Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

6. A Sense of Time: Pausanias as Historian
War because both works had the same main hero, Aristomenes, although
two generations were thought to have passed between the two wars. 50
Pausanias decides to follow Rhianos’ chronology, mainly because he considers
Myron as less trustworthy as an author, and his work seemed to
contradict some of the information supplied by the poet Tyrtaios who was
contemporary to some of the events. For once, Pausanias allows us an
insight into his activities as a historiographer, and he shows himself
capable of complex historical reasoning. It is not, however, clear how
Pausanias finally combined these sources to create his history of the
Messenian Wars: he seems to have followed his own chronology, but his
narrative is probably an adaptation of both Myron’s and Rhianos’ accounts,
with additions from other sources such as Tyrtaios. As Auberger
has shown, the account is carefully shaped to reflect Pausanias’ own
views. 51
The chronological framework for the Periegesis was particularly complex.
Every city description includes numerous sights and stories which
had to be provided with some form of date, and local tradition often came
without links to a generally intelligible chronology. Pausanias works with
a combination of different chronological systems which allows him to
provide a rough date for the thousands of monuments and stories contained
in his work. Such chronological information is often not given
explicitly, but it can usually be deduced from a story or name attached to
a particular feature of the landscape. 52 The guiding principle of chronology
in the Periegesis is genealogy. This system is based on generations which
could be roughly translated into years by equating one century with three
generations. For the mythical past this was the only system available, and
most local stories could be placed within a particular generation by
establishing their relationship with pivotal ‘events’ and their participants
from different areas of the Greek world. An example is the expedition of
the Argonauts and the Trojan War. 53 Wandering heroes such as Herakles
provided further convenient connections. Pausanias could expect his readers
to know the basics of this framework, especially for the heyday of the
Greek mythical past, roughly from Herakles to the first generation after
the Trojan War. 54 Most regions and cities could fit some of their own stories
into this system, and more connections could be established through
genealogies of local heroes, often mythical royal families. The most extensive
of these genealogies, particularly Pausanias’ Spartan and Arkadian
king lists, span many generations, offering a connection between the
earliest heroes and periods which are historical in the modern sense. 55
The introduction of Book III provides the most elaborate genealogical
account in the Periegesis: Pausanias presents the two Spartan royal lines
separately, essentially trawling through Lakonian history twice, but each
time with a slightly different angle on particular events. 56 Pausanias
explains that he keeps the two families apart because their generations
did not coincide. This would not matter much if he just wanted to provide
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