Description of Greece
Description of Greece (Ancient Greek: Ἑλλάδος Περιήγησις, romanized: Helládos Periḗgēsis) is a work by the ancient geographer Pausanias (c. 110 – c. 180).[1]
Author
Ἑλλάδος Περιήγησις
the second century AD
Pausanias' Description of Greece comprises ten books, each of them dedicated to some part of Greece. His tour begins in Attica (Ἀττικά) and continues with Athens, including its suburbs or demes. Then the work goes with Corinthia (Κορινθιακά), Laconia (Λακωνικά), Messenia (Μεσσηνιακά), Elis (Ἠλιακά), Achaea (Ἀχαϊκά), Arcadia (Ἀρκαδικά), Boeotia (Βοιωτικά), Phocis (Φωκικά), and Ozolian Locris (Λοκρῶν Ὀζόλων).[2] The work more than just described topography: it includes a cultural geography of ancient Greece in which Pausanias not only described architectural and artistic objects, but also reviewed the historical and mythological underpinnings of the culture that created them.[3]
Description[edit]
Although the author was not a naturalist by trade, he does tend to comment on the physical aspects of the ancient landscape. Pausanias wrote about the pine trees located on the coast of Ancient Elis, the wild boars and the deer in the oak woods of Seliana (Phelloe), and the crows amid the oak trees in Alalcomenae. Towards the end of Description of Greece, Pausanias touches on the fruits of nature and products, such as the date palms of ancient Aulis, the wild strawberries at Mount Helicon, the olive oil in Tithorea, as well as the "white blackbirds" of Mount Kyllini (Cyllene) and the tortoises of Arcadia.
Additionally, Pausanias was motivated by his interest in religion. His work has been regarded as some kind of "journey into identity",[4] referring to that of the Greek beliefs and heritage. Pausanias describes the religious art and sacred architecture of many famous sites such as Olympia and Delphi. However, even in the most remote Greek regions, he was fascinated by many kinds of holy relics, depictions of deities, and other mysterious and sacred things. For example, at Thebes, Pausanias views the ruins of the house of the poet Pindar, the shields of warriors who died at the famous Battle of Leuctra, the statues of Arion, Hesiod, Orpheus, and Thamyris. He also visited the grove of the Muses on Helicon and saw the portraits of Polybius and of Corinna at Tanagra in Arcadia.[5]
Pausanias was mostly interested in relics of antiquity, rather than contemporary architecture or sacred spaces. As Christian Habicht, a modern day classicist who wrote a multitude of scholarly articles on Pausanias, says: "He definitely prefers the sacred to the profane and the old to the new, and there is much more about classical art of Greece than the about contemporary, more about gods, altars, and temples, than about statues of politicians or public buildings."[6]
The end of Description of Greece remains mysterious: some believe that Pausanias died before finishing his work,[7] and others believe his strange ending was intentional. He concludes his Periegesis with a story about a Greek author, thought to be Anyte of Tegea, who has a divine dream. In the dream, she is told to present the text of Description of Greece to a wider Greek audience in order to open their eyes to "all things Greek".[8]
Media related to Pausanias's Description of Greece at Wikimedia Commons