Numismatic Commentary on Pausanias, I

Extract

The following paper is the first of a series of two or three which will bring into contact the extant coins of Greece and the text of Pausanias, thus furnishing to many passages of the traveller's writings a running numismatic commentary.

The main object we have set before us is to collect and set forth the numismatic reproductions of works of art mentioned by Pausanias; but we have not excluded any numismatic types which at all illustrate the cults and the legends mentioned by him as existing in the various cities of Peloponnesus.

The importance of the work cannot be doubted when we consider that in the case of many of the statues mentioned by Pausanias the only copies known are those upon coins; we may therefore hope to reconstruct from numismatic evidence, at least the general schemes of many great works of art wholly lost, and thus furnish very important material for recovering the history of Greek art; especially the history of the succession of types of the chief deities of Greece, which is a subject of great and increasing interest to archaeologists.

Generally speaking, the coins on which we can place the most reliance as sources of information as to the monuments are those of Hadrian and the Antonines. These coins are also the best in point of execution; and we may add that they are contemporary with the travels of Pausanias.