Classicly

Pausanias was a Greek gentleman, native of Lydia, in Asia Minor, a geographer and traveller, who visited noted sites in Greece with the express purpose of seeing and describing all that was most beautiful and interesting in Greek art. He lived about one hundred and fifty years after the Christian era. His travels or “Itinerary” has come down to us, and a most curious and interesting work it is. He saw and described the Parthenon with much enthusiasm, with all its beautiful statues and works of art, as “still perfect,” though they were, even in his day, already considered as ancient art. He refers to the Homeric hymn as suggesting the subject of the group on the eastern pediment over the principal entrance to the temple.