that the Greeks used to describe a combatant’s death. From the world of Achilles to democratic Athens, in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, the warrior’s death was a model that concentrated the representations and the values that served as [masculine] norms.  This should not be a surprise: the Iliad depicts a society at war and in the Achaean camp, at least, a society of men, without children and legitimate wives. Certainly the Athenian polis (“city-state”) reversed the traditional combatant–citizen relationship by claiming that one must be, first, a citizen before being a soldier.  Nevertheless this polis distinguished itself from others by the splendour that it gave the public funeral of its citizens that had died in war and especially by the repatriating of their mortal remains (Thuc. 2.34). In a society that believed in autochthony this repatriation was, undoubtedly, significant. Since the beautiful death crystallised the aretē (“courage”) of Achilles and Athenians alike, it was, from the outset, linked to speech. Indeed heroic death and the civic beautiful death were the subject-matter of elaborate speech. Such a celebratory discourse gave the warrior’s death an eternal existence in memory. This discourse gave his death its reality, but, conversely, also took for itself all that was valued in his accomplished exploit and claimed to be its truthful expression. In short the beautiful death was a paradigm.

La mésaventure d’Aipytos, aveuglé dans le hiéron de Poseidon Hippios par une «vague marine», n’est
connue que par l’insatiable curiosité de Pausanias. Cette légende locale, qui ne laisse pas d’intriguer,
rappelle le lien entre la cité de Mantinée et Poseidon, mais sa portée mythologique dépasse l’Arcadie,
et même la Grèce. Il est en effet possible de retrouver à Mantinée un mythe bien connu dans le monde
indo-européen: le fameux «feu dans l’eau», qui sanctionne les impies et les mauvais rois. Ainsi, l’histoire
d’Aipytos rappelle de près celle de la naissance de la rivière Boyne. L’héritage i-e. retrouvé, étrangement
ancré au coeur du territoire arcadien et interprété selon les critères du Périégète, invite à repenser
le lien entre Poseidon et la royauté en Grèce.

Using Jerome J. McGann’s suggestion that the earliest fragments of "Manfred" might have been written during his Levantine Tour (c 2 July 1809 –  14 July 1811), this study aims to offer a new perspective on Byron’s "Manfred", taking into account issues inherent in Byron’s patrician upbringing, his experience of Ottoman Greece, his notion of a Classical tradition, and his previous Byronic heroes. The majority of motifs previously perceived as “Gothic” can thus be seen in a new light, namely, as “Greek”.
The Introduction to my study surveys the Greek imaginary, its historical dissemination, its respective appropriations by the Roman Empire and by North-Western Europeans, especially by British Whigs, and its legacy within British poetry, especially regarding the description of mountain landscapes. Aiming to facilitate an insight into Byron’s formative experiences, the chapter offers a survey of eighteenth-century Philhellenism and its socio-political conditions, namely the institution of the Grand Tour, burgeoning Orientalism, Winckelmann's aesthetic reassessment of the plastic arts (followed by the trends of antiquarianism and the picturesque in British painting) and the French Revolution. Here, I draw an ideological and aesthetic distinction between the Greek imaginary and Gothicism and then I outline Byron's Greek imaginary.

‘No one knows so little of Homer, so as not to know that the best of the heroes are parasites’ (Par. 44). This bold claim comes from Simon, an interlocutor in a dialogue by the second century CE author Lucian of Samosata, titled De parasito (On the Parasite). Simon’s argument in this piece is that the parasitic art deserves to be considered a technē because the Homeric heroes invented the practice. De parasito is a clear parody of the genre of encomium, but it also takes aim at the efforts of myth rationalizers, from Prodicus (fifth century BCE) to Heraclitus (second century CE), to explain (origin) myths by explaining the origins of origin myths. In this chapter I will argue that De parasito, together with such pieces as De saltatione (On the Dance), De astrologia (On Astrology), Electrum (Amber), and Muscae encomium (Praise of the Fly), represents Lucian’s playful response through parody to rationalizing aetiologies of myth.

Kuin, I.N.I. 2021. ‘Patroclus Was a Parasite: Lucian’s Satirical Aitia,’ in J.J.H. Klooster; A.B. Wessels (eds.), Inventing Origins: The Function of Aetiology in Antiquity. Brill, Leiden, 183—198.

https://brill.com/view/title/61226?rskey=fxopYP&result=1

Il contributo discute lo status delle copie nel mondo ellenistico e romano, in parte contestando la posizione ‘ortodossa’, che considera le copie esclusivamente in quanto riproduzioni consapevoli di capolavori ‘classici’. L’autore insiste sugli effetti distorsivi di tale visione modernizzante. Egli ritiene convintamente che in antico le copie fossero percepite in modo pi  articolato: anche come copie in senso moderno, senza dubbio, ma prima di tutto come opere scultoree con una propria funzione, nelle quali, copiando, l’esecutore legittimamente manifestava la sua abilità e la sua techne. Del massimo interesse   la descrizione di Pausania delle statue del ginnasio di Messene, dove una copia del Doriforo di Policleto (rinvenuta in sito da P. G. Themelis negli anni Settanta) viene citata come statua di Teseo di Apollonio e Demetrio di Alessandria, senza alcuna menzione di Policleto.

Manisa ya da Antikçağdaki adıyla Magnesia Ad Sipylum, Lydia Bölgesi'nde kurulan önemli kentlerden biri olarak kabul edilmiştir. Strabon, Herodotos, Pausanias, Plinius ve daha pek çok antik dönem yazarı kent hakkında önemli bilgiler vermektedir. En erken arkeolojik kalıntının Geç Paleolitik Dönem'e kadar indiği kentte, ilk iskan tarihi Geç Neolitik Dönem'de başlamaktadır. Kentin adından söz ettirmesi ise M.Ö. 281'de Lysimakhos ile Seleukos arasında gerçekleşen savaş ile gerçekleşecektir.

Επαναφέροντας στη μνήμη ένα χαμένο σήμερα ενεπίγραφο βάθρο της λατρείας των Καβείρων στην Αμφίπολη, μέσα από 3 παλαιές δημοσιεύσεις, ερμηνεύοντας την επιγραφή και αναλύοντας την σχέση της Αθηνάς και του Ηφαίστου, με τους μεταλλοτεχνίτες, την μαντική, τον Διόνυσο και την Δήμητρα.

Why does Pausanias end his work with a description of the Greek landscapes of Phocis and Western Locris, which at first glance seem less “classical”? Why does he describe the small poleis there, which seem to lack everything that makes up the Greek city of the 2nd century CE? In this paper, I argue that, for Pausanias, in this remote world an important part of what constitutes Greece had survived the passage of time more undisturbed than in the “classical” Greek world: the small polis that had produced mythological heroes and participated in Panhellenic wars, that guarded its borders, that maintained its cults, that longed for a temple of stone and that was the home of proud citizens. In this sense, Pausanias uses Book X to document the present of Greece’s past through this seemingly marginal example.

The paper analyzes, within the late Domenico Musti’s scholarly activity, some studies specifically devoted to the Delphic sanctuary (more particularly, to the amphictiony and the sacred wars) and some remarks on these and related topics included in other works by the same scholar. The paper aims at stressing Musti’s approach to the history of Delphi and of the major Greek sanctuaries, as a meaningful example of his method in studying the ancient literary sources.
On the other hand, some suggestions and remarks made by Musti in his ‘Delphic’ pages are here further developed. The paper includes a section on Pausanias X 8, 1-5, underlying his possible sources on the history of Delphi in the fourth century BCE and his interest in juridical matters; some remarks on the different roles of the local tradition and of the so-called ‘Delphic propaganda’ in shaping the foundation tales which connected the Delphic oracle to colonial enterprises; an attempt at explaining the lack of references to the ‘first sacred war’ by the great historians of the fifth century BCE and at clarifying, more generally, the real importance of the ‘sacred wars’ in ancient Greek history.

This paper examines ancient Greek embodiments of animals in sculpture and their afterlives in the Roman imperial period. Statues of animals, both lifesize and lifelike, were prototypical votive and funerary monuments, characteristic of the Classical period (ca. 480-323 B.C.). Lions, bulls, and other animals were dedicated to the gods in their sanctuaries as ἀγάλµατα (pleasing gifts), as emblems of the identities of their divine recipients , and as perpetual sacrificial victims. The most famous of these statues in antiquity was Myron's cow, a bronze statue that originally stood on the Athenian Acropolis, but was later removed to Rome. Though representations of animal bodies could not be mistaken for human portraits, many were later reinterpreted as "portraits" of animals that had benefited humans by their virtuous deeds. A principal example is Pausanias' story about a bronze bull dedicated by the people of Corcyra at Delphi to represent the bull that had miraculously led them to a gigantic tuna catch (10.9.3-4). The stories generated by animal statues are treated by Pausanias and other authors of the Second So-phistic as moralising exempla, a typical feature of Roman discourse in this period. While the accretion of oral traditions over time to earlier animal statues never challenged the literal boundary between animal bodies and human ones, earlier monuments were reimagined as products of mainstream Hellenistic and Roman portrait culture.

ABSTRACT
A sanctuary of Eileithia and Sosipolis is mentioned by Pausanias in the following passages:

[6.20.2] At the foot of Mount Cronius, on the north . . . , between the treasuries and the mountain, is a sanctuary of Eileithyia, and in it Sosipolis, a native Elean deity, is worshipped. Now they surname Eileithyia Olympian, and choose a priestess for the goddess every year. The old woman who tends Sosipolis herself too by an Elean custom lives in chastity, bringing water for the god's bath and setting before him barley cakes kneaded with honey.
[6.20.3] In the front part of the temple, for it is built in two parts, is an altar of Eileithyia and an entrance for the public; in the inner part Sosipolis is worshipped, and no one may enter it except the woman who tends the god, and she must wrap her head and face in a white veil. Maidens and matrons wait in the sanctuary of Eileithyia chanting a hymn; they burn all manner of incense to the god, but it is not the custom to pour libations of wine. An oath is taken by Sosipolis on the most important occasions.

With the discovery of the sanctuary of Eileithyia and Sosipolis north of the Kronos hill in the last decade, a topographical problem concerning the sanctuary for a long time, was finally solved. In the context of the study of the findings from the excavation, which is still in progress, issues related to the worship which lasts from the archaic era to the late antiquity, will be discussed.


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Greek myth comes to us through many different channels. Our best source for the ways that local communities told and used these stories is a travel guide from the second century AD, the Periegesis of Pausanias. Pausanias gives us the clearest glimpse of ancient Greek myth as a living, local tradition. He shows us that the physical landscape was nothing without the stories of heroes and gods that made sense of it, and reveals what was at stake in claims to possess the past. He also demonstrates how myths guided curious travellers to particular places, the kinds of responses they provoked, and the ways they could be tested or disputed. The Periegesis attests to a form of cultural tourism we would still recognise: it is animated by the desire to see for oneself distant places previously only read about. It shows us how travellers might map the literary landscapes that they imagined on to the reality, and how locals might package their cities to meet the demands of travellers' expectations.

In Pausanias in the World of Greek Myth, Greta Hawes uses Pausanias's text to illuminate the spatial dynamics of myth. She reveals the significance of local stories in an Empire connected by a shared literary repertoire, and the unifying power of a tradition made up paradoxically of narratives that took diverse, conflicting forms on the ground. We learn how storytelling and the physical infrastructures of the Greek mainland were intricately interwoven such that the decline or flourishing of the latter affected the archive of myth that Pausanias transmits.