Talk:Pausanias (geographer)

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Andrew Stewart, One Hundred Greek Sculptors

I can't find any bibliographical details about this book. I take it this is the living Andrew Stewart who's written on Greek sculpture, not someone quoted by the 1911 Britannica? I can't track down date, publisher, or ISBN. The text of the book is given on the Perseus site but that doesn't have any details either; it does have an ISBN, but it's for the wrong book. Petrouchka 00:52, 8 October 2006 (UTC) Re.: Andrew Steward: In any case, that citation, and all that goes with it should probably be removed.

Generally, the whole article is full of very oldfashioned thinking about Pausanias. Check out Hutton's and Pretzler's books, and the Alcock/Cherry/Elsner edited volume (as in the bibliography). Habicht (1985) is simply outdated now, and the article pretty much summarises what he and older writers say.

Pausanias' language is no longer seen as clumsy, a number of references have turned up in recent years (so we have to assume that he was in fact read).

The question is whether this should get a pretty thorough re-write... a lot of this is simply judgemental in a very oldfashioned (and now thoroughly outdated) way - all taken from sources which are simply too old, it seems. Megalopolitan (talk) 23:25, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

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Move to Pausanias (travel writer)?

Pausanias was not a geographer but a travel writer as should be clear as soon as you start to read his work.Dejvid (talk) 15:47, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

@Dejvid: He was both. The ancient Greeks did not really have a clear distinction between the two. "Geographer" is the term ancient writers would have probably used to describe him with. "Travel writer" is more of a modern designation. I would be fine with either title for the article. "Travel writer" is probably more specific. --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:24, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Pausaniou ElladOs PeriiEgEseOs

Title page for Pausanias shows a Photograph of a book With a Beautifully Illuminated Portrait Showing Title spellings in Block Greek Capital Letters that seem to differ from its accompanying article.

I only approximate transliteration thusly:

Pausaniou ElladOs PeriiEgEseOs

Will a Greek Scholar Please explain this discrepency with Pausanias Ellados Periegesis?

Thank you. 🐱🐱🐱 FritzYCat (talk) 04:44, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Nobody answered at the time. In case anyone now wonders, the illuminated title is grammatical but incomplete: it means "... of the Tour of Greece of Pausanias": everything in the genitive case. Something in the nominative would additionally be expected, and, this being the first page of a Greek manuscript text, you might expect it to be "Book one ...". Why the expected phrase in the nominative isn't to be seen I don't know. Andrew Dalby 15:44, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Should we reunite Pausanias (geographer) and Description of Greece?

In April this year User:ColinSchm, who does not normally edit on classical subjects, took it upon himself to split off the book from the author without any discussion, using as edit summary "per Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles/List_of_notable_books/3 based on Pausanias (geographer) + re-write, infobox, etc".

I rather think this was a mistake, as we know nothing about P except what he tells us in the book, which isn't much. What do people think about merging them back together? Both articles seem of pretty low quality to me. The biography gets 5-7 times more views btw. It would be great if someone who knows the area better than I do would improve them/it. Also the title(s) - "geographer" is a tad misleading, and Peter Levy's Guide to Greece might be better. I'll copy this to Talk:Pausanias (geographer); please comment there. Johnbod (talk) 04:17, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, this is a good idea. Neither article is especially long and most of the material in this article is strictly speaking about the Description anyway. As for the disambiguator, I like "periegete", but I suppose "(travel writer)" might be more transparent. Furius (talk) 00:35, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

P.S. we discussed a broader version of this a few years back Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Classical_Greece_and_Rome/Archive_36#Merging_articles_on_ancient_authors_with_only_one_work?; this resulted in Diogenes Laertius and Lives of the Eminent Philosophers being merged. I still think that many of the other articles mentioned there are good candidates for a merge and, while not everyone was as keen on merging as me, there seemed a general consensus that cases like this where very little is known about the author are good merge candidates. Furius (talk) 20:55, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Crikey! I'd forgotten that, though I see you got one of them through. Vitruvius and De architectura might be added to the list - most of the quite long "biography" is about the book. Johnbod (talk) 03:16, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree that they are better off as a single article. The sections in Pausanias (geographer) on writing style and modern views are all really about the Description of Greece, and should be covered in that article. The fact that we don't currently say that archaeologists have found the book to be largely accurate in the article on the book seems like a major omission! And once we have brought that back over, there's little point in keeping what remains separate – especially as even the Biography section contains information on the book which isn't currently in that article. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 09:28, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[copied from the classical project talk] Johnbod (talk) 02:24, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Actually the bio does say "Modern views of Pausanias (header) Until twentieth-century archaeologists concluded that Pausanias was a reliable guide to the sites which they were excavating, classicists largely dismissed Pausanias as of a purely literary bent...". But we don't say that he was almost certainly a doctor. Johnbod (talk) 04:33, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

The doctor idea is news to me -- and to the OCD. You have my attention, but do you have a source? Christian Habicht's Sather lecture from 1999 says it has recently been said that Pausanias probably was a doctor, but the basis for such an assumption is extremely fragile (referencing Peter Levi's Penguin, I think) -- and indeed the "evidence" seems to consist in the fact that Pausanias took an interest in Asclepian temples? UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 21:31, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes - a noticeable interest. But the evidence for his whole biography rests on such slender threads. The possibility is certainly widespread, without I think any alternative vocational idea. Here for example. Johnbod (talk) 22:37, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Interesting -- definitely a good thing to discuss in a biography, though personally I'd be wary of using it as an epithet in other articles: even Mayor hedges with "if Pausanias was a doctor, as some believe" (emphasis mine), and the major biographical sources seem to ignore/avoid it. I'm not sure being a literary traveller in ancient Greece really required a specific profession (other than having lots of money and free time) -- nobody has tried, as far as I know, to argue that Herodotus was a chef, though the same argument would work. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 09:35, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

• Well there seems to be consensus for this - if anyone wants to enact it, please go ahead, or I will get round to it eventually. Johnbod (talk) 23:52, 30 November 2023 (UTC)