Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

Pausanias: Travel Writing in Ancient Greece
but his only reference to the sculptures is a quick note on the theme of the
pedimental sculptures. Did he even see the frieze, placed high up on the
wall behind the outer colonnade? What did he make of the style and
composition of the sculptures?
Pausanias’ descriptions are often surprising and at times disappointing,
and, although his work had a significant impact on the development
of modern art history, his approach has little in common with today’s
methods of art analysis. 4 In this chapter I investigate Pausanias’ descriptions
of art in their contemporary cultural context. Art, that is to say
sculpture, painting and architecture, played an important role in the lives
of Greek communities and their educated élites. The presentation of art
works in the Periegesis depends on the display and perceived significance
of the original on site, and the text also needed to be shaped to accommodate
the interests and previous knowledge that could be expected from
potential readers. In antiquity, discussing art meant much more than just
commenting on an artefact’s appearance and interpreting the artist’s
methods and intentions: works of art could serve as the basis of learned
discussions that went far beyond straightforward description, and some
had a deeper meaning, particularly when they were displayed in a sacred
context. Pausanias could draw on a long literary tradition of ekphrasis, the
description of art, which reached a particularly high degree of sophistication
in the second century AD. The many references to works of art have
an important role to play as a characteristic ingredient of the Periegesis as
a literary creation.
Many Greek cities of the Roman period would have had a lot of art on
public display: architecture, particularly temples, as well as a variety of
sculpture including honorary statues, sacred images, relief stêlai and
architectural sculpture. Paintings were displayed in temples or other
public buildings, alongside a mix of miscellaneous objects, from works of
art and elaborate cult equipment to historical war booty and fossilised
bones. 5 This image of a typical city’s collection of artefacts could be pieced
together from ancient literature without the Periegesis, but Pausanias
offers by far the most detailed overview, providing information about the
setting of public art in numerous sites of Roman Greece, and about its
meaning for the local community. Individual examples are often mentioned
only in passing, but the sheer amount of material adds up to a
comprehensive picture. Caylus, an eighteenth-century French artist who
read Pausanias to learn more about Greek art, 6 counted ‘about 2827’
statues mentioned in the Periegesis, but this was not a reliable number
because Pausanias often just passes through a public space with a note
that there are ‘some statues’. As already noted, in Olympia alone
Pausanias records about two hundred statues of Olympic victors, and that
was, as he tells us quite clearly, just a selection of the most noteworthy
specimens. According to Caylus, the Periegesis also records 50 reliefs, 24
chariots, 40 statues of animals, 131 paintings and 713 temples. 7
When
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