Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

Pausanias: Travel Writing in Ancient Greece
supplied the information that allowed travellers to evoke this bitter-sweet
contrast between past and present.
For most travellers in early modern Greece the local people were a sore
disappointment. 52 Westerners were looking for memories of the old myths
or remnants of ancient customs. Cyriac of Ancona was luckier (or more
sympathetic) than most when he discovered that in Lakonia people still
used ancient building techniques, followed dietary habits he recognised
from the ancient texts and had preserved ancient expressions. Their young
men even engaged in sporting competitions. 53 Nevertheless, soon after
reporting these signs of cultural continuity he expresses his grief about the
decline of Greek cities, and laments the sad state of the people who had
lost all traces of their original ‘noble human virtue and renowned integrity
of spirit’. 54
Later travellers who were faced with Greece as an Ottoman
province found it even more difficult to discover evident parallels. Only
occasionally did the locals manage to impress by displaying behaviour or
knowledge that seemed sufficiently reminiscent of their ancient forebears
to satisfy classically minded visitors with idealistic expectations. 55
Pausanias’ Greece was inhabited by Greeks who were aware of their past
and keen to continue ancient traditions. Nevertheless, his work, together
with other Second Sophistic texts, suggested ways in which travel writers
might approach the dilemma of Ottoman Greece. Many took their lead
from Pausanias and focused on the topography and ancient monuments
without paying much attention to contemporary circumstances and local
people. 56 Pausanias often chooses to ignore the history and monuments of
the last few centuries before his own time, and early modern travellers
frequently decided to do the same. Medieval and Ottoman history is
therefore rarely discussed at all, and there are few Turkish buildings that
managed to attract special attention from the western visitors.
We lose sight of the Venetians and Turks, of Dandolo and Mohammed II, and
behold only the ruins of Sparta and Athens, only of the country of Leonidas
and Pericles. For Greece has no modern history of such a character as to
obscure the vividness of her classical features. A modern history she does
indeed possess, various and eventful, but it has been (as has been truly
observed) of a destructive, not of a constructive character. It has left little
behind which can hide the immortal remains of the greatness of Hellenic
genius. In all parts of the country the traveller is, as it were, left alone with
antiquity: Hellas tells her own ancient history with unmistakable distinctness.
(G.F. Bowen in Murray (1884) 8)
By the time Murray’s travel guide was written this neglect of post-classical
or post-Roman history and remains had become the standard approach to
Greece, and the conspicuous gap between the end of antiquity (or sometimes
the fall of Constantinople) and the foundation of modern Greece is
still largely the norm in Greek public discourse and self-presentation as
well as in most outsiders’ imagination. 57
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