Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

Pausanias: Travel Writing in Ancient Greece
I have to get on with my account (logos), because I am dealing with all Greek
matters (panta ta Hellênika) in the same way. 15 (Paus. 1.26.4)
Together with the title transmitted by Stephanos of Byzantion, Periêgêsis
Hellados, this seems to suggest that the work was intended to deal with
‘all of Greece’, as ‘panta ta Hellênika’ is often translated into English, yet
it does not do so in any straightforward sense. ‘Greek matters’ were
certainly not restricted to the area described in Pausanias’ Periegesis.
Since the archaic period the Greek world had included many areas around
the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and with Alexander’s
conquests it grew considerably, expanding east into Asia. With the exception
of Athens, the great cultural centres of the Greek world in the Roman
period were situated outside mainland Greece, in Asia Minor and around
the eastern Mediterranean. In fact, Pausanias’ own use of the terms
Hellas or to Hellênikon and ta Hellênika do not consistently refer to a
particular region, let alone exactly the region covered in the Periegesis. 16
Mainland Greece could be seen as a distinct entity, but no ancient geographical
definition coincides with Pausanias’ selection. It is difficult to
find fault with the regions that are included, but, whichever ancient
definition of Greece one might choose, there are always a few areas
missing without clear reason (Fig. 4). 17 Homer was recognised by many as
prime geographical authority, and the places described in the Catalogue
of Ships in the Iliad would have offered a generally acceptable framework
for a periêgêsis of Greece. 18 Pausanias deals with issues of Homeric geography,
19 but he leaves out crucial areas, such as parts of Lokris, Thessaly
and Aitolia, and one might have expected the inclusion of some of the
islands as well, especially Euboia. Pausanias’ Greece also does not coincide
with the province of Achaia or the area of the Delphic Amphiktyony, as
some have suggested. 20 One might exclude some regions on the grounds
that they do not play much of a role in classical literature or, in the case
of Aitolia or Akarnania, that they did not contain many ancient Greek
city-states (poleis), but this would still make the absence of parts of central
Greece difficult to explain. Is it possible that Pausanias did not finish his
book or that the one manuscript which reached Renaissance Europe was
incomplete? Stephanos of Byzantion, discussing Tamyna, a city in Euboia,
does include one reference to ‘Pausanias’ Book XI’, and some scholars have
accepted this as good evidence for the existence of an eleventh book, while
Robert went further and suggested that the original number of books was
fourteen. Stephanos’ reference to ‘Book XI’, however, may be due to a
corruption of the text, as Meineke argues. 21 The best argument against the
theory that a large amount of Pausanias’ text might be missing is the
existence of numerous cross-references, which (with one possible exception)
all refer to existing passages. 22
Pausanias probably had a plan for his whole work when he started to
write, and his original outline was apparently quite close to the text as we
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