Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

5. A Sense of Space: Landscape and Geography
point we are told that the road continues north, so we might (correctly)
imagine that we are moving in a northerly direction. Rather than referring
to the points of the compass Pausanias usually prefers to give directions
by simply naming the next major stage on the road, which does not provide
an objective geographical overview. Pausanias’ notes on distances seem to
be based on his own observations and tend to be reasonably reliable, but
they are rarely continuous. 37 In the example above we find out that it is
thirty stadia from Ptolis to Maira, but distances for the other stages are
given in only vague terms, if they merit any comment at all, and it is
impossible to find out from the text how far it is from Mantinea to the
boundary, or to the city of Orchomenos. 38 The description may not provide
comprehensive directions, but it does manage to give the reader a sense of
the route, and it would at least be possible to draw imprecise linear
diagrams of Pausanias’ roads with all the landmarks they pass on the way.
The reader is, however, not given enough detail to gain even a vague sense
of the layout of the landscape. Anyone trying to draw even a very simple
map of the topography would need a good deal of additional information;
my example of a visual representation of Pausanias’ text (Fig. 9) illustrates
his description of the Argolid. In the passage above, we are not told
how the two roads from Mantinea to Orchomenos relate to each other in
the landscape. Which route is on the left and which on the right? Do the
two roads take completely separate routes or is there a single road that
forks at some point? Where does the first route reach the boundary? Where
exactly is Mount Anchisia located, and how does the second route get there
from Mantinea? 39
It seems ironic that a work with such incomplete directions served as
the main travel guide to Greece for early modern travellers, particularly
from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, and that topographical
researchers continue to rely on the Periegesis. 40
Pausanias may have
assumed that any reader who needed exact directions could consult local
people who would be familiar with all the features named in the text, but
modern travellers did not have this advantage and often had to rely on the
text alone. It took the diligent efforts of many to understand how the
Periegesis relates to the topography and extant ancient remains, and the
results of these efforts make up much of the material included in the
various Pausanias commentaries. As it turns out, in most cases it is
possible to identify locations which seem to match the topographical
information in the Periegesis, even if Pausanias’ directions are incomplete.
41 It is important to remember that in spite of all the shortcomings
which can be identified by comparison with modern travel guides or maps
Pausanias still provides by far the most comprehensive information about
sites and landscapes in any extant ancient text. His approach is dictated
by an aim to produce a readable text rather than a scholarly handbook or
list of geographical data and it is informed by an understanding of topography
which differs considerably from our own.
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