Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

Pausanias: Travel Writing in Ancient Greece
well-developed centres around the Eastern Mediterranean. In the competition
between these grand cities, imposing buildings, splendid
monuments and the best infrastructure the Roman world could devise
were taken for granted. Pausanias, however, patiently describes numerous
towns that were less than impressive, and he pays attention to many
details that seem small and inconspicuous. He takes time to tease out the
significance of his discoveries, and finds a landscape so full of meaning and
history that few places outside mainland Greece could compete. One of his
most valuable discoveries is the great variety of myths, monuments and
cults which could be found in different Greek cities. Pausanias documents
how even small communities maintained, adapted and displayed their
local traditions in this period to claim their place in the competitive world
of Greek cities under Roman rule: what we get to see was of the greatest
contemporary significance.
The variety and range of cultural expression in the cities of mainland
Greece is crucial to Pausanias’ project to investigate ‘all things Greek’. It
was well documented, particularly in the Iliad and Herodotos’ Histories,
that the conflict between individual communities’ concerns and common
Hellenic interests was a crucial aspect of Greek identity. The Periegesis is
a complex account of local cultural expression within the wider context of
the almost cosmopolitan interpretation of Hellenism favoured by the
educated élite of the Second Sophistic. Rarely are the boundaries between
the outsider’s ethnographical gaze and the insider’s observations in investigating
his own identity as blurred as in the Periegesis. We can find the
visitor mystified by traditions that seem strange and outlandish, but what
he is observing is Greek by definition, because it is situated in the old
motherland. At the same time, Pausanias as a pepaideumenos often felt
that he understood Greek traditions better than his informants because
he had an intimate knowledge of the literary tradition and an overview of
many cities and regions. The result of this enquiry, then, is an insight into
the many expressions of Greek identity with more depth and detail than
can be found in any other ancient text. Pausanias charts a complex
network of memories, myths and symbols centred on the old cities of
mainland Greece that held the whole Greek world together and defined
the place of individuals and communities in it. The Periegesis also allows
us to observe a variety of responses to the Roman influence on Greece –
Pausanias’ own differentiated reactions as well as those of many communities
he visited. The tensions between local and global perspectives
emerging between cities, the Greek world and the Roman empire is central
to the culture of the Second Sophistic, but it was never documented in a
more complex fashion than in the Periegesis: Pausanias still has much to
contribute to the study of the culture and literature of his period.
Pausanias has traditionally been seen as an outsider to the exclusive
circle of Second Sophistic writers. Close study shows that he shares the
concerns and intellectual interests of many of his contemporaries, and he
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