Pausanias 1.1.1-1.1.5

Athena Promachos, Academy of Athens. Image via Flickr user Dimitris Kamaras, reproduced under a CC BY 2.0license.

This sampling of comments is taken from an online project A Pausanias Reader, edited by Greta Hawes and Gregory Nagy. My set of comments on the first two sentences in the text of Pausanias 1.1.1 is divided into seven paragraphs, §§1–7. Among the many points of interest noted by Pausanias in these two sentences is his mention of a temple of the goddess Athena at the headland of Sounion—a mention that seems to anticipate what he will say at a later point about a colossal bronze statue of the goddess Athena Promakhos (sometimes spelled Promakhos) guarding the Acropolis in Athens.

Before we delve into the first two sentences, however, I offer two preliminary comments about Pausanias and his work:

1. The name of the author, Pausanias, who lived in the second century CE, is known by way of Stephanus of Byzantium (Constantinople), who lived in the sixth century CE. This Stephanus produced a geographical dictionary, and one of his sources was the work of Pausanias. For helpful background, I recommend Habicht 1998:1.

2. Stephanus, in his citations of Pausanias, occasionally indicates the number of the scroll from which the given citation is taken.