Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

4. Greek Travel Writing: Between Report and Invention
eyewitnesses who, like the readers, shared the author’s education, wealth
and high class. 30
Xenophon’s Anabasis records the adventures in 401-399 BC of the Greek
mercenaries hired by the Persian prince Cyrus for his attempt to overthrow
his brother, King Artaxerxes II. While the fragments of most
explorers’ tales focus on describing foreign regions and unusual discoveries,
the Anabasis is presented as a historical narrative which chronicles
the Greek mercenaries’ campaign to northern Mesopotamia and their bid
to return home through the unknown hostile territory of eastern Anatolia.
Once the Black Sea coast and therefore familiar Greek territory is
reached, 31 the text reverts from a travel account to a more historical mode,
focusing on events involving the Greeks, rather than on their movements
and observations. Throughout the work, Xenophon maintains a strictly
impersonal authorial voice, never betraying the fact that he is, in fact,
identical with one of the central characters of the story. Nevertheless, this
text is the longest and most extensive personal account of an actual
journey that survives from antiquity. The work was probably written
decades after the events and it is not clear whether Xenophon had an
original travelogue as a source for the minute details he is recording. 32 He
includes specific information about distances, routes and topography as
well as comments on weather conditions, flora and fauna. When Xenophon
talks about the settlements and people they came across on the way, his
perspective is clearly not that of an explorer encountering unknown
cultures but rather that of an army commander most concerned with
security and provisions. He also conveys a sense of the men’s reactions to
danger, hardships and successes, and the text includes moments of high
emotion, most famously the scene when, after a long, difficult march
through mountainous inland territory, the Greeks finally catch a first
glimpse of the sea. 33
When Alexander started his campaign against Persia he was determined
to make history, and by taking a historian, Kallisthenes, he made
sure that there would be an official record. History was, however, not his
only concern: there were also experts tasked with recording distances and
information relating to geography, ethnography or the natural sciences. 34
It is not clear how far Alexander expected to go when he set out, but he
clearly assumed that he would pass areas which had not been explored
properly. In this he may have been influenced by Aristotle whose work
shows a particular concern with collecting, revising and extending knowledge
in various scholarly fields. Alexander set out to make history in a
political as well as in a scientific sense, and when he left the centres of the
Persian empire to continue towards Baktria and India his conquest did
indeed turn into the exploration of regions about which the Greeks knew
hardly more than miraculous stories. Alexander’s epic undertaking made
such an impression that it inspired a number of participants to write their
own version of the story. 35 None of these accounts is preserved, but, like
51