Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias ( ; ; ) was a Greek traveler and geographer. He is famous for his Description of Greece (, ), a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from his firsthand observations. Description of Greece provides crucial information for making links between classical literature and modern archaeology, which is providing evidence of the sites and cultural details he mentions although knowledge of their existence may have become lost or relegated to myth or legend.

Biography

Nothing is known about Pausanias apart from what historians can piece together from his own writing. However, it is probable that he was born into a Greek family and was probably a native of Lydia in Asia Minor. From until his death around 180, Pausanias travelled throughout the mainland of Greece, writing about various monuments, sacred spaces, and significant geographical sites along the way. In writing his Description of Greece, Pausanias sought to put together a lasting written account of "all things Greek", or panta ta hellenika.

Living in the Roman Empire

Being born in Asia Minor, Pausanias was of Greek heritage. He grew up and lived under the rule of the Roman Empire, but valued his Greek identity, history, and culture. He was keen to describe the glories of a Greek past that was still relevant in his lifetime, even if the country was beholden to Rome as a dominating imperial force. Pausanias's pilgrimage throughout the land of his ancestors was his own attempt to establish a place in the world for this new Roman Greece, connecting myths and stories of ancient culture to those of his own time.

Writing style

Pausanias has a straightforward and simple writing style. He is, overall, direct in his language, writing his stories and descriptions unelaborately. However, some translators have noted that Pausanias's use of various prepositions and tenses may be confusing and difficult to render in English. For example, Pausanias may use a past tense verb rather than the present tense in some instances. Their interpretation is that he did this in order to make it seem as if he were in the same temporal setting as his audience.

Unlike a modern day travel guide, in Description of Greece Pausanias tends to elaborate with discussion of an ancient ritual or to impart a myth related to the site he is visiting. His style of writing would not become popular again until the early nineteenth century when contemporary travel guides resembled his. and even its potential as a guide for further investigations. Research into Tartessos exemplifies where his writing about it is aiding contemporary archaeological research into its existence, location, and culture.

References

Attribution

Bibliography

Howard, Michael C. (2012). Transnationalism in Ancient and Medieval Societies: The Role of Cross-Border Trade and Travel. McFarland. p. 178.
Hutton, William. Describing Greece: Landscape and Literature in the Periegesis of Pausanias. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

External links

Pausanias Description of Greece, tr. with a commentary by J.G. Frazer, 6 volumes (1898) (also at the Internet Archive)
Pausanias at the Perseus Project: Greek; English (Jones trans. 1918)
Description of Greece, Jones translation at Theoi Project
New translation by Gregory Nagy of Harvard University's Center for Hellenic Studies (incomplete). (archived, 2020)
Bibliography (in French)
"The Oldest Guide-Book in the World", Charles Whibley in Macmillan's Magazine, Vol. LXXVII, Nov. 1897 to Apr. 1898, pp. 415–421.
Andrew Stewart, One Hundred Greek Sculptors, Their Careers and Extant Works
G. Hawes, Rationalizing myth in antiquity. Oxford: OUP, 2013 contains much discussion of Pausanias' sceptical approaches to myth.