Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

Pausanias: Travel Writing in Ancient Greece
Although there was perhaps not much more to see in Panopeus than in
Tithronion, there was still a lot more that could be said about it. When
Pausanias notes that Panopeus still has boundaries and sends delegates
to the Phokian league he acknowledges that it has the status of a polis, a
city-state with what qualified as ‘foreign relations’ in the Roman period.
The question of what constitutes a polis in the Periegesis is important
because the text is organised by city territories. Pausanias may therefore
have decided the status of some of his sites to suit the structure of his
books, but these choices could not be completely arbitrary. Scholarly
discussion about Pausanias’ definition of a polis revolves mainly around
borderline cases. Large cities are easy to categorise, but it is more difficult
to understand where he draws the line between a polis, a small city or
town (polisma) and a village (kômê). In the case of Panopeus, membership
of the Phokian assembly was sufficient to make a few huts perched above
a ravine a polis, but another member of the Phokian League, Ledon, did
not qualify because there the core settlement was completely abandoned. 5
A deserted town could, however, also be given polis status: as excavations
have shown, by the second century AD there was only limited settlement
activity at the site of Stymphalos, but Pausanias speaks of the ‘city of my
own time’, suggesting that Stymphalos is a functioning polis. His description,
however, seems to reflect the reality, because it is largely concerned
with a rural landscape. 6
This inconsistency between different passages in the Periegesis is quite
typical: Pausanias’ decision about a settlement’s polis status was clearly
not made with a well-defined checklist of buildings in mind. His judgement
of a site depends on its physical appearance in conjunction with its status
in the Greek literary tradition; often history, rather than monuments,
seems to be the decisive factor. In Panopeus, for example, Homeric ‘history’
was particularly important. Many cities on the Greek mainland were
mentioned in the Catalogue of Ships, but Panopeus is singled out because,
apart from that standard reference, it also appears as the residence of
Schedios, a king and notable warrior, and the poet even describes it as
famous (kleitos). Even more remarkably, it was mentioned in the Odyssey,
too, where we hear that Leto was on her way to Delphi, passing the
‘beautiful dancing places’ of Panopeus. 7
Other cities had stories, monuments
and customs which were connected to such important episodes of
their history, but Panopeus had little to show for its Homeric distinction.
Pausanias had to resort to his own research to find appropriate links to
the epic tradition. He points to the large, ancient city walls and strategic
position of the settlement to explain why such a place might have been an
attractive location for the residence of a Homeric king: Panopeus has
clearly seen better days. 8
In the end, Pausanias could at least find a
contemporary Athenian tradition which suggested that the Odyssey’s
reference to the ‘beautiful dancing places’ of Panopeus was still applicable,
because every other year Athenian women went to Mount Parnassos for a
92