Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T09:22:06.611Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Pausanias at Mantinea: invention and manipulation of local history1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Maria Pretzler
Maria Pretzler
Affiliation:
University of Wales, Swansea
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Pausanias' qualities as a historian have long been the subject of scholarly attention, not least because some of his historical accounts present modern commentators with seemingly insurmountable problems. In fact, there is no denying that at times, Pausanias gets his history spectacularly wrong. Such apparent errors are all the more problematic because Pausanias' version is sometimes incompatible with major historical works which he, as a very well-read man, should have known. Do we have to assume that Pausanias sometimes chose to present historical accounts which he himself could identify as inaccurate or at least as clashing with other literary works?

In this article I investigate Pausanias' description of Mantinea which contains two of the most blatant examples of his inaccurate historical accounts, both set in the third century BC, and both incompatible with alternative sources: we are offered a lengthy description of a battle that probably never took place, and Pausanias' version of Mantinea's fate after its defeat in 222 BC seems a complete reversal of what Polybius reported much closer to the time. I use these examples to demonstrate how such idiosyncratic versions of history could develop and survive within their local context, and why they may have seemed an attractive addition to Pausanias' Periegesis.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Classical Journal , Volume 51 , 2005 , pp. 21 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alcock, S. E. (1993) Graecia capta. The landscapes of Roman Greece, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Amboglio, D. (1991) ‘La periegesi di Pausaniae la storiografia greca tradita per citazioni’, QUCC n.s. 39.3, 129–38.Google Scholar
Ameling, W. (1996) ‘Pausanias und die hellenistische Geschichte’, in Bingen, (ed.), 117–60.Google Scholar
Arafat, K. (1996) Pausanias' Greece. Ancient artists and Roman rulers, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Beloch, K. J. (1927) Griechische Geschichte, vol. 4.2 (2nd ed.), Berlin & Leipzig.Google Scholar
Bingen, J. (ed.) (1996) Pausanias Historien, Entretiens Fondation Hardt, vol. 41, Geneva.Google Scholar
Bölte, F. (1930) RE vol. 14, s.v. Mantinea, 1290–1344.Google Scholar
Bowie, E. L. (2001) ‘Inspiration and aspiration. Date, genre and readership’, in Alcock, S. E.Cherry, J. F., Eisner, J. (eds.) Pausanias. Travel and memory in Roman Greece, Oxford, 21–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brilliante, C. (1990) ‘Myth and history’, in Edmunds, L. (ed.) Approaches to Greek myth, Baltimore, 91–141.Google Scholar
Calame, C. (1999) ‘The rhetoric of mythos and logos: forms of figurative discourse’, in Buxton, R. (ed.) From Myth to reason? Studies in the development of Greek thought, Oxford, 119–43.Google Scholar
Callmer, C. (1943) Studien zur Geschichte Arkadiens bis zur Gründung des arkadischen Bundes, Lund.Google Scholar
Cohen, A. (1985) The symbolic construction of community, Chichester.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curty, O. (1995) Les parentés légendaires entre cités grecques, Geneva.Google Scholar
Daux, G. (1963) ‘Chronique des fouilles 1962, part 1’, BCH 87, 689–836.Google Scholar
Eide, T. (1992) ‘Pausanias and Thucydides’, Symb. Osl. 47, 124–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fougères, G. (1898) Mantinée et l'Arcadie orientale, Paris.Google Scholar
Habicht, C. (1985) Pausanias' guide to ancient Greece, Berkeley, Los Angeles & London.Google Scholar
Halfmann, H. (1986) Itinera principum. Geschichte und Typologie der kaiserreisen im römischen Reich, Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Henrichs, A. (1999) ‘Demythologizing the past, mythologizing the present: myth, history and the super-natural at the dawn of the Hellenistic period’, in Buxton, R. (ed.) From Myth to reason ? Studies in the development of Greek thought, Oxford, 223–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hiller, F. (1927) ‘Pausanias' arkadische Königsliste’, Klio 21, 1–13.Google Scholar
Hitzig, H., Blümner, H. (1907) Des Pausanias Beschreibung von Griechenland, vol. 3.1, Berlin & Leipzig.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, E., Ranger, T. (eds.) (1983) The invention of tradition, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Hodkinson, S. & Hodkinson, H. (1981) ‘Mantinea and the Mantinike. Settlement and society in a Greek polis’, ABSA 74, 71–7.Google Scholar
Hurschmann, R. (2002) ‘Tropaion’, Der neue Pauly 12.1, 872–3.Google Scholar
Jones, C. P. (1996) ‘The Panhellenion’, Chiron 26, 29–56.Google Scholar
Jones, C. P. (2001) ‘Pausanias and his guides’, in Alcock, S. E., Cherry, J. F., Eisner, J. (eds.) Pausanias. Travel and memory in Roman Greece, Oxford, 33–9.Google Scholar
Jost, M. (1973) ‘Pausanias en Mégalopolitide’, Rev. Ét. Anc. 75, 241–67.Google Scholar
Jost, M. (1985) Sanctuaires et cultes d'Arcadie, Paris.Google Scholar
Kalkmann, A. (1886) Pausanias der Perieget: Untersuchungen über seine Schriftstellerei und seine Quellen, Berlin.Google Scholar
Karayiorga, T. (1963) ‘Archaia Mantineia’, Arch. Delt. 18/2.1, 88–90.Google Scholar
Larsen, J. A. O. (1968) Greek federal states. Their institutions and history, Oxford.Google Scholar
Meadows, A. R. (1995) ‘Pausanias and the historiography of classical Sparta’, CQ 45, 92–113.Google Scholar
Nielsen, T. H. (2002) Arkadia and its poleis in the archaic and classical periods, Hypomnemata 140, Göttingen.Google Scholar
Niese, B. (1899) Geschichte der griechischen und makedonischen Staaten seit der Schlacht bei Chäronea, vol. 2, Gotha.Google Scholar
Oliver, V. H. (1970) Marcus Aurelius: aspects of civic and cultural policy in the East, Hesperia Supplement 13, Princeton.Google Scholar
Pearson, L. (1962) ‘The pseudo-history of Messenia and its authors’, Historia 11, 397–426.Google Scholar
Pretzler, M. (1999) ‘Myth and history at Tegea: local tradition and community identity’, in Nielsen, T. H., Roy, J. (eds.) Defining ancient Arkadia, Acts of the Copenhagen Polis Centre 6, Copenhagen, 89–128.Google Scholar
Pretzler, M. (2004) ‘Turning travel into text: Pausanias at work’, G&R 51, 199–216.Google Scholar
Pretzler, M. (2005) ‘Pausanias and oral tradition’, CQ 55, 235–49.Google Scholar
Pritchett, W. K. (1969) Studies in ancient Greek topography. Vol. 2: battlefields, Berkeley, Los Angeles & London.Google Scholar
Regenbogen, O. (1956) RE Suppl. vol. 8, s.v. Pausanias, 1008–97.Google Scholar
Robert, L. (1980) A travers l'Asie mineure. Poètes et prosateurs, monnaies grecques, voyageurs et géographie, Paris.Google Scholar
Rogers, G. M. (1991) ‘Demosthenes of Oenoanda and models of euergetism’, JRS 81, 91–100.Google Scholar
Roy, J. (1968) ‘The sons of Lycaon in Pausanias' Arcadian king-list’, ABSA 63, 287–92.Google Scholar
Scranton, R. L. (1941) Greek walls, Cambridge, Mass.Google Scholar
Spawforth, A. J. S. (1999) ‘The Panhellenion again’, Chiron 29, 339–52.Google Scholar
Spawforth, A. J. S., Walker, S. (1985) ‘The world of the Panhellenion I. Athens and Eleusis’, JRS 75, 78–104.Google Scholar
Spawforth, A. J. S., Walker, S. (1986) ‘The world of the Panhellenion II. Three Dorian cities’, JRS 76, 88–105.Google Scholar
Strubbe, J. H. M. (1984–1986) ‘Gründer kleinasiatischer Städte’, Ancient Society 15–17, 253–304.Google Scholar
Urban, R. (1979) Wachstum und Krise des achäischen Bundes, Historia Einzelschriften 35, Wiesbaden.Google Scholar
Veyne, P. (1988) Did the Greeks believe in their myths?, Chicago & London (translation of Les grecs ontils cru à leurs mythes?, Paris, 1983).Google Scholar
Walbank, F. W. (1933) Aratus of Sicyon, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Walbank, F. W. (1957) A historical commentary on Polybius, vol. 1, Oxford.Google Scholar
Winter, F. (1971) Greek fortifications, London.Google Scholar