BMCR 2009.02.24, Maria Pretzler, Pausanias: Travel Writing

Maria Pretzler, Pausanias: Travel Writing in Ancient Greece. Classical
Literature and Society.  London:  Duckworth, 2007.  Pp. xiii, 225.
ISBN 9780715634967.  $18.00 (pb).

Reviewed by William Hutton, College of William & Mary ([email protected])
Word count:  1687 words
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To read a print-formatted version of this review, see
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2009/2009-02-24.html
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Pausanias's Description of Greece has been the focus of increased
scholarly scrutiny over recent decades, and this interest has produced
a growing list of articles, collections, commentaries, dissertations
and monographs. One thing for which an increasing need has arisen,
however, is an up-to-date work that can serve as an accessible
introduction to the text and its author for non-specialists as well as
specialists. Christian Habicht's 1985 monograph,[[1]] based on his
Sather lectures, has served that purpose ably for over two decades, but
was always somewhat limited in its scope and has been overtaken in many
respects by the progress of scholarship on Pausanias that it did no
small part to inspire. A new synthesis of the state of Pausanias
studies has long been needed, and Maria Pretzler has filled that lack
admirably with the volume under review.

Like the Description of Greece itself, Pretzler's work is divided into
ten parts, but Pretzler's divisions deal not with different parts of
Pausanias's Greece but with the different aspects of Pausanias's
authorial effort: Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the basic facts
about the Description of Greece, and Chapter 2 deals with what we know
about Pausanias himself, always a difficult topic to address since we
know nothing about Pausanias aside from the tiny scraps of information
that he lets slip in his own work. Pretzler avoids the pitfalls of
biographical criticism that plague many previous efforts at this topic
and paints for us a Pausanias who, far from being an idiosyncratic
loner, purveys antiquarian information to the antiquarian elite society
of the Second Sophistic at a time when "details about history and cults
were valuable commodities" (p. 30).

Chapters 3 and 4 situate Pausanias in the context of travel and travel
literature in ancient the Greek world, and in the Greek East of
Pausanias's day in particular. Here Pretzler deftly balances a
comparative overview of travel and travel writing outside of Pausanias
with an appreciation of Pausanias's unique place in that milieu. In
contrast to the facile characterizations of Pausanias's work as a
"travel guide" that one finds in earlier scholarship, Pretzler
judiciously asserts that "the ancients had neither a clearly defined
genre of travel writing, nor a notion of books specifically written for
travelers," and that "nothing suggests that [Pausanias] considers his
work as a part of a specific genre of travel literature" (p. 45).
Chapter 5 assesses Pausanias's position in the broader realm of ancient
conceptualizations and expressions of space, drawing on the work of
geographers and periploi as well as the Tabula Peutingeriana for
comparison.

Chapters 6, 7 and 8 deal with Pausanias as historian, topographer and
connoisseur of art. While these are separate chapters, one theme that
pervades them is that Pausanias's efforts in these areas cannot be
understood in isolation from one another. Pausanias's desire to produce
a treatment of each Greek locality that does justice to its unique
character affects his selection and presentation of historical and
artistic data. A sensitivity to local concerns may help explain
Pausanias's historiographical idiosyncrasies and his focus on certain
aspects of artwork, such as historical and mythical connections, rather
than others, such as style and affective response.

Up to the end of Chapter 8, there is little in Pretzler's work that
could be considered a radical departure from previous scholarship, yet
along the way one constantly comes across fresh insights that make the
reading worthwhile even for the most experienced of Pausaniacs (such as
Pretzler's comments on what Pausanias's persona reveals about himself
8.33.2, where he states that formerly wealthy places like Delos and
Egyptian Thebes had fewer resources in his day than a "private man of
modest means" (p. 25)). In Chapter's 9 and 10, however, Pretzler really
breaks new ground by tackling the issue of Pausanias's reception in the
early modern period. The fortune of Pausanias's text in late antiquity
and the middle ages was covered by a still-fundamental series of
articles by Aubrey Diller in the 1950's,[[2]] and numerous studies have
emerged in recent years concerning the use of Pausanias by scholarly
giants from around the turn of the 1900s, such as Farnell and
Wilamowitz, but there is a large gap of time in between, from the
sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, that has received relatively
little scholarly scrutiny. Pretzler takes a solid step toward filling
that gap in these chapters, examining the use of Pausanias by the likes
of Caylus and Winckelmann and by early travelers to Greece such as
Dodwell and Leake. In these chapters Pretzler underlines the importance
of Pausanias in the formative days of the disciplines of art history
and archaeology, and illustrates the ways in which Pausanias's
selective portrayal of Greek landscapes has shaped and sometimes
straitjacketed modern views. Of course in the span of two chapters in a
short book the amount of ground that Pretzler can cover is limited. An
indication of how fertile a field of inquiry this remains is that in a
work that was published independently and nearly simultaneously with
Pretzler's a team of scholars addressed Pausanias's reception in the
same general period, and ended up dealing, by and large, with a very
different set of Pausanias's readers.[[3]]

Overall, Pretzler gives us a Pausanias who exercises authorial control
of his work, rather than a passive recorder of information, one whose
aims and methods must be taken into account in the interpretation of
the information (archaeological, historical, religious, and
topographical) he provides. His work is accordingly one that cannot be
understood piecemeal -- each part of Pausanias's testimony must be read
an organic part of a carefully constructed context that weaves together
the various strands of tradition and history that preoccupied the
educated classes of the time with the realities that Pausanias found
on-site in his travels. The ideal interpreter of Pausanias, therefore,
is a scholar equally at home reading sophistic declamations and reports
of archaeological surveys -- the sort of interpreter Pretzler amply
demonstrates herself to be. Pretzler's Pausanias is not the trustworthy
dingbat that too many of today's scholars still wish he were -- one
whose intellectual and literary pretentions can safely be ignored in
the process of extracting information from the text -- but neither is
he a springboard for deracinated pontifications about identity, memory,
gaze and other currently popular abstractions. The observations
Pretzler makes are solidly grounded in Pausanias's own words and in the
archaeological record, and copiously documented with citations.

The Description of Greece is such a complex text that no scholar can
hope to cover every aspect of it in a work of less than 200 pages, and
different Pausanias enthusiasts will doubtlessly miss different things
in Pretzler's selection of topics. One important area that seems to me
to receive short shrift is the literary nature of Pausanias's account.
On several occasions, for instance, Pretzler will discuss some feature
in Pausanias's text that is reminiscent of Herodotus (e.g. pp. 18-19)
in a manner that may leave readers thinking that such similarities are
incidental or accidental, rather than fundamental elements of a
pervasive program of Herodotean mimesis. Although Pretzler acknowledges
Pausanias's literary sophistication, she sometimes lapses into an
interpretation of his decision-making that harkens back to old notions
of Pausanias as a subliterary scribbler. For instance, in considering
the question of why Pausanias presents his pocket biography of
Philopoimen (8.49.2 - 52.6) in his treatment of Tegea (rather than in
Philopoimen's hometown of Megalopolis, or in Messene where he died)
Pretzler's answer is that it gave Pausanias the opportunity to show off
an interesting inscription that he found on a statue base for
Philopoimen at Tegea (p. 80). Pretzler is possibly correct about this,
but it is at least worth considering that Pausanias had more involved
motives for saving his account of the life of independent Greece's
"last good man" until he comes to an empty statue base in the last city
he describes in the last book of his intricately structured account of
the Peloponnesos.

As is appropriate for a work of this sort, Pretzler avoids devoting
much space to controversy and polemic, though there are times when this
reader feels that she might have done a bit less glossing over of
points of scholarly contention. For instance, in discussing a notorious
sentence in 8.27.1 Pretzler states Pausanias refers to Roman rule (or
at least certain effects of it) as a "disaster." I happen to think that
Pretzler is right about this, but she should at least acknowledge the
fact that an impressive number of scholars, including the editors of
the most recent scholarly editions of the text, favor emending this
apparent 'anti-Roman' reference out of existence. Finally, in a work
that tackles so many topics in such a constrained space, there are
inevitably a number of places where even a non-scholarly reader might
long for a few examples or citations to illustrate generalizing
statements, as, for example, when Pretzler states that some of
Pausanias's demonstrable historical errors "can be understood in the
context of his aims, his use of local sources and his willingness to
include details that differed from what could be found in well-known
literary works" (p. 80). In nearly all such cases numerous examples and
citations are provided, but they are buried in the endnotes. Though
presumably the author herself is not to blame for the decision to use
endnotes rather than footnotes, the decision was, in my view, a
regrettable one. The utility of some books might not be hindered by the
use of endnotes, but in the case of this one, the need to flip pages to
find citations and examples was a continual annoyance.

Apart from these minor complaints, the work is thoroughly solid from
beginning to end. The bibliography is remarkably complete and current.
Maps and diagrams, though few in number, are clear and helpful. I would
recommend this book to anyone who wants a concise and reliable
introduction to the issues involved in studying Pausanias. With its
overall high quality and its affordable price we have good reason to
hope that it will reach a wide audience and provide a solid foundation
for the next generation of Pausanian studies.


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Notes:


1.   C. Habicht (1985), Pausanias's Guide to Ancient Greece [2nd
edition: 1998]. Berkeley: University of California Press.

2.   C. Diller (1955), "The Authors Named Pausanias," TAPA 86: 268-279;
(1956) "Pausanias in the Middle Ages," TAPA 87: 84-97; (1957) "The
Manuscripts of Pausanias," TAPA 88: 169-188.

3.   C. Guilmet, K. Staikos, G. Tolias, A. Malliaris and A. Asvesta
(2007), "Pausanias in Modern Times (1418-1820)." Chapter 3 of M.
Georgopoulou et al. (eds.) Following Pausanias: The Quest for Greek
Antiquity. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press.