A Numismatic Commentary on Pausanias

Imhoof-Blumer and Gardner compare Pausanias’s descriptions of statues, sanctuaries, cults, and local myths with coin types from the same cities, illustrated on thirty plates. The work is useful for ancient topography, the reconstruction of lost monuments, local iconography, and the study of how civic coins reproduced cult images. It remains a starting point for identifying visual correspondences, but each proposed link should be tested against modern archaeological and art-historical evidence.

Because the work predates much of the modern archaeological, die-study, epigraphic, and provenance evidence, verify dates, mint or ruler assignments, legend readings, authenticity, and current specimen locations against current corpora and databases.