Thus Pausanias criticised Greek myths and legends according to his lights, and if his lights did not shine very brilliantly the fault was not his.
Of his taste in painting and sculpture we are scarcely able to judge, partly because he is chary of his praise, generally confining himself to a simple mention or description of the work before him, partly because so few of the works described by him have survived to our time. [Sidenote: His taste in painting.] The paintings are all gone. A little blue pigment on a ruined wall at Delphi is all that remains of those frescoes of Polygnotus which excited the admiration of antiquity. That Pausanias himself admired them is clear, both from the length of his description and from the words with which he brings it to a close: “So varied and beautiful is the painting of the Thasian artist.” Elsewhere he seems to have lost no opportunity of describing extant pictures of Polygnotus, though he does not always mention his name. A painting of Drunkenness by Pausias apparently struck Pausanias especially, for he tells us that “in the picture you can see the crystal goblet and the woman’s face through it.” But the only pictures, besides those of Polygnotus at Delphi, on which he deigns to bestow a dry word of commendation are a couple of paintings on tombstones, one of them by Nicias, as to whom Pausanias tells us elsewhere that he had been the greatest painter of animals of his time.