Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

10
Discovering Greece with Pausanias
I return to Pausanias. The details I have presented on the basis of his work
must strike the imagination and give a good impression of the genius of the
Greeks. One might be surprised to find so many things of beauty united in a
land which is rather mediocre in size, and this is even more surprising when
one considers that these works of art were generally masterpieces, created
with taste, genius and in the most grandiose manner. Finally, Greece was
the temple of the arts, and … everywhere she presented a perfectly arranged
art gallery, even more superb because all the works of art which imitated
beautiful nature were placed in a way that doubled their merit. No part of
the world has ever offered a sight to equal it. … We can therefore only
preserve with much sorrow and much diligence the little of the monuments
that remain of these rare and superior people. (Caylus (1752-86) II.109-10)
From the seventeenth century onwards most educated travellers who
visited Greece would have arrived with clear expectations of what might
still be found in that ancient landscape. Ideas about the achievements of
Greek culture were based on the classical texts, combined with the idealistic
image created by many authors of the Second Sophistic. Pausanias,
however, connected the art, literature and mythology of the ancients with
specific places, and offered a glimpse of Greek cities and countryside well
beyond Athens. Before western Europeans even set foot on the Greek
mainland they would therefore have expected a landscape full of poignant
associations. Few would have shared Caylus’ utopian view, which has
little to do with Greece in any period of antiquity, but his enthusiastic
musings stand for the more romantic notions that Pausanias inspired in
his readers, ideas that inevitably defined their approach to Greece, its
landscape, people and ancient remains. 1
The Periegesis has had a major influence on the complex discourse
between Greeks and outsiders, and between ancient tradition and historical
reality that was, and to an extent still is, central to the identity of
modern Greece. This influence is most manifest in the memorial landscape
of Greece today, which, through rediscovery as well as invention during
the last four hundred years, has acquired numerous place names, sites and
specific monuments which are directly related to the Periegesis. Both
Greeks and outsiders, particularly the writers of early travel reports and
later on archaeologists and historical topographers, have contributed to
this process, which started in the Ottoman period and gained momentum
after the foundation of the Greek state in 1821. This complex story
130