SOURCE: "Pausanius' Attitude to Antiquities," The Annual of the British School at Athens, No. 87, 1992, pp. 387-409.

In the following essay, Arafat explores the unstated criteria used by Pausanias in determining what to present in his works, including his religious beliefs and preference for ancient works over modern.

The very fact that the second-century AD traveller Pausanias wrote at such length about the sites and monuments of Greece is itself indicative of his most important attitude towards antiquities.¹ That is, he thought them of sufficient value to be worth recording and thought it worth travelling extensively in mainland Greece over a period of many years to see them for himself. His purpose and approach are markedly different from those of other surviving ancient writers on comparable subjects: our most informative sources such as Pliny, Lucian, Quintilian, and Cicero, were primarily interested neither in art per se nor in travelling...