He is inspired by a patriotic interest in the ancient glories of Greece. He is most at home in describing the religious art and architecture of Olympia and of Delphi; but, even in the most secluded regions of Greece, he is fascinated by all kinds of quaint and primitive images of the gods, by holy relics and many other sacred and mysterious things. He is interested in visiting the battlefields of Marathon and Plataea, and in viewing the Athenian trophy on the island of Salamis, the grave of Demosthenes at Calauria, of Leonidas at Sparta, of Epameinondas at Mantineia, and the colossal lion guarding the tomb of the Thebans on the Boeotian plain. At Thebes itself he views the shields of those who died at Leuctra, and the ruins of the house of Pindar; the statues of Hesiod and Arion, of Thamyris and Orpheus, in the grove of the Muses on Helicon; the portrait of Corinna at Tanagra, and of Polybius in the cities of Arcadia.
,At Olympia he takes note of the ancient quoit of Iphitus in scribed with the terms of the Olympic truce, the tablets recording treaties between Athens and other Grecian states, the memorials of the 'victories of the Greeks at Plataea, of the Spartans at Tanagra, of the Messenians at Naupactus, and even those of Philip at Chaeroneia and of Mummius at Corinth. At Delphi, as he climbs the sacred way to the shrine of Apollo, he marks the tro phies of the victories of the Athenians at Marathon and on the Eurymedon, of the united Greeks at Artemisium, Salamis and Plataea, of the Spartans at Aegospotami, of the Thebans at Leuctra, and the shields dedicated in memory of the repulse and defeat of the Gauls at Delphi itself. At Athens, he sees pictures of historic battles, portraits of famous poets, orators, statesmen and philosophers, and inscriptions recording the laws of Solon; on the Acropolis, the trophy of the Persian wars, the great bronze statue of Athena; at the entrance to the harbour of the Peiraeus, the grave of Themistocles ; and, outside the city, the monuments of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, of Cleisthenes and Pericles, of Conon and Timotheus, and of all the Athenians who fell in battle, except the heroes of Marathon, "for these, as a weed of valour, were buried on the field." In the topographical part of his work, he is fond of digressions on the wonders of nature, the signs that herald the approach of an earthquake, the tides, the ice-bound seas of the north, and the noonday sun which at the summer solstice casts no shadow at Syene. He criticizes the myths and legends relating to the gods and heroes. He prefers the works of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. to those of later times. At Delphi he admires the pictures of
Polygnotus, closing the seven chapters of his minute description with the appreciative phrase : "so varied and beautiful is the paint ing of the Thasian artist" (x. 31, 2). In sculpture his taste is no less severe. Even in the "uncouth" work of Daedalus, he recog nizes "a touch of the divine" (ii. 4, 5). In architecture, he admires the prehistoric walls of Tiryns, and the "Treasury of Minyas," the Athenian Propylaea, the theatre of Epidaurus, the temples of Bassae and Tegea, the walls of Messene, the Odeum at Patrae, as well as the building of the same name lately built at Athens by Herodes Atticus (vii. 20, 6), and finally the Stadium which that munificent Athenian had faced with white marble from Pentelicus. He has been well described by J. G. Frazer as "a man made of common stuff and cast in a common mould; his intelligence and abilities seem to have been little above the average, his opinions not very different from those of his contemporaries." His literary style is "plain and unadorned yet heavy and laboured" (Introduc tion, pp. xlix., lxix.).
In all parts of Greece the accuracy of his descriptions has been proved by the remains of the buildings which he describes ; and a few unimportant mistakes, and some slight carelessness in copy ing inscriptions, do not lend any colour to an imputation of bad faith. His accurate notice of Mycenae led to its discovery by Schliemann. It has been stated with perfect justice by Frazer (p. xcv. seq.) that "without him the ruins of Greece would for the most part be a labyrinth without a clue, a riddle without an answer." For the possible extent of Pausanias's obligations to Polemon and other writers see the references below, especially those to the work of Frazer, Kalkmann and Gurlitt.