Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

Pausanias: Travel Writing in Ancient Greece
particular contexts. He clearly did not set out to produce a purely historical
work, let alone a political history in the strict Thucydidean sense, but his
emphasis on local detail and on his personal enquiries deliberately echoes
Herodotos’ Histories. The close integration between history and landscape
in the Periegesis will be explored further in Chapter 7, but first it is
necessary to consider Pausanias’ efforts as a historian, namely his ways of
using, selecting and presenting accounts of the past to serve various
purposes within his work.
Pausanias’ histories reach down to his own lifetime, 4 although he gives
more space to earlier times, particularly the Hellenistic period and the
remote past. Any discussion of Pausanias’ historical activities needs to
take into account the fact that for the ancient Greeks the earliest mythical
times merged into history without clear distinction. 5
When I speak of
history, therefore, I refer to the whole past as Pausanias and his readers
would have seen it, with no distinction between ‘real’ and mythical events.
Mythical stories were attached to a wide range of cultural phenomena, for
example the many traditions about legendary ancestors and founders
which defined local identities and explained the nature of sanctuaries,
cults or local customs. 6 In the Periegesis all these aspects of Greek culture
are therefore also historical phenomena, and religion in particular becomes
an integral part of this historical past, all the way back to the birth
of the gods. It is also important to remember that the great past of Greece,
or at least an idealised and selective version of it, was thoroughly familiar
to every pepaideumenos who had grown up with classical Greek literature.
Pausanias expects his audience to recognise oblique historical references
just as they would understand obscure literary allusions in the texts of the
period: a connection with a particular battle or the name of a hero would
suffice to indicate the historical context. History provided common ground
between Pausanias and his readers, because most educated Greeks had
similar ideas about the significance of particular events and the merits of
the major historical accounts.
History in the Periegesis comes in many shapes and sizes. There are
several long narrative accounts which offer the best opportunity for
Pausanias to show his credentials as a historian. Introductions to particular
regions allow him to focus on specific periods, for example the
Messenian Wars in Book IV and the history of relations between the
Achaian league and Rome in Book VII. In Lakonia and Arkadia Pausanias
provides detailed royal genealogies which form a framework for regional
history. 7 Extensive narratives can also be attached to a particular site or
monument, for example several long excursuses on Hellenistic history
which are included in the description of Athens, the account of the Gallic
invasion in Delphi and the biographies prompted by memorials of Aratos,
Philopoimen and Epameinondas. 8 For his introductions to cities of some
importance Pausanias developed a particular form of historical outline:
before he launches into his description he provides an account of ‘high-
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