Pausanias (/pɔːˈseɪniəs/paw-SAY-nee-əs;Ancient Greek:Παυσανίας;c. 110 – c. 180)[1] was aGreek traveler andgeographer. He is famous for hisDescription of Greece (Ἑλλάδος Περιήγησις,Hēlládos Periḗgēsis),[2] a lengthy work that describesancient Greece from his firsthand observations.Description of Greece provides crucial information for making links between classical literature andmodern 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.
Nothing is known about Pausanias apart from what historians can piece together from his own writing. However, it is probable that he was bornc. 110 AD into aGreek family and was probably a native ofLydia in Asia Minor.[3] Fromc. 150 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 hisDescription of Greece, Pausanias sought to put together a lasting written account of "all things Greek", orpanta ta hellenika.[4]
Being born inAsia Minor, Pausanias was of Greek heritage.[5] He grew up and lived under the rule of theRoman Empire, but valued his Greek identity, history, and culture. He was keen to describe the glories of a Greek past that still was 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.[6]
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.[7]
Unlike a modern day travel guide, inDescription 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.[6] In the topographical aspect of his work, Pausanias makes many natural history digressions on the wonders of nature documented at the time, the signs that herald the approach of anearthquake, the phenomena of thetides, the ice-bound seas of the north, and that at thesummer solstice the noonday sun casts no shadow at Syene (Aswan).
While he never doubts the existence of the deities and heroes, he criticizes some of the myths and legends he encountered during his travels as differing from earlier cultural traditions that he relates or notes. His descriptions of monuments of art are plain and unadorned, bearing a solid impression of reality.[8]
Pausanias is frank in acknowledging personal limitations. When he quotes information at second hand rather than relating his own experiences, he is honest about his sourcing,[9] sometimes confirming contemporary knowledge by him that may be lost to modern researchers.
Map of ancient Laconia fromPausanias's Description of Greece translated byJames George Frazer, 1898. British Library.
Until twentieth-century archaeologists concluded that Pausanias was a reliable guide to sites being excavated, classicists largely had dismissed his writings as purely literary. Following their presumed authoritative contemporaryUlrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, classicists tended to regard him as little more than a purveyor of second-hand accounts and believed that he had not visited most of the places that he described. Modern archaeological research, however, has revealed the accuracy of information imparted by Pausanias,[10] and even its potential as a guide for further investigations. Research intoTartessos exemplifies where his writing about it is aiding contemporary archaeological research into its existence, location, and culture.[11][12][13]
^Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece, Aristéa Papanicolaou Christensen,The Panathenaic Stadium – Its History Over the Centuries (2003), p. 162
^Also known inLatin asGraecae descriptio; see Pereira, Maria Helena Rocha (ed.),Graecae descriptio, B. G. Teubner, 1829.
^Howard, Michael C (2012).Transnationalism in ancient and medieval societies: the role of cross-border trade and travel. McFarland. p. 178.ISBN978-0-7864-9033-2.OCLC779849477.Pausanias was a 2nd century ethnic Greek geographer who wrote a description of Greece that is often described as being the world's first travel guide.
^Sidebottom, H. (December 2002). "Pausanias: Past, Present, and Closure".The Classical Quarterly.52 (2):494–499.doi:10.1093/cq/52.2.494.
^Habicht, Christian (1985). "An Ancient Baedeker and His Critics: Pausanias' 'Guide to Greece'".Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society.129 (2):220–224.JSTOR986990.
Diller, Aubrey (1957). "The Manuscripts of Pausanias".Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association.88:169–188.doi:10.2307/283902.JSTOR283902.
Habicht, Christian (1985). "An Ancient Baedeker and His Critics: Pausanias' 'Guide to Greece'".Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society.129 (2):220–224.JSTOR986990.
Habicht, Christian (April 1984). "Pausanias and the Evidence of Inscriptions".Classical Antiquity.3 (1):40–56.doi:10.2307/25010806.JSTOR25010806.
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.
Jacob, Christian; Mullen-Hohl, Anne (1980). "The Greek Traveler's Areas of Knowledge: Myths and Other Discourses in Pausanias' Description of Greece".Yale French Studies (59):65–85.doi:10.2307/2929815.JSTOR2929815.
MacCormack, S. (November 2010). "Pausanias and his commentator Sir James George Frazer".Classical Receptions Journal.2 (2):287–313.doi:10.1093/crj/clq010.
Akujärvi, J. (2005).Researcher, Traveller, Narrator: Studies in Pausanias' Periegesis. Studia graeca et Latina lundensia 12. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
Alcock, Susan E.; Cherry, John F.; Elsner, Jas, eds. (9 October 2003).Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece. Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-534683-1.
Arafat, K. (1996).Pausanias' Greece: Ancient Artists and Roman Rulers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Diller, Aubrey (1956). "Pausanias in the Middle Ages".Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association.87:84–97.doi:10.2307/283874.JSTOR283874.
Dunn, Francis M. (1995). "Pausanias on the Tomb of Medea's Children".Mnemosyne.48 (3):348–351.JSTOR4432507.
Hutton, W. E. (2005). Describing Greece: Landscape and Literature in the Periegesis of Pausanias. Greek Culture in the Roman World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Pirenne-Delforge, V. (2008).Retour à la Source: Pausanias et la Religion Grecque. Kernos Supplément 20. Liège, Belgium: Centre International d‘Étude de la Religion Grecque.
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