[Sidenote: Description of the coast of Hermionis.]
When we next enquire whether the descriptions of Pausanias contain errors into which he could scarcely have fallen if he had seen the places and things which he describes, a student of Pausanias is at once reminded of the author’s description of the coast of Hermionis, which it is difficult or impossible to reconcile with the actual features of the coast. That the description contains grave errors is almost certain. How these errors are to be explained is much more doubtful. It is easy to suggest, as has been done, that Pausanias did not himself sail along the coast, but borrowed his description from one of those _Periploi_ or _Coasting Voyages_, which enumerated the places on a coast in topographical order and recorded the distances between them. Yet this supposition by itself would hardly explain the confusion into which Pausanias has fallen. Specimens of these _Coasting Voyages_ have come down to us, and they are so exceedingly clear, concise, and business-like, that it is difficult to understand how any one who simply set himself to copy from them could have blundered so egregiously as Pausanias appears to have done. More plausible is the suggestion that, while Pausanias was obliged by the plan of his itinerary to describe the coast in one direction, the _Coasting Voyage_ which lay before him described it in the reverse direction, and that in his effort to throw the information supplied by the _Voyage_ into the form that suited his itinerary Pausanias made the jumble which has caused his critics so much trouble. This may be the true explanation. It would have the further advantage of helping us to understand how Pausanias obtained his knowledge of the exact distances between places on various parts of the coasts of Greece, notably on the coast of Achaia and on the wild inhospitable coast of Laconia. The _Coasting Voyage_ which he used may, like the extant _Coasting Voyage_ of Scylax, have comprised a description of the whole coast of Greece, and from it Pausanias may have borrowed his estimates of distances and perhaps other features of his description as well. This is Mr. Heberdey’s theory, and it is a perfectly tenable one, though in the absence of direct evidence it must remain only a more or less probable hypothesis. Yet when we remember that Pausanias’s topographical indications are nowhere more full and exact than in Arcadia, where by the nature of the case he cannot have used a _Coasting Voyage_, the hypothesis that he used one in other parts of his work seems superfluous, if not improbable. It is quite possible that he described the coast of Hermionis from notes he had made for himself in sailing along it, and that either he failed at the time to take in the natural features correctly or that afterwards in redacting his notes at home he misunderstood what he had written on the spot. Perhaps I may be allowed to say that having repeatedly sailed along the coast in question I can testify from personal experience how difficult it is to identify by sight the places from a ship, so bewildering is the moving panorama of capes, islands, bays, and mountains. It would be no great wonder if Pausanias’s head swam a little in this geographical maze.