Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

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Greek Travel Writing: Between Report
and Invention
… In the old days poets, historians and philosophers wrote much that is
miraculous or mythical. … One of these is Ktesias, son of Ktesiochos of
Knidos, who wrote about India and its characteristics without seeing it
himself or hearing about it from anyone who was telling the truth. … Many
others with similar aims have written about their imaginary wanderings,
journeys and adventures of theirs, and they talk about huge beasts, cruel
men and strange ways of life. Their guide in these falsehoods is Homer’s
Odysseus, who tells Alkinoos and his court about captured winds, one-eyed
men, cannibals and savages, and talks about animals with many heads, and
the transformation of his comrades which was achieved with drugs. 1 (Lucian
VH 1.2-4)
According to Lucian, ancient Greek travel writers could not be trusted.
This attack on real or imagined travel writing is humorously exaggerated,
and serves as an introduction to the Verae Historiae (‘True Stories’), a rare
ancient example of a fantasy story that never claims to be anything else
but a figment of the author’s imagination. As far as we can tell, such
honesty about fictionality was rare in ancient literature, and distant
regions in particular had become a convenient setting for the fantastic. 2
Serious scientific pursuits such as ethnography and geography, however,
had to rely on reports of explorers who had reached distant lands, even if
their accounts were less than trustworthy, and many unrealistic details
about far away regions were handed on reverently from one scientific work
to the next. At the same time, the scepticism about ‘tall stories’ displayed
by Lucian also had a long tradition, and heated debates about the world
and distant regions were well established probably as early as in the late
archaic period. 3 Any author embarking on a work of travel literature in the
widest sense could hardly avoid skirting along the blurred boundary
between fact and fiction, and an account of ancient travel literature must
necessarily follow in their footsteps. It should therefore come as no surprise
that works with doubtful factual credentials, namely the Homeric
epics and a number of Lucian’s satirical writings, will have to play a
crucial role in a discussion of Pausanias’ literary context.
This chapter introduces main themes in Greek literature that are
connected to travelling. Modern travel literature most commonly focuses
on individuals’ encounters with a place or region and personal experiences
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