Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

7. Describing a City
relationship with the Athenian sanctuary. 61 Pausanias reports many such
sacred relationships, establishing topographical connections which transcend
mere geography. Such links can also reach far beyond mainland
Greece, and through their many monuments that defined such connections
Olympia and Delphi in particular offered him an opportunity to
survey much of the Greek world. 62
There is one ancient text which shares many of the typical traits of
Pausanias’ city descriptions, namely Lucian’s Dea Syria which deals with
the sanctuary of Atagartis at Hierapolis in Syria. This text is written in a
language that imitates Herodotos’ Ionic Greek, but, like Pausanias, it
focuses on monuments, history and rituals. Lucian’s narrator presents
himself as a devout Hellenised Syrian who has researched the history of
the monuments and rituals at Hierapolis in order to present them to a
Greek audience. 63 The description is almost overwhelmed by the amount
of information about mythical history and details about the cult, but it
follows a route from the entrance of the precinct to the temple which
receives most of his attention, and then it discusses the monuments
outside the temple while proceeding to the sacred lake. The narrator
expresses a personal religious investment in the site which we sometimes
also glimpse in the Periegesis, as, for example, at the oracle of Trophonios. 64
Compared with the Dea Syria, however, Pausanias’ site descriptions seem
sober and restrained. Parts of the account provide realistic details about
Hierapolis but some passages seem ludicrously exaggerated. 65
Lucian’s
work almost seems like a parody of the Periegesis because it echoes many
of Pausanias’ mannerisms and usually exaggerates them just a little so as
to make them seem absurd. Lucian was a close contemporary of
Pausanias, and it is possible that he knew at least part of the Periegesis,
although there is no conclusive proof of a direct connection between the
two authors. 66 The similarities between the two texts can be explained by
their common model, Herodotos. Lucian’s choice of Ionic Greek supports
the idea that the work is a deliberate pastiche of the ethnographical
digressions in Herodotos’ Histories. The Dea Syria shares more similarities
with the Periegesis even than does Herodotos because both Lucian and
Pausanias apply their model to detailed site descriptions, and they are
equally influenced by the interests and scholarly traditions of their own
time.
Pausanias’ preoccupation with monuments, history and local tradition
was not unusual for an educated Greek in the second century AD. Every
Greek was intimately familiar with the monuments and stories of his own
city, not least because the identity of every polis was so closely connected
with its memorial landscape. A pepaideumenos would also have a thorough
knowledge of Athens and perhaps a few other prominent sites. 67
What is unique about the Periegesis is Pausanias’ careful investigation of
the objects and traditions of so many communities which could be achieved
only by meticulous and personal exploration. Pausanias’ Greece is more
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