Pausanias. [Guide to Greece]. Part One

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Pausania
Guida della Grecia
[Guide to Greece]
Edited by Domenico Musti and Mario Torelli

Ten volumes
Lorenzo Valla Foundation / Mondadori, 1982-2017

Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro. Part One

The front cover of Pausanias' Guide to Greece, dedicated to Attica

It took twenty-five years to complete the publication of the Description of Greece (Ἑλλάδος Περιήγησις – Periegesis of Greece, as it appears on the manuscripts that handed down the text) - or, if you prefer, the Guide to Greece written by Pausanias during the II century AD. Compared to the time when the publication started under the auspices of the Lorenzo Valla Foundation, a few things have however changed. In the first volume, Domenico Musti and Luigi Beschi spoke, in fact, of the first Italian translation of Pausanias after one hundred and fifty years. In reality, meanwhile, a further Italian translation was published between 1991 and 2012 by Salvatore Rizzo for B.U.R., i.e. a popular pocket series by Rizzoli publishing house . While biographic events (in particular the death in 2010 of Domenico Musti, for almost thirty years professor of Greek History at La Sapienza University in Rome, who was the main inspirer of the translation) certainly led to inevitable delays, the series (initially conceived in seven volumes and then published in ten) has now been completed, and this edition will remain for a long time as a reference edition in Italy. 

Pausania and the Guide to Greece

A view of the Acropolis of Athens
Source: Salonica84 via Wikimedia Commons

We know very little about Pausanias. The few things we are aware of actually derive from our reading of his Guide. As it always happens in similar cases, over the centuries the most disparate hypotheses have flourished: that Pausanias never existed, that under that name one should group a series of different authors, that his journey across Greece never took place, but the work rather resulted from the collation of previous sources and from the imagination of his author, that the Guide was written in different years, probably in two different periods, and that there was a stratification of the texts up to the final version (which, however, some believe not complete).

As one can see, plenty of confusion. Let us try to recall Domenico Musti’s exposition in his General Introduction to the Work (Volume 1, pp. VII-LV). It is nearly certain that Pausanias actually existed. He was undoubtedly a cultured man, who lived under the empire of the Antonines, in a moment therefore of pacification of the empire, which meanwhile allowed the possibility of traveling and then favoured the attempt to recover the classical tradition of ancient Greece. "Seemingly, the work evolved around two highpoints, each of which around a different date: on the one hand Adrian’s last years and the first ones of the Antonines, that is, the years 135-145/150; and on the other hand the reign of Marcus Aurelius, 161-180" (p. XIV). In any case, one element is certain: it was a phase in which the splendour of Greek civilization had lastly become blurred and the order was guaranteed by the Roman Empire.

Pausanias was a Greek from the suburbs; or, rather, he was not Greek in the strict sense, but came from areas that had intensely experienced the influence of Greek civilization. Most likely, he came from Asia Minor, and most probably from the western part of it. His journey was therefore an itinerary of (re)discovery veined by a deep sense of nostalgia.

Pausanias’ Guide was not an artistic guide, but a historical text. The models of the writer were Thucydides and above all Herodotus. Obviously, as part of the story telling, he also included the description of artistic artefacts, from large temples to sculptures. But his interest – as Musti repeated - was wider and aimed at an entire civilization. There was also a profound religious sense, which led to the exploration of the places of myth and to the recognition and the "recovery" of possibly minor narrations, but still linked to the Greek world. In this sense, the (supplementary) resemblance between Pausanias’ Periegesis and the Mirabilia Urbis Romae of the Middle Ages has been highlighted: they were both intended for pilgrims and therefore centred on spiritual itineraries and the highlighting of the location of religious relics, more than on works of art.

As it has been said, Pausanias had as models Thucydides and Herodotus (but in reality the sources from which he drew were much more numerous). His work had a function of 'integration'; it aimed at completing (and eventually correcting) established traditions or - as mentioned - at recovering others, which risked being lost. In this last sense, the author was in some way in competition with his models, trying to improve them. It has been noted, for example, that in general Pausanias did not repeat what had already been written by Herodotus and Thucydides; moreover, he left out the history of Philip and Alexander the Great, considered universally known (see pp. XXXIX-XL). Of course, this raises a problem of 'credibility' of the author. "Setting himself the goal of integrating large and small historiographic models, but also of competing with them, Pausanias certainly also did it by referring to traditions not yet codified in writing, i.e. to oral traditions and «minor» literature, which in turn could represent the medium of local (oral or written) traditions" (p. XLII).

In light of this criterion of 'complementarity', Musti believed he could also rationalise the choice of those artworks which were mentioned or ignored in the Description: for example, only a few lines were dedicated to the Parthenon, while "all commentators always detected, with regard to the works of architecture and sculpture, the particular attention given to the works of the archaic and classical age" (page LIII). Pausanias, in short, seemed interested above all at the roots of a civilization and its tangents with myth.

Pausanias' fortune

Pausanias, The Laurentianus 56,11 manuscript, preserved at the Mediceo-Laurenziana Library in Florence
Source: Web Gallery of Art via Wikimedia Commons

Pausanias’ Guide to Greece had a very different fortune compared to works like Vitruvius’ De architectura or Pliny’s Natural History. In fact, the latter texts benefited of continuous attention also during the Middle Ages. To the contrary, Pausania disappeared. The reasons are not clear. It is obviously possible that Pausanias’ writing immediately ended up in a library and was only dug up in 1300 (see p. LXVII); alternatively, the affirmation of Christianity may have declared the declining interested in "an author particularly interested in the history of pagan cults and places of worship" (page LXVI). In fact, most of the critics believe that the manuscript circulation of the work began in the humanistic age and came from a single archetype (now lost) that belonged to the Florentine Niccolò Niccoli (1364-1437). The Guide to Greece would have then arrived in Florence before the latter's death. In 1400 the interest in the book raised exponentially, fully in line with the rediscovery of the Greek world. Today, fourteen codes have transmitted in full (or almost) Pausanias’ work, all written at the latest by 1550.

Compared to the tradition, which has given greater importance to the Parisinus code gr. 1410 (transcribed in 1491) for the purposes of publication of the work, today we attribute greater reliability to the Venetus Marcianus gr. 413, preserved in Venice and the Laurentianus 56.11, kept in Florence, certainly copied on a previous date. However, most importantly, the manuscript tradition was soon interrupted thanks to the first printed edition published in Venice in 1516 by the heirs of Aldo Manuzio (who had passed away the year before) and by Andrea Torresano, and curated by Marco Musuro. The Aldina edition was, obviously, in Greek, while the first Latin translation (published in Rome by Romolo Amaseus) occurred in 1547 and the Italian one in 1593 (the translation was made by the Ferrara-born Alfonso Bonacciuoli and the publication took place in Mantua).

Pausania’s Guide, in short, became a reference text and knew periods of greater or lesser fortune depending on the attention that was attributed to the classical world and, while not having as a main object of his narration the description of works of art, entered fully in what Schlosser called the 'literature of artistic guides'. Obviously, Schlosser did not make any evaluation of Pausanias’ Guide, because his Kunstliteratur began with the Middle Ages, but in the third chapter of book III of his main work he clearly wrote about artistic guides: "We have already seen how this interest of the pilgrims [note of the editor: travelling to Rome], therefore a purely positive and sacred interest (which however also revealed a sense for history, even if strangely stifled by all the rest), justified those books of Mirabilia; the latter, starting from the schemes of the late Greek-Roman world, cannot completely deny their spiritual kinship with the guides of the temples we know from Pausanias” (p 209).

The individual volumes

I am displaying below the bibliographic references to each of the ten volumes published by the Lorenzo Valla Foundation, while transcribing the text of the cover flap for each of them.

Pausanias
Guide to Greece
Book I. Attica
Edited by Domenico Musti and Luigi Beschi
Lorenzo Valla Foundation – Arnoldo Mondadori Publishing House, 1982

Athens. The Parthenon
Source: Harrieta171 via Wikimedia Commons

Text of the cover flap:

"The cultured traveller and the tourist, in love with Greece, will not be able from now on to visit the acropolises of Athens, Corinth, Epidaurus, Delphi, Olympia, without this book, the most secure and faithful companion of their wanderings. The Guide to Greece is a Baedeker, a Guide bleu, written by an intelligent and curious traveller of the second century after Christ, when most of the temples, shrines and classical tombs were still standing; and so the tourist of today, crossing his sight with Pausanias’ scrupulous eyes, will imagine seeing the wonderfully vivid paintings, and the statues of Phidias and Praxiteles, will believe to put his foot in a region where the "sacred" was present in every stone, in every tree, in every celestial apparition. But this book is much more than a Guide. Living in the times of Emperor Hadrian and his successors, who tried to restore a depopulated country to its ancient splendour, Pausanias searched for the greatness of archaic, classical, proto-Hellenic Greece. The stories of Herodotus and Thucydides were not enough for him. He then interrogated the different local traditions, the guides, the priests, always looking for the precious news that had escaped from the others. Everything interested his precise and patient spirit, and his meticulous gaze. This Guide is therefore a mine: indispensable to the archaeologist, the historian, the geographer, to the scholar of religions, myths and symbols, the ethnographer, and to every man who scrutinizes the many living shadows of the past.

Pausanias’ present edition, directed by Domenico Musti and Mario Torelli, is the first appearing in Italy after one hundred and fifty years. The translation reproduces the essence and elegance of this lover of Herodotus: the rich commentary on Attica, edited by Domenico Musti and Luigi Beschi, both an archaeological and historical-religious guide, responds to all the interests of the scholar and the educated reader. The other volumes will follow with a regular rhythm.”

Pausanias
Guide to Greece
Book II. Corinthia and Argolis
Edited by Domenico Musti and Mario Torelli
Lorenzo Valla Foundation – Arnoldo Mondadori Publishing House, 1986

Myceane. The Lion Gate
Source: David Monniaux via Wikimedia Commons

Text of the cover flap:

"In 1982, the series «Greek and Latin writers» hosted the first volume of the Guide to Greece (Attica), edited by Domenico Musti and Luigi Beschi. There Pausanias spoke mainly of Athens: in a certain way he was overwhelmed and crushed by the enormity of his task. Here he proceeded to Corinthia and Argolis: he described with his customary minutia and his hidden passion Corinth, Sicyon, Phlius, Mycenae, Tiryns, Argos, Epidaurus, Aegina, Troezen; and the modern reader, who has learned to travel to Greece with Pausanias, finds him in the fullness of his qualities as a historian, archaeologist and writer. As always, Pausania intertwined the mythical events (Heracles, Theseus, Phaedra, the return of the Heracleidae) with historical facts, until his interest in the natural quirks compelled him to interrupt the storytelling to deal with the bones of sea monsters or hot sources. On the surface, in the face of the myth, he seemed to be split between devotion and scepticism. In reality, nothing rapt him as much as beauty; and beauty made sense, for him, only if it was united to the sacred. With what secret shiver did he speak to us about mystery rites, impenetrable places, archaic art (perhaps «unpleasant to the sight, but marked by a sort of divine inspiration»), the cyclopean walls of Tiryns, and the old wild wood statues! It makes my heart cry that he saw Mycenae already ruined: that he saw only, like us, the Gate of the Lions, the Perseia spring and the tombs of Atreus, Agamemnon, and those murdered on their way back from Troy. But his soul seemed to be mainly attracted by that living sanctuary, by that mobile religious theatre, which was Epidaurus.

The commentary on Corinthia and Argolis, by Domenico Musti and Mario Torelli, both in archaeological and historical-religious terms, introduces the scholar and the reader to the complexity of the text of Pausanias. Within a short time, the third volume of the Guide to Greece, dedicated to Laconia and Messenia, will be published [note of the editor: in reality something went wrong, as the comments to Laconia and Messenia were released in two separate volumes, only five years later]."

Pausanias
Guide to Greece
Book III. Laconia
Edited by Domenico Musti and Mario Torelli
Lorenzo Valla Foundation – Arnoldo Mondadori Publishing House, 1991

Front cover of volume III

Text of the cover flap:

"After the first two volumes, dedicated to Attica, Corinthia and Argolis, the Guide to Greece reaches the third volume, focused on Sparta. The initial chapters can disappoint us. Pausanias did not like history, and this glimpse of laconic history, divided between two royal families, seems like written by a very poor compiler. But, as soon as he began to describe places - a large number of oaks or a pebble beach -, Pausania was transformed: he turned to the reader, saying: «you will arrive at a temple» or «very close to the tombs you will see a stele» - and an almost completely disappeared city as Sparta rises clearly in front of the our eyes. Apparently, Pausanias was against Laconia: but, in reality, Sparta embodied what fascinated him the most: the archaic, the sacred, and the cruel. Everything he told about the violent races of Spartan ephebes, or the old wooden statues, like the one that Orestes and Iphigenia would have stolen from Tauris, has an extraordinary intensity. Among the most beautiful pages of the book is the meticulous description of Bathycles' throne in Amyclae's thesaurus: this remote peak of Greek archaic sculpture, around which Pausanias wove his mythical stories. And the quick glimpse on Achilles, who after death married Elena on the White Island: symbol of the candid and profound veneration that Pausanias always nourished for heroes."

Pausanias
Guide to Greece
Book IV. Messenia
Edited by Domenico Musti and Mario Torelli
Lorenzo Valla Foundation – Arnoldo Mondadori Publishing House, 1991

Text of the cover flap:

"Nothing was more tremendous than the war between Spartans and Messenians at the dawn of Greek history, as Pausanias narrated it. Massacres, destruction, ruins, sinister signs, divine announcements accompanied the defeat of Messenia. What grief around his fall, for three centuries, under the yoke of Sparta. The fourth book of the Guide to Greece, which follows shortly the publication of the third, dedicated to Laconia, has a character that seems to distinguish it from all others. On the one hand, the history of Messenia is, more than any other, sacred history: the gods have never been so present in the facts: the art of men is, if ever, that of just correcting destiny; and, on the other hand, in no book of Pausanias, history assumes such a fantastic and romantic aspect.

Modern readers are likely to prefer the second part of the book. At the end of Sparta's very long domain, the Messenians returned to their homeland. The past reappeared: the Messenians, who preserved the language and customs of their fathers, celebrated sacrifices, recited prayers, built houses and temples, invited the heroes to return to live with them, in an atmosphere full of expectation and religious emotion. No theme could be dearer to Pausanias, who so deeply felt historical fidelity." 

End of Part One
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