Having looked in detail at the text of Pausanias and particularly at his words concerning the leading figures of the later Republic and early Empire, I wish here to stand back from the details in order to look at the overall picture, at what Pausanias actually thought of Rome and all that it had brought to Greece. Also to bring together his approaches to past and present, to assess whether he regards the latter as lesser than the former, whether he denigrates the present better to promote the past; how far he seeks to glorify the past, and how far he ignores the present, following the archaizing tendency in the culture of his age which has repeatedly been stressed in the preceding pages.

Pausanias does not feel negatively towards Rome per se – he had visited Rome and wondered at its sights (8.17.4, 9.21.1), as well as at those of other parts of Italy. In saying that Pausanias does not feel negatively towards Rome, I follow Palm (and others) in supporting Clavier's emendation of the text at 8.27.1, to include epi, with the meaning that the inhabitants were overtaken by ‘disaster under the Roman Empire’ (i.e. as a chronological statement) rather than meaning the ‘disaster of the Roman Empire’. This is an important point for present purposes since, as Palm observes, it has been the key element in any view of Pausanias as anti-Roman.

The very fact that Pausanias wrote at such length about the sites and monuments of Greece is itself indicative of his most important attitude towards antiquities. That is, that he thought them of sufficient value to be worth recording and, in recording them, he thought it worth travelling extensively in mainland Greece over a period of many years to see them for himself.

Although the context of Pausanias' writings, in the tradition of the periegesis and against the cultural and political background of his day, has been stressed in the previous chapter, analysis of his attitude to antiquities involves greater complexities and subtleties than are accounted for simply by the historical context into which he was born.

J.J. Pollitt has observed that Pausanias ‘almost never expressed personal preferences or values beyond pointing out that certain work was “worth seeing”’. Similarly Habicht, although he argues that Pausanias has been unjustly neglected, gives little space to consideration of the shades of presentation reflected in Pausanias' writings, that is, to how his narrative reflects differing attitudes to specific works and types of works. In contrast, I suggest that Pausanias had strong personal preferences and values in his attitudes to the objects and sites he describes, and that they are reflected in the subtleties of presentation of the objects described in his narrative. It is those attitudes that I hope to define more closely in this chapter.

The bracketing of Caesar and Augustus in this chapter derives from Pausanias' own view of them as, effectively, the founders of the Roman Empire. He refers to both as basileus (e.g. 5.25.1, 2.17.3 respectively), a use of terminology which is discussed in the following pages, and which clearly places Caesar at the head of the line of sole rulers, the rest of whom belong to the Imperial period, rather than associating him with the earlier, Republican, rulers. Such categorization is more appropriate to the history of Roman Greece than would be a conventional Republican/imperial divide.

JULIUS CAESAR

Unlike Mummius and Sulla, Caesar appears to have been widely regarded as a cultured man: Pliny says that he ‘gave outstanding public importance to pictures by dedicating paintings of Ajax and Medea in front of the temple of Venus Genetrix’, the implication being that he was the first to do so and that he thereby set a fashion (NH 35.26, 7.126). The paintings referred to are by Timomachos of Byzantium, a contemporary of Caesar's (NH 35.136), so this does not represent a pursuit of antiquity. Suetonius refers to him as ‘a most enthusiastic collector of gems, carvings, statues, and pictures by early artists’ (Julius 47), the latter phrase indicating a discriminating preference for antiques. His practice of taking with him on campaign ‘tessellata et sectilia pavimenta’ (Suet. Julius 46) implies interest in art per se, although not necessarily the art of a previous era.

Apart from Augustus, the only Julio-Claudian emperor to whom Pausanias pays significant attention is Nero, the starting point for this chapter. Pausanias' few references to the remaining Julio-Claudian emperors were considered in the first part of chapter 3, along with the reasons behind his omitting some emperors altogether (namely Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Domitian, Nerva and Titus). The fact that the greater part of this chapter is devoted to Hadrian accurately reflects the distribution of Pausanias' writings on the emperors of this period. I argued in chapter 1 for the importance of Hadrian in shaping the world in which Pausanias grew up, and the points made there should be borne in mind here.

As well as Pausanias' view of Nero and Hadrian, his brief references to Vespasian, Trajan, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius are also discussed in this chapter.

NERO

Nero may be regarded as the second most philhellene of the emperors whose reigns are covered in this study, after Hadrian. Like Claudius, he was a speaker of Greek. The most celebrated aspect of his philhellenism was his visit to Greece in ad 66/7, particularly his declaration of freedom for Achaia at the Isthmian games.

More than in the case of other emperors extensively treated by Pausanias (and he has more to say on Nero than on any bar Augustus and Hadrian), Nero's character forms a constant theme. The general attitude of the sources towards Nero is hostile, and Pausanias' account will be compared with those sources.

INTRODUCTION

The following three chapters consider in detail the writings and attitudes of Pausanias concerning the ruling figures of Roman Greece. The first part of this chapter considers some of the criteria for selection which caused Pausanias to omit, or refer only briefly, to some of the emperors; the latter part concerns Pausanias' attitudes to Mummius and Sulla. Chapter 4 will concern Caesar and Augustus; and chapter 5 those emperors whom Pausanias discusses of the period from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, with particular emphasis on Hadrian.

The starting-point for these chapters is Mummius' destruction of Corinth in 146 bc, seen as a seminal moment in Greek history not only by modern scholars, but by Pausanias himself. There had, of course, been considerable earlier involvement of the Romans with Greece, and Pausanias has much to say on the Hellenistic period to 146 bc, besides his more widely acknowledged interest in Classical and earlier Greece. This was also the period when the Romans developed the habit of despoiling Greece of its art, a practice by no means original to them, as Pausanias was well aware (8.46.2; see below, p. 128), but one at which they became expert. The inglorious deeds of Marcellus at Syracuse in 211 bc are the most notable early example, and among the Romans ‘from that time came the very beginning of enthusiasm for Greek works of art and consequently of this general licence to despoil all kinds of buildings, sacred and profane’ (Livy 25.40.2; cf. Plut. Marc. 21.1).

The origin of this study lies unashamedly in its author's fascination with Pausanias, who has been (to borrow a phrase used by Sir John Beazley of the Berlin Painter) ‘a friendly presence’ in the study, in the lecture room and on site for ten years.

Chapter 2 is adapted from Arafat (1992), parts of which have also been used in chapter 1 (with the kind permission of the British School at Athens). References to Pausanias are taken from the Teubner edition of M.H. Rocha-Pereira, vols. I—III (2nd edn, Leipzig 1989—90). Unless otherwise specified, translations of Pausanias are taken from Frazer vol. 1, and of other authors from the Loeb editions, in both cases with modifications. Transliterations are mainly Hellenized, but some inconsistencies result from the retention of familiar forms.

The researching of this book, as well as its writing, has been immeasurably enhanced by the companionship of Catherine Morgan who (if I may return the compliment) ‘bore the rigours of fieldwork with fortitude’. I also owe much to my parents for their unstinting support, expressed in so many forms. I have benefited greatly from the patient encouragement of Pauline Hire of Cambridge University Press, and from the comments of the anonymous referees. The help of the staff and volunteers of the Library of the Institute of Classical Studies in London has considerably facilitated my work.

In this chapter I consider the benefactors, or euergetai, whom Pausanias mentions, other than the emperors. They comprise the Augustan and the Hadrianic Eurykles of Sparta; Philopappos of Commagene, whose monument in Athens was erected in c.114–6; ‘Aithidas’ of Messene (mid second century ad); ‘the Roman senator Antoninus’ (a contemporary of Pausanias, whose floruit was in the 160s); and Herodes Atticus (c.ad 103–79). The length of this chapter reflects the markedly small number of such benefactors, and the proportion of it devoted to Herodes Atticus also reflects Pausanias' own attentions. Both of these aspects are worth examination.

Herodes Atticus was a contemporary of Pausanias and a man whose activities in Greece – well attested by Pausanias – are unique in their scope for a private individual in this period. These activities (and those of Herodes elsewhere) reveal a man who acted in many respects in the manner of an emperor, and shed an informative light on the practice of private benefaction in Pausanias' day. It is the sheer scale of Herodes' capacity to act as a benefactor that makes him so exceptional, allowing him, for example, to create his own private projects such as his estates at Marathon and Loukou, as well as the more conspicuous public monuments.

The primary purpose of such benefactions is publicity for the benefactor: one acts thus in order to be noticed. Hence being mentioned by writers such as Pausanias was part of the purpose of these benefactions, part of the pay-off.

In the course of describing his travels in mainland Greece in the second century ad, Pausanias explicitly and implicitly reveals many of his attitudes and preferences towards the past and the present which governed, and arose from, those travels. In this book, I consider how Pausanias approached and carried out the task he had set himself. The major part of the study concerns his attitudes to the Romans in Greece, but his attitudes to the past are also considered, and it is a central tenet that Pausanias' examination of the present is indistinguishable from that of the past, indeed that the former was shaped to a significant extent by the latter. Pausanias himself is the starting point of this study: it is not a study of Greece and Rome, nor of provincial attitudes, Roman buildings, or individual emperors. It would not be possible (even if it were my intention) to look at all that the Romans built or dedicated in Greece nor at their pervasive impact on life in the province of Achaia.

There have been several full-scale commentaries since the pioneering (and still, in some respects, unsurpassed) work of Sir James Frazer. The ever-growing wealth of archaeological evidence (mostly confirming the value of Pausanias) increasingly renders the compilation of a comprehensive commentary an impractically burdensome task. In tandem, there have been many articles and monographs on aspects of Pausanias, including several in recent years, of which that by Christian Habicht is the broadest in scope.

It is likely that most of the decorative techniques employed on bucchero are derived ultimately from metalware. Not only many of the techniques but also some of the motives to be observed on bucchero are found also on impasto pottery. But on impasto they are employed rather at random, whereas bucchero evolves a number of distinctive decorative schemes, which in many cases are related to the shape of the pot. Decoration on early bucchero can be quite lavish, often making use of several techniques together; but some of these, such as rouletting, are discarded by the end of the seventh century, and few survive far into the sixth. Completely plain pots are normal for the sixth century and later, and are by no means unknown even in the earliest period of bucchero production.

SILVERING

Some bucchero pots seem originally to have had a silver overlay covering the entire exterior and, on open shapes, the interior as well. The evidence comes from very small fragments of silver leaf found still attached to the surface. In one instance chemical analysis has shown that the adhesive agent used is a compound of mercury (Ramage, 17f.). The total number of pots which still show these traces is very small, but this may be due to such a fragile surface having perished over the centuries. It may be significant that almost all the bucchero from the Camera degli Alari (Ramage, 39ff.) – one of the very few tomb-chambers found intact – shows evidence of silvering.

AMPHORA

Recent studies have helped to make the development of the amphora clearer: Dohrn and Colonna have examined the impasto types; Verzár has tackled the evolution of the later bucchero amphorae.

The amphora of Type 1 is characterized by the conical neck and the ribbon handles from shoulder to rim. There is a clear line of development from the earliest types to the ‘Nikosthenic’ shape, and the latter is in no way derived from the Villanovan biconical urn as once suggested (by Gallatin, AJA 30 (1926), 76ff.).

Types 1a and 1b are often decorated with a double spiral on the body, which has given rise to the term ‘spiral amphora’. These types (especially in impasto) are also sometimes called ‘anfora laziale’, although they are as common on S. Etruscan and Faliscan sites as in Latium.

The typology of the impasto amphora is summarized by Colonna (MEFR 82 (1970), 637ff.). His view is that the shape begins very squat (Type A), the body narrowing to globular during the first half of the seventh century (Type B). The latter type occurs not uncommonly, the narrower and later Type? almost exclusively in bucchero. This agrees well with the later development of the shape in bucchero, where the most noticeable trend is the progressive narrowing and heightening of the body. This in itself would tend to discredit Dohrn's conclusion (Dohrn 1965, 149) that the impasto amphora develops from narrow to broad. Dohrn would place the very broad examples from the Vaccareccia tombs at Veii (Palm, 61ff.: Tomb 1 no.2, Tomb 4 no.8, Tomb 5 no.3 etc.) typologically late in his series.

The earliest bucchero of Cerveteri by far surpasses in quality all pottery previously produced in Central Italy, and indeed in the whole W. Mediterranean area. The production of the thin-walled bucchero of GROUPS 1–3 required careful preparation of the clay, skilled control of firing, and great precision at the wheel. In excellence of technique, as well as in other aspects, favourable comparisons may be made with Protocorinthian pottery. Is it possible that these technical improvements may be due to the presence of immigrant Corinthians at work in Cerveteri workshops? The influence from Corinth can, however, be overstated. In the typological analyses at attempt has been made to trace, where possible, the earlier history of specific types in impasto. By this means one can see bucchero emerging from an earlier native tradition – early bucchero evolving as a gradual refinement of impasto shapes and technique. Moreover the decorative styles and techniques belong for the most part to this same native tradition, with some taken from native metalware. Of the Protocorinthian shapes copied by the earliest bucchero only the kotyle attains real popularity, whereas among purely native shapes there are the amphora Type 1a, jug Type 1a and kyathos Types 1a-c. There is also an Oriental element, which we see most clearly in the oinochoe Type 2a and in the style of the earliest incised animal friezes. It is later – after the middle of the seventh century – that Protocorinthian influence becomes really dominant with the appearance of the olpe, oinochoe Type 3a, cup Type 1c and the later incised friezes.