Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

6. A Sense of Time: Pausanias as Historian
to such works. His preference for a vague genealogical chronology is
therefore deliberate, again rejecting developments in historiography initiated
by Thucydides in favour of a more archaic, Herodotean approach. 61
Once the material was selected, evaluated and firmly placed into context
Pausanias could start to compose his text. It is particularly difficult
to assess his efforts as a historical writer because the Periegesis deals with
the past in many different ways and contexts. Pausanias adapts his
material to fit his purpose within a particular section of the text, which
allows him to demonstrate his versatility as a writer and the wide range
of his historical knowledge. He covers various subjects, ranging from the
mythical and miraculous to recent political history, and he includes romantic
tales and legends as well as descriptions of battles and political
developments or genealogical lists. Pausanias could choose from a wide
range of historiographical styles and methods, and he could expect his
erudite readers to recognise echoes of different writers or historical episodes.
The presentation of a historical narrative could therefore depend on
the effect he wanted to achieve in a particular context.
In a few cases Pausanias tells the same story twice, and he also had to
deal with many types of events that recur in Greek history, such as battles
or sieges, and the repetitive traditions about some mythical figures. 62
Pausanias adjusts the style and focus of his accounts, and rather similar
events can be treated very differently. I compare his accounts of the sack
of Kallion by the Gauls and of the destruction of Corinth by the Romans,
which are of about the same length and deal with devastating conquests
of cities by foreign aggressors.
What Komboutis and Orestorios did to the Kallians is the most atrocious
crime ever heard of, and no man has ever dared to do anything similar. All
males were put to the sword, old men were butchered as well as children at
their mothers’ breasts; as they killed the fattest of these infants the Gauls
drank their blood and ate their flesh. Women and adult virgins who had any
spirit killed themselves before the city was captured. Those who survived
were subjected to every kind of extreme outrage perpetrated by men equally
devoid of pity and love. Every woman who happened to find a Gallic sword
committed suicide; the rest were soon to die of lack of food and sleep as the
unrestrained barbarians took turns in raping them, and they even assaulted
the dying and the dead. 63 (Paus. 10.22.3-4)
This passage is written in the tradition of dramatic historiography which
aimed to evoke strong emotions in the reader by including striking anecdotes
and graphic descriptions of cruel scenes in the narrative. Polybios
expresses particularly strong criticism of this mode of historical writing
because he thought that such effects borrowed from tragedy were not
appropriate for a serious historical work. In his opinion any historian of
integrity should include only information based on fact, while dramatic
historians would usually have to invent their lurid details. 64 Pausanias’
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