Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece

392 Pages·2001·7.77 MB·English

by  Pausanias

Pausanias:
Travel and Memory in
Roman Greece
SUSAN E. ALOCOCK
JOHN F. CHERRY
JAS ELSNER,
Editors
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Pausanias

pausanias
Travel and Memory in Roman Greece
Edited by
Susan E. Alcock,
John F. Cherry, &
Jas´ Elsner
3
2001
1
Oxford NewYork
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota´ BuenosAires Calcutta
CapeTown Chennai DaresSalaam Delhi Florence HongKong Istanbul
Karachi KualaLumpur Madrid Melbourne MexicoCity Mumbai
Nairobi Paris SaˆoPaulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Warsaw
andassociatedcompaniesin
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright (cid:1) 2001 by Oxford UniversityPress
PublishedbyOxfordUniversityPress,Inc.
198MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NewYork10016
OxfordisaregisteredtrademarkofOxfordUniversityPress.
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,
storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,
electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording,orotherwise,
withoutthepriorpermissionofOxfordUniversityPress.
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Pausanias:travelandmemoryinRomanGreece/editedbyS.E.Alcock,J.F.Cherry&J.Elsner.
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN0-19-512816-8(cloth)
1. Pausanias.DescriptionofGreece. 2. Greece—Descriptionandtravel—Earlyworksto
1800. 3. Greece—Antiquities. 4. Greece—Historiography. I. Alcock,SusanE. II. Cherry,
JohnF. III. Elsner,Jas´.
DF27.P383P382000
938'.09—dc21 00-022461
Frontispiece:Locationofprincipalplacesmentionedinthebook.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
onacid-freepaper
For Silvia, Britten, and Bax
This page intentionally left blank
Preface
This volume is dedicated to the principle that Pausanias deserves more—and
more ambitious—treatment than he tends to receive. The editorsindependently
discovered, early in their careers, what Konstan here calls “the joys of Pausa-
nias”: Elsner, for instance, through his interest in pilgrimage; Alcock with her
exploration of landscapes in Roman Greece.1 Part of the fascination of using
him, we found, was that the Periegesis was infinitely richer, and more stimu-
lating, thanonewouldhaveexpectedfromitsconventionalreputation.Overthe
centuries, Pausanias has, of course, been considered a happy survival, a mar-
velouscornucopia,anancientBaedeker,andasturdyresourcetominefornames
and places, fragments of history, and versions of myth. He has also been peri-
odically decried as long-winded, tedious, inaccurate, and digressive. The idea
that the Periegesis might have much more to offer than either an interesting
factualbricolageorawaytogeneratechecklistsofciviccultswas,atleastuntil
quite recently, rarely considered.
That situation is now changing drastically, and for once, a clear turning
pointcanbeidentified.Itisfairtosaythatthiscollectionofessayswouldnever
have had its genesis without the revolutionary work of Christian Habicht and
his 1982 Sather Classical Lectures, published in 1985 as Pausanias’ Guide to
Ancient Greece (rev. ed., 1998). Habicht not only offered a passionate and co-
gent defense of the Periegete’s accuracy but also began to place the account in
its own historical and social context and to push the edges of its interpretive
envelope. His decision totakePausaniasseriously,coupledwithasimultaneous
growing curiosity about the world of the so-called Second Sophistic, has con-
tributed to a florescence of “Pausaniacs” at the end of the millennium: books,2
conference proceedings,3 an index verborum,4 a fast-growing assemblage of ar-
ticles throughout the 1990s, and—not least—two new critical editionswithex-
tensive commentary book by book5.
This outburst, as Henderson notes, parallels a similar surge of interest at
the turn of the nineteenth century, which one might perhaps call the “First
Pausanian Sophistic.” Habicht provided a seminal impetus in late-twentieth-
century studies, in part by uniting the best in German- and English-language
viii Preface
scholarshipandbycombininghistoricalandarcheologicalapproaches;likewise,
the late nineteenth century left an extraordinarily erudite and interdisciplinary
scholarly monument to tower over its Pausanias, in the form of the great six-
volume translation and commentary made by Sir James George Frazer (1854–
1941). At the center ofFrazer’sworkthroughoutthe1880sand1890s(“awork
on which I have spent, well or ill, some of the best years of my life”),6 his
Pausanias’s “Description of Greece” not only isan authoritativesummationof
its field across all areas of contemporary study in all the European languages
but was also a crucial opening and scholarly supplement to Frazer’s more fa-
mous and influential interests, including the study of mythology, ritual, and
anthropology.7 Pausanias, it would seem, appears to intrigue people in a fin-de-
sie`cle,transitionalorcommemorativemood,aswellasscholars(likeFrazerand
the“CambridgeRitualists”)eagertotransgressdisciplinaryboundaries,whether
in the late twentieth century or the late nineteenth.
We decided to fan the flames of the modern Pausanian revival by assem-
bling within a single volume a diverse cast of characters: classicists, ancient
historians, archaeologists, art historians, historical geographers, intellectualhis-
torians, and cultural anthropologists. The intention was very much to expand
boththeappreciationandthescholarlyexerciseofPausanias:inpartbyinviting
some of the best people available in their respectivefieldstoparticipate,inpart
through the sheer “shock value” of seeing such variant disciplines and such
different investigations placed side by side.
The collection is divided into three roughly equal parts:“Pausaniasandhis
Periegesis, the Traveler and the Text”; “Studies and comparisons”;and“Nach-
leben.” The divisions reflect some of the main currents,realizedorpotential,in
research on the Periegesis. Part I might be perceived as the more traditionalin
tone, dealing as it does with the individual author and the nature of the com-
position. In chapter 1 Jas´ Elsner immediately establishesthecaseforseeingthe
Description ofGreeceasaliteraryconstructandnotasafarragotobedismem-
bered at will. Ewen Bowie, in chapter 2, responding to the work of Habicht,
contributes an up-to-date review of central questions regarding the authorship,
inspiration, date, and motivationslying behindthePeriegesis.Inchapters3and
4,C.P.JonesandIanRutherfordeachexplorespecifictopicswithinthisbroader
ambit:theformerinvestigatingandassessingthesourceformuchofPausanias’s
information (his guides), the latter reexamining the arguments over the heated
question of whether or not his activities could be termed “pilgrimage.”
Part II offers a selection of studies that spring from the text of the Perie-
gesis. In two cases, these focus on specific sections of Pausanias: the Chest of
Kypselos (5.17.5–19.10) in chapter 7, by A.M. Snodgrass, and the Messeniaka
of Book IV in chapter 8, by Susan E. Alcock. Snodgrass uses the famouschest
at Olympia, and Pausanias’s lengthy exposition of it, to approach a body of
issues: not only how Pausanias interpreted works of art butalsojustwhattypes
of challenges particularly attracted him. Pausanias’s account of the “many suf-
ferings of the Messenians” (4.29.13), for Alcock, offers one means to explore
his strategies of narrative and what they reveal and conceal; their impact on
Preface ix
later readings of Messenian history and archaeology is patent. In the two other
chapters of Part II, Pausanias is drawn into a wider discourse. In chapter6Ada
Cohen situates Pausanias in the realm of artistic innovations, with the unprec-
edented visual representation of travel in Hellenistic and Roman times. James
I. Porter, also does something quite unusual, in chapter 5, by juxtaposing Pau-
sanias with Longinus and Dio Chrysostom. By considering the Periegesis as
something fit to be discussed in the contextof other authorsandtheircreations,
entirely new fields of inquiry are opened up, be it Pausanias’s relation to the
“sublime” or his place in the wider literary landscape of the Second Sophistic.
Part III explores the Nachleben—the powerful, if much underestimated,
aftershock of Pausanias’s writings that followed his rediscovery and printingin
the Renaissance. Because of his very matter-of-factness, his apparent transpar-
ency,Pausaniaswaslongtaken(equallymatter-of-factly)atharmlessfacevalue.
Only recently have the judgments and instincts he instilled in his innumerable
later readers begun to be realized in their full efficacy. In chapter 10, J.M.
Wagstaff’s exegesis of the work of Colonel William Martin Leake (1777–
1860)—and of Leake’s reliance on Pausanias—demonstrates the interdepend-
enceoftravelers’accountsthroughtheages.SusanBuckSuttonapproachesthis
same dependence from a different angle in chapter 9, describinghowonesmall
section, a couple of sentences in Book II, has guided the viewing of a single
Greekvalleyfornearlytwomillennia.FarfromablamelessBaedeker,Pausanias
emerges as a central shaping force in perceptions of just “what was important”
(and what not important) about Greece—perceptions that areastonishinglyper-
vasive still today. In chapters 11 and 12, John Henderson and Mary Beard
explore this phenomenon in the late nineteenth century, through the figures of
“feebleFarnell”andJaneEllenHarrisonandtheirverydifferentreadingsofthe
Periegesis. The former bought completely and complacently into an elevated,
Olympian version of the Pausanian vision, whereas the latter, exploring the
cracks and “byways of Pausanias’s synthesis,” perceived that the Periegete ac-
tually “lets out quite unconsciously a good part of the secret”—a secret of loss
and change and nostalgia.
In addition to the main commissioned essays, we invited a number of spe-
cialist commentators—some expert in Pausanian studies and others in adjacent
fields such as the historiography of travel—to respond to the book with shorter
pieces. These are placed at the end of their respective parts, where we thought
they would best resonate with the other essays. Among the commentators,Ste-
phen Bann and Paul Cartledge both examine Sparta: the former from the point
of view of Enlightenment travel writing and the latter as an ancient historian
inevitably indebted to Pausanias. Bettina Bergmann contraststhevisualinscrip-
tion of the Roman landscape with Pausanias’s textual inscription, while Mario
Torellicastsaprofessionaleditor’seyeonceagainonthecomplexinterrelations
of text and archaeology. David Konstan and John F. Cherry both weigh the
Periegesis against later writing and travel: the first looking at the joys of nos-
talgic return to an ancestral homeland (not only in Pausanias but also in the
somewhat later text of Athenaeus), the second exploring the Description of
Greece within the specificgenreof travelliterature.Finally,inthebook’scoda,