ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a detailed treatment of the landscape, history and culture of mainland Greece was particularly significant in Pausanias's own time, which saw elites of the cities around the Eastern Mediterranean use Greek culture to re-define and re-evaluate their status within the Roman empire. Pausanias's Description of Greece is the most extensive example of travel writing which has come down to us from antiquity. Pausanias came from Asia Minor, probably from Magnesia on Sipylos, and he was therefore culturally Greek. Pausanias's text follows routes through the landscape, focusing on locations and objects which he considered worth seeing. Herodotus's Histories are cited particularly often, and Pausanias deliberately echoes many of the characteristic features of Herodotus's work, although he draws on a wide range of historical literature. Pausanias adopts many mannerisms of Herodotus's description of strange places and customs, and, like his model, he emphasizes his personal enquiries and insists in presenting conflicting evidence.
