His report of this last spectacle, though it is confirmed by another witness, may raise a doubt as to his credibility. Professor Alfred Newton, whom I have consulted on the subject, kindly informs me that he knows of no modern evidence to bear Pausanias out, but that considering the widespread belief of the ancients in the familiarity of dolphins he does not think it inconceivable that in those days the creatures lived in little fear of mankind. We cannot judge, he says, by the behaviour of animals at the present day of what they might or did do before persecution began. “When the Russians,” he continues, “discovered Bering’s Island in 1741, they found its shores thronged by a big sea-beast (the _Rhytina gigas_ of naturalists), which, never having seen men before, had no fear of them, and the Russians (shipwrecked as they were) used to wade in the water and _milk_ the ‘cows.’ The confidence was misplaced, and within thirty years or so every one of the animals had been destroyed, and the species extirpated.” Thus it seems not impossible that dolphins may have been tamer in antiquity than they are now, and that Pausanias may really have seen what he tells us he saw. But perhaps the exhibition at Poroselene was a hoax.
[Sidenote: Description of Greece by the pseudo-Dicaearchus.]
So much for the contents of Pausanias’s book. Before we enquire into the character of the writer and the sources from which he drew his materials it may be instructive to compare his work with the fragments of another ancient description of Greece which have come down to us. The comparison will help us to understand better both what we have gained and what we have lost by the idiosyncrasies of Pausanias. The fragments commonly pass under the name of the eminent Messenian writer Dicaearchus, a pupil of Aristotle; but from internal evidence we may conclude that the work of which they formed part was written by a later author at some time between 164 B.C. and 86 B.C. The nature of the work may be gathered from the following free translation or paraphrase, which is also slightly abridged.
“ The road to Athens is a pleasant one, running between cultivated fields the whole way. The city itself is dry and ill supplied with water. The streets are nothing but miserable old lanes, the houses mean, with a few better ones among them. On his first arrival a stranger could hardly believe that this is the Athens of which he has heard so much. Yet he will soon come to believe that it is Athens indeed. A Music Hall, the most beautiful in the world, a large and stately theatre, a costly, remarkable, and far-seen temple of Athena called the Parthenon rising above the theatre, strike the beholder with admiration. A temple of Olympian Zeus, unfinished but planned on an astonishing scale; three gymnasiums, the Academy, Lyceum, and Cynosarges, shaded with trees that spring from greensward; verdant gardens of philosophers; amusements and recreations; many holidays and a constant succession of spectacles;—all these the visitor will find in Athens.