Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias (geographer)
Pausanias (/pɔːˈseɪniəs/, ; ; c. 110 – c. 180) was a Greek traveler and geographer of the second century AD. 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.
Biography
Not much is known about Pausanias apart from what historians can piece together from his own writing. However, it is mostly certain that he was born c. 110 AD into a Greek family and was probably a native of Lydia in Asia Minor. From c. 150 until his death in 180, Pausanias travelled through the mainland of Greece, writing about various monuments, sacred spaces, and significant geographical sites along the way. In writing 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 still was relevant in his lifetime, even if the country was beholden to Rome as a dominating imperial force. Pausanias's pilgrimage through 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 noticeably straightforward and simple way of writing. He is, overall, direct in his language, writing his stories and descriptions in an unelaborate style. However, some translators have noted that Pausanias's use of various prepositions and tenses are confusing and difficult to render in English. For example, Pausanias may use a past tense verb rather than the present tense in some instances. It is thought that he did this in order to make himself seem to be in the same temporal setting as his audience.
Additionally, unlike in a traditional travel guide, in Description of Greece, Pausanias tends to digress to discuss a point of an ancient ritual or to tell a myth that goes along with the site he is visiting. This style of writing would not become popular again until the early nineteenth century. In the topographical aspect of his work, Pausanias makes many digressions on the wonders of nature, the signs that herald the approach of an earthquake, the phenomena of the tides, the ice-bound seas of the north, and the noonday sun that at the summer solstice casts no shadow at Syene (Aswan). While he never doubts the existence of the deities and heroes, he sometimes criticizes the myths and legends relating to them. His descriptions of monuments of art are plain and unadorned, bearing a solid impression of reality.
Pausanias is also frank in his confessions of ignorance. When he quotes a book at second hand rather than relating his own experiences, he is honest about his sourcing.
Modern views of Pausanias
Until twentieth-century archaeologists concluded that Pausanias was a reliable guide to the sites which they were excavating, classicists largely dismissed Pausanias as of a purely literary bent: following their usually authoritative contemporary Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, they tended to regard him as little more than a purveyor of second-hand accounts, and they believed that Pausanias had not visited most of the places that he described. Modern archaeological research, however, has tended to vindicate Pausanias.
Additionally, a multitude of scholars have sought to discover the truth about Pausanias and his Description of Greece. Many books, commentaries, and scholarly articles have been written on this ancient figure, and Pausanias's recorded travels still serve as a tool to understanding the relationship between archaeology, mythology, and history.
References
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.
Further reading
Akujärvi, J. (2005). Researcher, Traveller, Narrator: Studies in Pausanias' Periegesis. Studia graeca et Latina lundensia 12. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
Arafat, K. (1996). Pausanias' Greece: Ancient Artists and Roman Rulers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
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.
Pretzler, Maria (2007). Pausanias: Travel Writing in Ancient Greece. Classical Literature and Society. London: Duckworth.
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.
Ancient Greek geographers
Ancient Greek travel writers
Ancient Roman geographers
2nd-century writers
Year of birth unknown
Year of death unknown
2nd-century geographers
2nd-century travelers