Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

Pausanias: Travel Writing in Ancient Greece
local history, a process which went on for centuries and which had shaped
their memorial landscape. In local oral tradition, history is not static: it is
selected, interpreted and manipulated, and therefore develops with the
community’s sense of identity. Herodotos, six centuries earlier than
Pausanias and in so many ways his model, took it for granted that there
would be different local versions of historical events, and he accommodated
them in his work.
In Roman Greece the past was more important than ever because the
Greeks, collectively as well as in communities and as individuals, often
needed to emphasise their impressive history to maintain their status of
cultural superiority. 47 As the perception of the past changed, new monuments
were set up and old ones were re-interpreted or abandoned. In
Athens a number of classical temples and altars were even moved to the
agora to create a new memorial landscape with ‘genuine’ historical roots. 48
Pausanias’ Periegesis reflects the results of such selective processes. For
example, at Tegea he mentions the Persian Wars in the historical introduction,
but he does not present a single monument that commemorates
this crucial event. This omission is surprising because most cities prided
themselves on their Persian War record and Herodotos emphasises the
valiant role of the Tegeans, particularly in the battle of Plataia. 49 This gap
in Pausanias’ Tegean history probably reflects an actual peculiarity of the
local memorial landscape, the result of a selection process that took place
over time. It seems that the Tegeans preferred to present themselves as
implacable enemies of their dominant southern neighbour, Sparta, and
this version of the past could hardly be reconciled with the image of the
Tegeans as a loyal Spartan ally which emerges from Herodotos and other
major classical texts. 50
The complete absence of any connections to the
Persian Wars is particularly uncharacteristic for Pausanias, who shows so
much interest in both Herodotos and the struggle for Greek freedom. He
does not discuss the issue, but it seems unlikely that he did not notice the
fact that of the two dedications Herodotos saw in the temple of Athena
Alea the shackles of the Spartan prisoners had survived, while the monumental
bronze manger captured in the Persian camp after the battle of
Plataia had disappeared. For anyone familiar with Herodotos the gap
would be conspicuous without needing further comment. As we have seen
at Panopeus, such a discrepancy between the literary tradition and the
memorial landscape could be deeply disconcerting for Pausanias. Tegea,
however, was still a sizeable city with plenty of material to collect and
report, which probably made it easier to pass over this obvious gap in the
local tradition without discussing it further.
Pausanias had to work with the monuments and stories he found on
site, but this would still have left him with a good deal of freedom to select
and emphasise what he found worth recording. Ultimately, the literary
image of the memorial landscape is essentially his creation, even if it
echoes local preferences. 51 Pausanias’ selectivity is a standard subject of
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