Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

7. Describing a City
nese, the Tegean Echemos, son of Aeropos, beat Hyllos in single combat. The
Tegeans were the first of the Arkadians to resist an attack of the Spartans,
and they took most of them prisoner. 27 (Paus. 8.45.1-3)
There are some significant omissions in this summary, but the events that
are included represent an uncontroversial selection. A foundation myth
was obligatory and, as so often in cities of mainland Greece, the Tegean
story is not very distinctive. All other episodes mentioned were familiar to
educated Greeks because they were well represented in the Greek literary
tradition. The Tegean king Aleos played an important part in the story of
Telephos, a hero who was part of the cycle of stories connected with the
Trojan War. Aleos’ daughter Auge was raped by Herakles, and after her
son Telephos was born she and her child were driven out of Tegea to be
killed. They survived and came to Asia Minor, where Telephos opposed the
Greeks on their way to Troy. This story was the subject of plays by
Sophokles and Euripides which are now lost, and Telephos’ fame further
increased with the rise of Pergamon, which claimed him as its founding
hero. 28 The Kalydonian boar hunt is often referred to in ancient literature,
and besides its main characters Meleager and Atalante it could feature a
variable cast of participants. The Tegean version predictably emphasised
the role of a local hero. 29 The reference to the Trojan War refers to Tegea’s
entry among the Arkadian forces in the Catalogue of Ships. The stories of
Echemos’ fight with Hyllos, the victory over the Spartans, Tegea’s involvement
in the Persian Wars and the battle of Dipaia are all mentioned in
Herodotos’ Histories. 30
The wider context for most of these events is provided by the list of
Arkadian kings presented at the beginning of Book VIII: 31 Lykaon, Apheidas,
Aleos, Lykourgos and Echemos are all part of the mythical Arkadian
royal family. References to the Kalydonian boar hunt and to the death of
Hyllos, son of Herakles, establish connections to well-known myths. The
Spartan defeat is a specifically Tegean event which readers might find less
easy to place within the wider Greek tradition. Pausanias provides appropriate
connections: the event is mentioned in his Spartan chronology, and
later on, in the course of the description of Tegea, a rough date is provided
by naming the defeated Spartan king. 32
The reference to ‘common
Arkadian achievements’ serves as a reminder of the list of historical
exploits presented in the regional introduction at the beginning of Book
VIII, perhaps also with a nod to readers who knew about these events from
the Iliad and Herodotos and expected them to be included. 33 Pausanias’
focus in this passage is on those episodes of Tegean history that were also
particularly well represented in the monuments and stories he was about
to record.
Equipped with this framework of major events in local myth-history,
the reader is ready to set off to explore the sights. The temple of Athena
Alea was Tegea’s major sanctuary, which attracted many visitors from
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