Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

7
Describing a City
From Chaironeia it is twenty stadia to Panopeus, a city (polis) of the
Phokians, if one can call it a city, seeing that they have no government
offices, no gymnasium, no theatre, no market-place, and no water descending
to a fountain, but live right above a ravine in mere shelters, just like cabins
in the mountains. Nevertheless, their territory has defined boundaries with
their neighbours, and they send delegates to the Phokian assembly. …
Looking at the ancient city walls I estimated their length at about seven
stadia. I was reminded of Homer’s verses about Tityos, where calls the city
‘Panopeus with beautiful dancing floors’, and in the battle over the body of
Patroklos he says that Schedios, the son of Iphitos and king of the Phokians,
lived in Panopeus. 1 (Paus. 10.4.1-2)
Rarely is Pausanias as scathing about the current state of a site as he is
in this passage. He saw many ancient cities in a state of decline, and his
description of such places usually conveys a sense of nostalgia or historical
inevitability paired with respect rather than the disdain shown here. 2
Panopeus is an extreme example that allows some insight into Pausanias’
approach to individual cities. In this chapter I focus on a few sites to
demonstrate how monuments, local stories and Greek literature add up to
characteristic images of particular places. Geography and history have so
far been discussed separately, but a closer look at Pausanias’ site descriptions
shows how he integrates landscape and history to create his distinctive
vision of Greece.
Pausanias’ comments on Panopeus have traditionally been seen as a
catalogue of minimum requirements for a city, a list of basic amenities
which he expected to find in any settlement that deserved to be classified
as a polis. 3 This close attention to the typical components of ancient urban
infrastructure is, however, unusual for Pausanias. He occasionally mentions
such public buildings, but they rarely receive more than a passing
comment, while private houses are almost completely absent from the
Periegesis. Why did he choose to comment on these aspects of a city here,
where they were absent or particularly unimpressive? There was a simpler
way of dealing with places where there was nothing worth describing:
Fifteen stadia from Amphikleia is Tithronion which lies in a plain. There is
nothing memorable there. From Tithronion it is twenty stadia to Drymaia. 4
(Paus. 10.33.12)
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