Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

3. The Importance of Travelling
point Pausanias actually travelled along most of the routes he is describing.
He mentions the state of a road only when it does not conform to usual
standards, and these occasional comments suggest that Pausanias expected
to find single-track roads fit for a carriage with two draught
animals. 15 Greece did indeed have a well-established road system which
made even rather remote and mountainous areas accessible for wheeled
transport. Carriages were a standard means of transport for the wealthy,
who would usually travel with a number of attendants and substantial
baggage. 16
Practicalities of ancient travel have had some bearing on the discussion
about Pausanias’ potential readership. Ancient readers probably could
have found the Periegesis worth their while without actually travelling to
Greece, but did Pausanias expect that some would use his work on site? It
is never explicit whether he imagines his readers at home or somewhere
on a site in Greece. 17 Intellectuals did take books and writing materials on
their journeys, but there is no evidence that travellers used guidebooks. 18
At first sight Pausanias’ plain topographical information, for example
comments on roads or springs, seems designed for a travelling reader, but
in fact it is rarely sufficient to serve as a practical guide. 19 Simple directions
are clearly not Pausanias’ priority, but the work certainly stood up
to a confrontation with the realities of a site, as far as we can tell today.
For example, Pausanias’ description of Olympia contains details of hundreds
of statues: this provides an interesting trawl through centuries of
Greek history when read at home, but on a bewildering site with probably
thousands of statues Pausanias’ selection of noteworthy objects would
surely have been of particular value. 20 There has been some discussion as
to whether it would have been too cumbersome to handle ancient scrolls
while walking around sightseeing. 21 This approach takes for granted the
most common modern way of using guidebooks, namely carrying them
around a site to help with organising a tour or to find explanations for
interesting features as one comes across them. Ancient travellers did not
need to use guidebooks in quite the same way, because exact directions
and essential details about monuments were easily available in most
places. The Periegesis does not replace the services of a tourist guide, it is
more concerned with adding to the information that was easily available
on site. For this purpose the book would not have to be carried around
while sightseeing, but a traveller might find it useful to have it on hand to
consult it in preparation for a site visit. Pausanias’ travelling readers
would be ready to face their informants with ideas about which sites to see
and which questions to ask about local tradition.
Any ancient traveller would take communication with local people for
granted. The slow pace of travel meant that visitors would usually stay for
longer than most modern tourists and communication was easy because a
visitor’s Greek or Latin would be understood in almost the whole known
world. In Pausanias’ time there were tourist guides at sites that could
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