Pausanias’s Description of Greece was published by Macmillan in 1898 in six volumes — two of translation and four of commentary — and it represents Frazer’s most sustained work of classical scholarship. Pausanias, a Greek traveler of the second century AD, wrote a guide to the monuments, temples, and sacred sites of Greece that remains one of the most important sources for ancient Greek religion and topography. Frazer’s edition provides the standard English-language access to this text.
The commentary is where Frazer’s distinctive contribution lies. He visited virtually every site Pausanias describes, comparing the ancient text with what he found on the ground and drawing on the latest archaeological discoveries to illuminate or correct Pausanias’s descriptions. But he also brings his comparative anthropological method to bear: when Pausanias describes a ritual, a myth, or a sacred custom, Frazer provides parallels from other cultures, showing how Greek religious practices fit into the larger patterns of human religious behavior that The Golden Bough had mapped.
The edition established Frazer’s credentials as a classical scholar (he was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and held the chair of Social Anthropology at Liverpool) and demonstrated that his comparative method was rooted in rigorous philological and archaeological training rather than in dilettante speculation.
Collecting Pausanias’s Description of Greece
First edition (Macmillan, London, 1898): Six volumes, cloth binding.
Market values:
- Complete six-volume set: $400–$1,200
- Individual volumes: $40–$100