Whatever may be thought of this theory, the attention which Pausanias obviously bestowed on literary style is in itself wholly laudable. Such attention is a simple duty which every author owes to his readers. Pausanias cannot be blamed for trying to write well; the pity is that with all his pains he did not write better. He was anxious not to be needlessly tedious, not to inflict on the reader mere bald lists of monuments strung together on a topographical thread. He aimed at varying the phraseology, at shunning the eternal repetition of the same words in the same order. Yet he steered clear of one shoal only to run aground on another. If to some extent he avoided monotony and attained variety of expression, it was too often at the cost of simplicity and clearness. The natural order of the words was sacrificed and a crabbed contorted one substituted for it merely in order to vary the run of the sentences. For the same reason a direct statement was often discarded in favour of an indirect one, with the result that a reader who happens to be unfamiliar with the author’s manner is sometimes at a loss as to his meaning. For example, it has been questioned whether he means that there was a statue of Aeschylus in the theatre at Athens and one of Oenobius on the Acropolis. Yet any person conversant with his style must feel sure that in both these cases Pausanias intends to intimate the existence of the statue, and that if he does not affirm it in so many words this is due to no other cause than a wish to turn the sentence in another way. Similar instances could easily be multiplied. The ambiguity which so often arises from this indirect mode of statement is one of the many blots on the style of Pausanias. Such as it is, his style is seen at its best in some of the longer historical passages, notably in the spirited narratives of the Messenian wars and the Gallic invasion. Here he occasionally rises to a fair level of literary merit, as for example in describing the evil omens that preceded and hastened the death of the patriot king Aristodemus, and again in relating the impious attack of the Gauls on Delphi and their overwhelming repulse. Through the latter narrative there runs, like a strain of solemn music, an undertone of religious faith and fervour which greatly heightens the effect.