SOURCE: "Pausanias the Periegete" in The Attica of Pausanias, edited by Mitchell Carroll. Boston: Ginn & Company, 1907, pp. 1-11.

In the following essay, Carroll explores the dates for composition of the Periegesis, the aim and method used by Pausanias, and his debt to previous writers.

1. Gi; 1. scope and Character of Pausanias's Work. =~ Sscope and Character of Pausanias's Work.

—Aldus Manutius begins his preface to the editio princeps of Pausanias's Description of Greece, which appeared in 1516, by characterizing it as an "opus antiquae raraeque eruditionis thesauros continens." And invaluable it is because of its subject-matter, since it reveals to us numerous details, not only concerning "the city of the violet crown," but also about the other most celebrated sites of ancient Greece, when its monuments still retained some of the freshness and splendor of the older time.

The [Periegesis] has come down to us in ten books. The work is...