Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

Pausanias: Travel Writing in Ancient Greece
tion in connection with excavations and topographical research in Greece.
Back in the ivory towers of western Europe, far from the physical evidence,
Pausanias allowed scholars to deal with the material remains of ancient
Greece without having to contemplate new approaches that could challenge
the role of the literary tradition as main source for ancient culture:
the idea that ancient texts can be an obstacle to the interpretation of the
material evidence was to become a matter of debate in Greek archaeology
only several decades later. 59 In Britain the earliest archaeology lectures
did, in fact, focus on choice passages in Pausanias, which could then lead
to discussions of new material evidence. 60 At the same time, however, all
but the most determined armchair scholars had begun to see a visit to
Greece as essential to their studies. Frazer spent a good part of the eight
years between the publication of the Golden Bough and the completion of
his six-volume commentary collecting archaeological evidence, and he
eventually realised that he needed to go to Greece to make sure that his
information was up to date and correct. 61 His two visits became much more
than mere fact-finding missions. Frazer discovered the landscape of
Greece which so rarely gets a mention in the Periegesis, and his commentary
turned into a hybrid between notes on the text and a report of his own
travels in the footsteps of Pausanias, often filling perceived gaps in the
ancient description. In the footsteps of his ancient guide, Frazer followed
ancient roads, looked for ancient sites and investigated monuments, and
in the process he also developed an image of Pausanias which was in many
ways similar to his own travelling, researching self. 62 Frazer’s Pausanias
broke with the tradition of classical scholarship because it did not include
the original text, let alone a new critical edition based on the manuscripts,
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but it firmly established the idea that Pausanias needed to be
read with the Greek landscape in mind.
The boundaries between classics and archaeology have never been fully
broken down, and attitudes to Pausanias during much of the twentieth
century reflect this continuing divide. By 1900 Pausanias was firmly
established as the crucial text for the study of Greek religion as well as for
archaeological work in mainland Greece. Beyond these specialised fields
the Periegesis remained peripheral to classicists’ interests: a text of inferior
quality which would at times be useful as a source for out-of-the way
information about Greece and its culture. The renewed interest in
Pausanias since the 1980s is closely connected to a radical reassessment
of Greek literature under the Roman empire: it seems that yet again the
Periegesis has become a useful resource for a new line of enquiry. As we
have seen, during the six hundred years since Pausanias was re-introduced
to western Europe, his work, though always at the edges of the
canon of ‘respectable’ ancient texts, has proved a versatile resource in the
changing trends of scholarly interests. Most of the scholars discussed in
this chapter had access to a wide range of ancient texts, but often it is clear
that Pausanias played a central role in their enquiries and served as more
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