Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

Pausanias: Travel Writing in Ancient Greece
of travel and enquiry. For a man who wanted to display his intellectual
prowess this alone could have been a good reason to investigate mainland
Greece. Ancient travellers, however, aimed not only to increase their
knowledge or paideia: they were also looking for the experience of encountering
landscapes or monuments that had a special cultural significance
for them. This aspect of ancient travel has become the focus of attention
because of an increased interest in ancient pilgrimage. 63 The term pilgrimage
in the context of Graeco-Roman culture is contentious, but the concept
can be useful to analyse reactions of ancient travellers if one avoids a
narrow, essentially Christian definition. 64
It is also worth remembering
that ‘pilgrimage’, if one chooses to adopt this terminology, does not need
to have exclusively or even principally religious aims. 65 Although ancient
religions did not, unlike Christianity or Islam, offer a widely recognisable
ideology of pilgrimage, there were many who sought to visit places that
were meaningful to them in some way.
When Elsner suggested that Pausanias’ Periegesis could be seen as a
pilgrim’s account written for pilgrims he provoked strong criticism, but he
has also opened new avenues of enquiry. 66 Pausanias comes closest to a
conventional pilgrim’s account when, with palpable awe, he reports the
complex and intense rituals required for a consultation of the oracle of
Trophonios at Lebadeia. The report ends with the statement that he
himself consulted the oracle, followed by a note that everyone who did so
had to dedicate an inscribed tablet. We are therefore led to assume that,
like many pilgrims and tourists everywhere, he left his own trace in the
sacred and monumental landscape, almost as a challenge for readers to go
and see for themselves whether his account is true. 67
Uniquely, this
passage clearly reflects a specific religious experience, but even here
Pausanias relates the process of consulting the oracle in impersonal terms.
In this respect the Periegesis is quite unlike ‘conventional’ pilgrimage texts
which focus more explicitly on the impact that encounters with particular
places have on a specific individual. As an opaque synthesis of many trips
with varying characteristics carried out during several years or decades,
the Periegesis makes it difficult to chart a ‘pilgrim’s progress’. 68
Pausanias’ impersonal account shifts the focus away from the author,
so as to let readers forget that they are experiencing Greece through an
intermediary. Nevertheless, Pausanias’ approach to the landscape shares
some characteristic features with pilgrims’ attitudes and experiences. 69 A
pepaideumenos travelling around Greece would encounter a landscape
that was already very familiar from the literary tradition, and would
therefore find his imagination confronted with reality. Hutton suggests
that Pausanias’ focus on sacred sites and monuments of the archaic and
classical age shows how an imagined landscape embued with a strong
significance by texts or tradition can influence a traveller’s perception of
an actual place: in some cases he may have been prone to finding what he
already expected. 70 Moreover, Pausanias illustrates what made Greece a
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