Description of Greece

Description of Greece (Ancient Greek: Ἑλλάδος Περιήγησις, romanized: Helládos Periḗgēsis) is the only surviving work by the ancient geographer Pausanias (c. 110 – c. 180).

Pausanias' Description of Greece comprises ten books, each of them dedicated to some part of mainland Greece. He is essentially describing his own travels, and large parts of Greece are not covered, including the islands. 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).

The work is rather erratic on described topography; its main interest is the cultural geography of ancient Greece, especially its religious sites, in which Pausanias not only mentioned, and occasionally described, architectural and artistic objects, but also reviewed the historical and mythological underpinnings of the culture that created them. 20th-century archaeological research has confirmed various of his descriptions and increased his credibility as a witness among scholars. In the 19th century his accounts were often regarded as unreliable.

We know nothing about Pausanias except what can be deduced from his book. There are no ancient mentions of either until the 6th century AD, and the book seems to have survived to the Middle Ages in a single manuscript, itself now lost. However, it attracted great interest in the Renaissance, and was copied in manuscript several times, before being first printed in 1516.

Pausanias was motivated by his interest in religion, mythology, and the local legends around religious sites. His work has been regarded as some kind of "journey into identity", 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. Although as a critic of art and architecture he is usually vague and frustratingly brief, his few words are often or usually the only surviving literary source from antiquity, and of great interest to historians and archaeologists.

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.

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."

Although he was no naturalist, he often gives brief comments on the physical aspects of the ancient landscapes he passed through. 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.