PREFACE
The Englishman in Greece who pays any heed to the remains of classical antiquity is apt, if he be no scholar, to wonder who a certain Pausanias was whose authority he finds often quoted on questions of ancient buildings and sites. The first of the following sketches may do something to satisfy his curiosity on this head. It has already served as an introduction to a version of Pausanias’s Description of Greece which I published with a commentary two years ago. The account of Pericles was contributed to the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I desire to thank Messrs. A. and C. Black for their courteous permission to republish it. The other sketches are reprinted, with some small changes and adjustments of detail, from my commentary on Pausanias. References to authorities have been omitted as needless in a book which is not specially addressed to the learned. Any one who wishes to pursue the subject further will find my authorities amply cited in the original volumes. Among works from which I have borrowed both outlines and colours for some of my sketches of Greek landscape I will here mention only two—the Erinnerungen und Eindrücke aus Griechenland of the Swiss scholar W. Vischer, and the Peloponnes of the German geologist Mr. A. Philippson. Slight and fragmentary as these sketches are, I am not without hope that they may convey to readers who have never seen Greece something of the eternal charm of its scenery. To such as already know and love the country they will yet be welcome, if here and there they revive some beautiful or historic scene on those tablets of the mind from which even the brightest hues so quickly fade.
Cambridge, March 30, 1900.