Pausanias_Travel_Writing_in_Ancient Greece [Maria_Pretzler]

6. A Sense of Time: Pausanias as Historian
ters places whose past or present identities were not indisputably Attic.
Oropos, Salamis and Megara therefore receive historical introductions
which focus on mythical founders and conquests to explain their traditional
links with Athens and Attica. 17
By the time he embarked on his second book Pausanias had apparently
abandoned his original plan of connecting all historical information with
particular features of a city’s memorial landscape. Introductions to larger
sites represented a space where history could be presented in chronological
order without interfering with the general topographical scheme. The
description of the Argolid and adjacent cities in Book II was bound to
encourage further experiments with this formula, because it dealt with an
area which did not have one common regional or tribal identity: 18 it was
therefore particularly important to establish every city’s ancestral connections.
The sequence of heroes, family relations and mythical conquests
that defined most cities’ identities could be set out relatively concisely in
a historical introduction, while it would be more difficult to give the reader
a comprehensible overview if the same material was presented as a set of
stories attached to monuments. Regional historical introductions probably
developed from Pausanias’ city histories: the earliest book with such a
general introduction is Book III on Lakonia where Sparta was so dominant
that the city’s history is almost identical to that of the whole region. After
Lakonia, every new region receives a historical introduction. 19 Pausanias’
increasing flexibility in his handling of historical narratives in relation to site
descriptions was particularly useful in those regions where he found less
material on site. The historical introductions of Messenia and Achaia therefore
became the dominant part of Books IV and VII respectively, which
allowed Pausanias to try his hand in extensive historical narratives. 20
In the earlier books Pausanias’ historical introductions are mainly
concerned with mythical events that define a city’s or region’s identity, and
specific historical events are discussed as part of site descriptions. In the
course of the Periegesis the scope of historical introductions is expanded
beyond the essential account of mythical origins, and in the later books
actual historical events become a regular feature in Pausanias’ summaries.
21 Usually he selects only two or three examples, but the introduction
to Arkadia provides a comprehensive list of the historical events he found
most worth mentioning.
The Arkadians as a whole have achieved memorable deeds: the most ancient
is their participation in the Trojan War, and next comes their support for the
Messenians in their struggle against Sparta. They also took part in the
action against the Persians at Plataia. It was obligation rather than approval
that made them fight with the Spartans against Athens and cross over to
Asia with Agesilaos; they also followed the Lakedaimonians to Leuktra in
Boiotia. … They did not fight with the Greeks against Philip and the
Macedonians at Chaironeia, nor later against Antipater in Thessaly, but
neither did they oppose the Greeks. They say that the Spartans kept them
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