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“DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE?”:

PLUTARCH AND PAUSANIAS AT DELPHI

J MI

Around  AD, Plutarch made the smartest move of his career: he quit
Rome. The mood in the imperial capital was becoming unsettled, and
affairs would come to a head with the assassination of the emperor
Domitian in . Plutarch apparently felt that the time was right to
trade the excitement of Rome for a place more conducive to philosophy
and reflection. He was offered the priesthood of Apollo by the people
of Delphi, and he returned to central Greece. The local lad from
Chaironeia who had become a successful intellectual and friend of
emperors was going home. For the next thirty years Plutarch would
serve the god at Delphi faithfully and loyally, never tiring of his position.
In his essay, An seni respublica gerenda sit (= Moralia F), he writes:
“You know I’ve served Apollo for many years, but you won’t hear
me say, ‘Plutarch, you have had enough sacrifices, enough processions,
enough choirs.’” Plutarch loved Delphi, and unlike Pausanias, whose
description of the site has all the hallmarks of a tourist’s hasty visit,
Plutarch knew every stone, every inscription and every dedication as
well as the back of his own hand.
Delphi was no backwater in Plutarch’s day. One hundred years
before Plutarch’s time, Strabo could describe Delphi as rich in mon-
uments but poor in silver.1 But the first century AD was a time of pros-
perity, and the sanctuary had benefitted from the largesse of emper-
ors such as Nero and Domitian, who paid for renovations on the tem-
ple and visited in . The time of Plutarch’s return coincided with an
period of unparalleled prosperity, linked to the Pythia’s accuracy:
The Pythia’s words, going straight to the truth, pass every test, and have
never yet proved false when examined. They have filled the shrine with
the richest offerings, Greek and barbarian, and adorned it with fine

1 Strabo ... I wish to thank the organizers of the Sixth International Conference
of the International Plutarch Society for their tireless work, and the participants at
Nijmegen who made helpful suggestions for the improvement of this paper. A second
version of the paper was read to the Classics Department at Swarthmore College, and
I thank the faculty and students there for their comments. My thanks also go to Ineke
Sluiter for discussing with me her work on memory in the Second Sophistic.
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  

buildings and Amphictyonic possessions. You yourselves can see many

structures where there were none before, while many that were in ruin
have recently been restored. Just as others grow next to healthy trees, so
too, Pylaea is just as flourishing and properous as Delphi. Thanks to the
wealth here she has not looked so lovely in a thousand years.
(Plutarch, De Pythiae oraculis F–A)

Delphi’s prosperity coincided with a very productive phase in Plutarch’s

own writing. It is to this time in the late first and early second century
that we can date his so-called Pythian Logoi, three essays set at Del-
phi. They are charming pieces, reflecting Plutarch’s thought at its most
humane and sympathetic. Delphi is especially appropriate as a setting
for these particular essays because each advocates a marriage of the-
ology and philosophy, and it was at Delphi that Plutarch himself com-
bined the roles of philosopher and priest. Yet Delphi is more than just
a convenient setting for Plutarch’s philosophical musings. In Plutarch’s
writings Delphi serves as a monumental evocation of cultural memory,
a place reverberating with multiple meanings. It is a place where past
and present meet, where Greece and Rome face each other, and where
hegemony is redefined in terms entirely favorable to the Greeks. In this
paper I propose to argue that in Plutarch’s work the natural and human
landscapes of Delphi are used to give substance to a new definition of
Greek culture.

This redefinition of Delphi begins in the introductory chapters in De

E apud Delphos when Plutarch speaks of sending his Pythian Logoi to
Sarapion in Athens as aparchai, first fruits. The passage reads as follows:
So I am sending to you, and through you to our friends there (i.e.,
in Athens), some of my Pythian Essays (Pythikoi logoi), like first-fruits
(aparchai), but I must confess that I am expecting many better essays
from you, since you of course have all the resources of a great city at
your disposal and enjoy greater leisure amid all those books and all that
philosophical discussion. (Plutarch, De E apud Delphos E)

Now, as any educated reader will know, the most famous aparchai re-
ceived in Athens were taken from the phoros, or tribute, submitted by
Athens’ allies. Plutarch’s language evokes memories of Athens in the th
century. By this formulation Delphi would be subordinate to Athens,
where, Plutarch says, his friends can enjoy all the advantages of a great
city. These are not measured by imports or tribute but in books and
discussions. So the university town of the late st century is a match for
Athens in its imperial heyday. But then the discussion immediately shifts
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“     ” 

to Apollo’s role in stimulating philosophical inquiry. In those terms, of

course, Delphi can claim a status that far exceeds that of Athens, since
all of Delphi is sacred to Apollo and all discussions that take place here
are infused with the god’s presence. Athens drops out of the picture
and we find ourselves firmly located in the god’s sanctuary. Delphi’s
numinous present is more than a match for Athens’ glorious past.
Imitating Plato, Plutarch casts the dialogue as the report of a conver-
sation that took place years earlier when Nero visited, but it is not the
presence of a Roman emperor that prompts either the earlier conversa-
tion or his recent recollection:
So, sitting them down by the temple, I began to inquire, and asked them
questions; thanks to the place and their responses, I recalled some things
which I had heard on another occasion many years earlier, when Nero
was here, and Ammonios and some others were talking, and the exact
same question had arisen. (Plutarch, De E apud Delphos B)
It is the place itself, says Plutarch, along with questions posed and
answers given that cause him to recall the conversation with Ammo-
nius he had witnessed years earlier. Plutarch’s language is deliberate:
references to inquiries and responses, and a spot that inspires utterance,
unmistakably evoke images of consulting the oracle of Apollo. Plutarch
is functioning not just as a philosopher, but also as a suppliant, mak-
ing inquiries and receiving answers, and, by now recalling that episode
and putting it into words he is behaving somewhat like the Pythia, or
at least as the priest of Apollo should, recalling utterances inspired by
the god in his holy sanctuary, and reporting them, just as the prophetes
would report the words of the Pythia. But the substance of what he
reports is not an enigmatic oracle. Rather, it is a philosophical discus-
sion about enigmata. The role of priest and the role of philosopher
are elided. This is a tremendously important move on Plutarch’s part,
because it means that all the philosophy that follows is imbued with an
aura of sanctity. Or, put another way, philosophical enquiry becomes a
holy and venerable activity.
This merging of philosopher and religion takes place in a disquisition
on the meaning of the famous E at Delphi. The E was a dedication, the
exact form of which is unclear to us, and the exact meaning of which
was opaque to Plutarch’s contemporaries. It was and is an enigma, a
suitable topic for Plutarch who saw enigmata as challenges posed by
god to mortals. Enigmata, in fact, allow the differences between phi-
losophy and religion to be elided. Plutarch works his way through a
whole battery of explanations for the meaning of the E—it’s a refer-
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  

ence to the five wise men, it’s a Chaldean code for the planets, it’s
a Pythagorean metaphor for perfection, it stands for the optative, it
really means “if ”, the word used by inquirers, and so on. Finally, stand-
ing all these readings on their head, Plutarch brilliantly contrasts them
with the absolute unity of the god’s essence, conveyed by what could
be called the ontological E, eei (“You are”). Philosophy as exemplified
in this logos becomes a discourse that begins with the contemplation of
an enigma—what is the E—and by the application of rational thought
leads the reader towards an appreciation of the complete unity of the
universe.
Delphi is crucial to Plutarch’s philosophy for two reasons: the speci-
ficity of Delphi’s location and the power of its monuments. The first
of these is, of course, an element of Delphi’s propaganda going well
back to the Archaic period. Apollo’s flight from Delos, his slaying of
the dragon, his guiding of the Cretan priests right to the shores of
the Krisaian Gulf below Delphi, are all part of a long tradition that
transformed a local cult in the foothills of Parnassos into a Panhellenic
shrine. But Plutarch is a vigorous proponent of an even more dramatic
claim regarding Delphi’s location, namely, that it is the centre of the
world. In the opening of De defectu oraculorum Plutarch makes reference
to the many stories of eagles flying from opposite ends of the earth and
meeting at Delphi. He then uses a modified version of the same story
to introduce the interlocutors in the logos:
Not long ago, just before the Pythian Festival in the archonship of Kallis-
tratos, in our own day, it so happened that two holy men came to Del-
phi from opposite ends of the inhabited world. Demetrios the Gram-
marian was coming home to Tarsos from Britain, while Kleombrotos of
Sparta had travelled a good deal in Egypt and through the land of the
Troglodytes, after having sailed even beyond the Red Sea.
(Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum A)
These high-flying philosophers have come from what Plutarch calls the
opposite ends of the oikoumene, the borders of which are suspiciously
close to those of the Roman empire. But there is no mention here of
imperium or arche, provinciae or governors. The oikoumene is the world of
the Roman Empire reconfigured as a Greek cultural zone, its borders
defined by the expeditions of philosophers, not legions, and its centre
located at a venerable Greek shrine, not Rome.
The theme of this dialogue is the supposed decline of oracles. At the
heart of the inquiry is the question, why have oracles declined? The
answers proposed in the dialogue all draw attention to the physical
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“     ” 

decline of Greece under the Romans. At Ptoon, once a flourishing

santuary of Apollo, one is now likely to run into a solitary shepherd,
a sure sign that the area is now a wasteland.2 It is one thing to see
the contemporary world of Roman Greece as inferior to the past,
but Plutarch is faced with the dilemma of explaining the concomitant
decline in religious activity without disparaging the gods. To do this,
he posits a middle layer between gods and men: daimones or demi-
gods. They interact with the world and when they forsake sanctuaries
oracles fall silent. God arranges prophesy, but oracles are subject to the
same general decay as the rest of the material world. As Sophocles says,
“Gods’ works die, though they do not.”3 This may be enough to save
Plutarch’s piety but it does not satisfy a skeptical Ammonios. When
pressed Plutarch turns from daimones to the earth itself to explain how
prophecy works:
The earth, what is more, sends out many other streams of power that
affect mankind. Some are harmful, bringing madness, sickness and
death, others are good, kindly, and beneficial. They become apparent
to us when we happen to come upon them. The prophetic stream and
spirit is the holiest and most divine, whether it comes by itself through
the air or is mixed with a stream of water. When it is combined with the
body, it creates a mixture that is unfamiliar to the soul, and peculiar, the
exact nature of which is difficult to explain clearly…” unbalanced quotes
(Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum D–E)
The trouble with this explanation is that it takes us so far from the
traditional gods that it threatens to make the procedural side of the
oracle appear to be no more than so much mumbo-jumbo. After all, if
it is just gas and possession then any one could be Pythia. Was Coretas,
the original enthusiast, any different from any other shepherd? The
answer to this takes us to the heart of Plutarch’s argument. Plutarch
postulates that any inquiry into first causes threatens to miss the specific
conditions and causes that distinguish one phenomenon from another.
For example, if you are trying to explain Polygnotos’ painting, or the
famous mixing bowl of Herodotus, you can inquire into the mixing of
paints or the forging of metal, but such inquiries will not explain these
particular masterpieces. This is because, according to Plutarch, there
are two general causes of coming into being: first causes, and necessary
or natural causes. In such a scheme, Delphi is a unique location. It

2 Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum A (Ptoon) and C (shepherds as indicators of

wasteland).
3 Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum D. See Nauck, TGF sv Sophocles .
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  

is the place where the earth and the gods join to provide oracular
guidance. Put another way, the place itself is a first cause of oracular
activity.
But there are other oracles, and other places where heaven and earth
meet: the cave of Trophonios, the oak tree at Dodona, the sacred pool
at Klaros. What makes Delphi different and what is specific to Delphi
is the human articulation of the sanctuary, the human environment
that grows up precisely here around this one prophetic stream: temple,
altar, Pythia, Lesche, paintings, dedications and treasures. Furthermore,
the procedures of the sanctuary become the means by which humans
connect with this world of first causes. We sprinkle the victim so as to
get a sign, to open the lines of communication with god. It is our way
of setting up a system that allows us to connect with the primal forces
of earth and heaven. In such a setting the Pythia is a key figure, since
it is she who must be possessed by and endure the god. But because
the human environment at Delphi, notably its monuments, is our link
with the sacred landscape, the very monuments of Delphi share in its
holiness. Plutarch makes this point over and over as he leads his guests
up the Sacred Way pointing out many miraculous events, all tied to
objects: the statue of the tyrant Hiero, that had fallen over on the day
of the tyrant’s death, the eyes that fell out of a Spartan statue before
Leuktra, the disappearance of Lysander’s stars and the appearance of
rough vegetation on his statue’s face, gold dates falling off the Palm
Tree at the time of the Athenian disaster in Sicily and the death of the
dancing girl Pharsalia because of a crowd rushing to grab the crown
she was wearing, a gift to her from Philomelos when he plundered the
sanctuary. These episodes lead Plutarch to contend that the dedications
at Delphi share in the god’s spirit:
Aristotle used to say that only Homer could compose poetry in which
the words moved thanks to their energy. I would have to say that among
dedications, too, the ones made here also can move and giving signs in
accordance with the god’s foreknowledge; no part of them is empty or
senseless; rather, all are full of the divine.” unbalanced quotes
(Plutarch, De Pythiae oraculis A)
One might add that these episodes often presage the collapse of em-
pires, a point that Plutarch may have wisely chosen not to underscore to
his contemporary audience. It is also notable that all these dedications
were made centuries earlier. If Delphi is to serve as the centre for a
Greek culture that is worthy of parity with Rome’s power it is a Delphi
in which the deep past is vividly present.
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“     ” 

Given the importance of Delphi to Plutarch’s programme, and in-

deed to his own experience, it is striking that the archaeological record
at Delphi does not at all fit Plutarch’s descriptions of the site. In the
early second century Delphi was adorned with hundreds if not thou-
sands of major dedications, yet Plutarch systematically ignores these in
favour of classical structures. In fact, in the immediate vicinity of the
temple and the Lesche of the Knidians, various Hellenistic kings and
Roman dignitaries had erected monuments that often replaced earlier
Greek dedications as they jostled for space in the area Daux called the
topos epiphanestatos.4 The early excavator of this section of the sanctu-
ary, Bourguet, remarks: “Toute la terrace devant le façade du Temple a
été peuplée dès le debut de l’époque romaine, puis sous les empereurs,
de statues pour lesquelles on ne s’est pas toujours contenté de faire de
la place en serrant les piédestaux les uns contres les autres. En cette
région, plus qu’en aucune de celles que nous avons parcourues, les
monuments de l’époque romaine et impériale ont chassé ceux qui y
existaient antérieurement.”5 By “l’époque romaine” Bourguet means
the second and first centuries BC, covering the age of Flamininus and
Aemilius Paullus, but his remarks also pertain to monuments erected
by Hellenistic rulers such as as Prusias of Bithynia, and Eumenes of
Pergamon, as well as the large pillar monument erected by a Roman
emperor (probably Nero or Domitian) at the eastern end of the temple.
These men carved out their prime locations at the expense of some of
the very Amphictyonic monuments whose restoration was celebrated
by Plutarch.
Furthermore, Plutarch ignores conspicuous earlier dedications by
monarchs such as Alexander  of Macedon, and makes no mention of
such famous dedications as the shield and crown offered by Flamininus
in thanks for his victory at Cynoscephalae, the equestrian statue put up
by the Delphians in honour of Flamininus, or the gold statue put up
by Perseus.6 Plutarch was certainly aware of these since it is his Vitae of
Flamininus and Aemilius Paulus that supply some of our best evidence
for these dedications.7 It is possible that some of the second century

4 Daux () –.

5 Bourguet () .
6 On Alexander  of Macedon at Delphi, see Miller () . On the dedications

of (and to) Flamininus and Perseus, see Miller () .

7 Plutarch, Flamininus .– (Flamininus’ shield and crown); Plutarch, Aemilius Paul-

lus . (Perseus’ gold statue, but see also Livy .. for multiple dedications by
Perseus); for the equestrian statue of Flamininus see FD III , .
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  

dedications by Hellenistic kings had been appropriated by Sulla, but

their pillar-bases were certainly still there, as were the imperial dedica-
tions. Yet despite his knowledge of the Hellenistic and Roman monu-
ments on the temple terrace, none figure in Plutarch’s topography. This
is all the more remarkable since Plutarch goes out of his way in De
defectu oraculorum to connect the philosophers’ conversion to their sur-
roundings. They travel up the Sacred Way, past the Temple and on
to the Lesche of the Knidians.8 The monuments they pass, therefore,
as they discuss the decline of oracles, are the Roman and Hellenistic
located close to the altar and temple.
Consistent with this systematic exclusion of the recent past, when
Plutarch does refer explicitly to the big men of the post-classical period
who consulted the oracle, his remarks are scathing. In explaining the
vagueness of oracular language Plutarch says that the oracle had to
protect itself when powerful cities, kings and ambitious tyrants con-
sulted it:
I wouldn’t be surprised if in former days there had been a need for some
ambiguity and obfuscation, because it wasn’t just anybody going down
to inquire about buying a slave or some business matter. No, it was very
powerful cities and kings and tyrants full of ambitious plans who used to
consult the god. It was scarcely to the advantage of those running the
oracle to annoy or provoke such people by having them hear things that
they didn’t want to hear… (Plutarch, De Pythiae oraculis D)

Plutarch goes on to explain that, in order to protect those in his

service, the god took pains to deflect the less unattractive aspects of the
truth by using poetry to distort his meaning. “There were, of course,
things that it would be better a tyrant did not know,” according to
Plutarch (D). Knowledge that could help the impious he concealed
by means of allegories and ambiguities. If the men who consulted
Delphi were unworthy of the oracle, then it goes without saying that
their dedications could hardly be thought to enhance the sanctuary, no
matter how valuable they were as mere objects. This is more explicitly
stated when Sarapion draws attention to the statue of Mnesarete, or
Phryne, the mistress of Praxiteles. Her statue is to be found, as Sarapion
says, “among the generals and kings.”9 Plutarch has just told us that the
speakers had passed the house of the Acanthians and Brasidas, and the

Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum D.

8

Plutarch, De Pythiae oraculis A: “Look up there and see golden Mnesarete amid
9

the generals and kings.”

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“     ” 

next stop on their itinerary will be by the south side of the temple, so
we are clearly in the immediate vicinity of the east end of the temple
terrace. The generals and kings, then, are those commemorated on the
Hellenistic and Roman monuments clustered around the temple’s east
porch. It is hardly complimentary, then, when Theon defends Phryne’s
inclusion in such rarified company saying that Praxiteles should have
been commended, instead of criticised, for putting Phryne here:
Crates should have praised Praxiteles because next to these golden kings
he erected a golden whore, thereby reproaching their wealth as worth-
less and unholy. The dedications of kings and rulers to the god should
be offerings of justice and moderation and a generous heart, not mon-
uments to the conspicuous consumption typical of the way of life of the
worst sort of people. (Plutarch, De Pythiae oraculis D)
When it comes to charging the Greeks with disgraceful conduct, for
making dedications that commemorate victories over other Greeks,
Plutarch is quite specific: “The Phocians from the Thessalians”, “The
Amphictyons from the Phocians” and so forth, but there is a stu-
dious silence when it comes to the Hellenistic and Roman dedications.
Plutarch resists naming specific monuments, relying instead on a blan-
ket condemnation. The Pythian logoi, in fact, excise Delphi’s recent
past, quite an accomplishment since there were physical reminders of
that past all over the sanctuary. Plutarch is often seen as unusually
accommodating towards Rome, but that accommodation stopped at
the doors of Apollo’s sanctuary.
A similar attitude towards the Roman presence at Delphi can be
seen in Pausanias’ description of the sanctuary of Apollo. When Pau-
sanias visited Delphi in the second century AD he saw the sanctuary
in much the same state as it must have appeared to Plutarch. Like
Plutarch, Pausanias managed to expunge the Roman presence from
Delphi almost entirely. He names  separate dedications and offer-
ings at Delphi, and not one of them is Roman. Arafat has noted that
Pausanias only mentions ten Roman dedications in the entire work.10
In fact he may have actively suppressed mention of some, because he
We know
states explicitly, “ unbalanced quotes
of no Roman before Mummius whether
private person or senator, who dedicated an offering in a Greek sanctu-
ary, but Mummius dedicated a bronze Zeus in Olympia from the spoils
of Achaea in  BC.11 Yet, as we have seen, immediately in front of the

10 Arafat () .

11 Pausanias ...
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  

temple of Apollo at Delphi stood the Aemilius Paullus monument, a

pillar originally erected by Perseus and rededicated by Aemilius Paullus
after his victory at Pydna in  BC. Furthermore, Plutarch says of
T. Flamininus, Manilius Acilius and Aemilius Paullus that “they had
not only kept their hands off the sanctuaries of the Greeks but had
given them gifts and added a great deal to their reputation and sanc-
tity.”12 It is very clear from Pausanias’ text that he walked right past
the Roman monuments. His silence on these dedications contrasts with
the almost manic detail of his description of Greek dedications in the
vicinity of the altar: the wolf of the Delphians, the statue of Phryne, two
Apollo statues, the Plataean ox, two new Apollos, statues of Aetolian
generals from the time of the Gallic invasions, Pheraian cavalry statues,
plus nine other separate dedications.13 It is undeniable, therefore, that,
like Plutarch, Pausanias simply filtered out those periods of the past
that did not evoke the days of Greece’s independence. As Chr. Habicht
has noted, Pausanias rarely mentions any art work or monument more
recent than the mid rd century BC, the very time when Delphi came
under the direct control of outside powers such as the Aetolians and
Macedonians.14
There are other correspondences between Plutarch and Pausanias
suggesting that both exemplify a crystallizing of cultural memory. For
example, although he appears to have begun his project as a skeptic,
Pausanias came round to a point of view concerning the enigmatic sto-
ries of the past that Plutarch would have thoroughly endorsed. Dis-
cussing the story of Rhea and Poseidon, he remarks,
As for these stories of the Greeks, when I began my work I regarded
them as full of nonsense, but now that I have reached the Arkadian
material I have begun to think about them this way: in the olden days
those of the Greeks who were considered wise spoke in enigmas, and
did not offer straightforward explanations, and so I think that this story
about Kronos is a piece of Greek wisdom. (Pausanias ..)

He doesn’t attempt to explain what this bit of philosophy might be,

but the land itself—here Arkadia, the most ancient part of Greece—
has persuaded this Greek who is not from Greece that ancient lore is
wisdom. In other words, the power of antiquity continues to operate
in the present. As with Plutarch, the landscape exists both in space

12 Plutarch, Sulla ..

13 On the itinerary through here see Amandry ()  n. .
14 Habicht () .
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“     ” 

and in time, and provides meaning to the traveller who, by crossing

the landscape, connects to the stories that take him into the past.
For Pausanias this is especially important because it is the location of
meaning in the landscape that distinguishes periegetic literature from
travelogue. Pausanias’ work does not include either Macedon, Aitolia,
Epiros, the islands of the Aegean or the Greek cities of the coast of Asia
Minor. It begins in Attica and ends in central Greece, a grand tour, full
of digressions, from Athens to Delphi. In short, Pausanias’ journey is
from the political centre of what was once independent Greece to the
religious centre of what is eternal Greece. In effect, both Plutarch and
Pausanias merge the glorious past with a timeless present.
With Delphi cut off from the usual flow of time it is also released
from the inevitable decline that time brings. Pausanias shares with
Plutarch the commonplace sentiment that “the affairs of men are tran-
sient and frail.”15 Mycenae, Nineveh and Boeotian Thebes have all
fallen into decline. Even Delos is no more than an outdoor museum
guarded by a few Athenian officers. On the other hand Alexandria and
Seleukia on the Orontes, “founded but yesterday” have risen to promi-
nence, illustrating the way Fortune now levels now elevates. The theme,
sic transit gloria mundi hardly makes for a unique connection between
Plutarch and Pausanias, but both writers appear to exempt Delphi from
the process of inevitable decline. For Plutarch it is a holy spot where the
god makes his presence felt, and for Pausanias it is the living centre of
a venerable Greece. In both cases the impact of Hellenistic and Roman
times is inconsequential.
The most obvious way of explaining the peculiarities of these ac-
counts would be to assert that the authors are writing Rome out of
the picture as a way of protesting the Roman domination of Greece.
Certainly Pausanias was no fan of Sulla or Nero, but by the same
token he readily acknowledged the generous benefactions of Hadrian.
In Plutarch’s case, it is simply not possible to make the case that he
despised Rome, and so in neither case can we rely on an explanation as
simple or banal as a Greek resistance to the Roman presence. Instead
the past is being divided into discrete phases, corresponding to the dif-
ferent treatments of the past identified in Assman’s work on cultural
memory. In Assman’s formulation oral societies employ the memory of
the past in three registers: the distant past, which is remembered in

15 Pausanias ...
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  

detail (if not accurately), the recent past, which is also relatively acces-
sible, and an intermediate stage, the floating past, which is both con-
tested and unclear.16 Pausanias’ awareness of the past splits into three
such registers: the deep past, rich in detail and myth, embedded in
the rituals and holy places of the entire Greek countryside, brought
vividly alive for him by his travels; the contemporary world, of Greece
under Roman control, stretching from the time of Hadrian to Marcus
Aurelius, a time of renewal, best illustrated by Hadrian’s building pro-
gramme in Athens; and in between, corresponding to Assman’s floating
time, the era from the Aetolian victory over the Gauls up to the recent
past. This is the period that is still contested.17 In a revealing passage,
Pausanias writes
The ages of Attalos and Ptolemy were so long ago that no familiarity
with those times survives, while the historians who were attached to those
kings to write accounts of their actions fell into neglect even sooner.
(Pausanias ..)

In one sense, the period from the rd to the st century was further
away, less known, than the glorious past commemorated by Herodotus.
Indeed, in narrating the story of the Gallic invasions Pausanias is able
to take up the mantle of Herodotus and even reclaim for the Phocians
some of the honour that they had forfeited by their pillaging of the
sanctuary in the th century. Graham Anderson has rightly remarked
that the Second Sophistic had a cult of the Greek past, but attitudes
to the past distinguished between what we would call the classical age
and the periods that came after.18 In that second phase Greece lost its
independence, and it seems not coincidental that it should be the mon-
uments of individuals like Prusias, Eumenes and Aemilius Paullus that
would be passed over.19 These were reminders of the political demise of
Greece and so did not warrant attention. As Arafat points out, though
there appears to be a sense of inevitable decline and fall operating in
Pausanias, it is in fact in the time of Mummius that he locates the
nadir of Greece’s fortunes. Since then conditions have improved. Mod-
ern critics have referred to Pausanias finding an explanation for the
shipwreck of Greece, but the shock of Rome’s triumph had engaged

16 Assmann (). The subject of attitudes to the past among Greeks in the second

century is also treated by Swain (), Bowie () and Sluiter (forthcoming).
17 Arafat () .
18 Anderson () .
19 Heer () .
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Greek thinkers as early as Polybius in the nd century BC.20 To suggest

that Pausanias was still reeling  years later perhaps misconstrues
the point of his and Plutarch’s work. The struggle of Second Sophis-
tic writers was not with Rome, but with their own identity, and in that
enterprise the sacred topography of Greece offered vastly greater riches
than Rome could muster.
A story in Pausanias perhaps will illustrate the point. At Olympia,
between the altar and the temple of Zeus there stood an ancient
structure called the pillar of Oinomaos. It was believed to be the last
remnant of the house of Oinomaos, the legendary king whose daughter
Pelops had won fraudulently by cheating in the chariot race against her
father. Pausanias says:
The following incident took place in my day. A Roman senator had
won an Olympic victory. He wanted to erect a bronze statue with an
inscription as a memorial of his victory, so a foundation was dug. The
excavation took place close to the pillar of Oenomaos, and while they
were digging they found there fragments of arms, bridles and curb
chains. I saw these objects myself as they were being excavated.
(Pausanias ..)
Pausanias’s narrative then picks up at the next monument, the Me-
troon, and we hear nothing further of the Roman senator or his statue.
Nor should we expect to. Why would Pausanias bother to record the
victory of some parvenue Roman when he had seen for himself the
actual equipment used by Oinomaos? In a place where one could
encounter the past as vividly as one encountered god, the majesty of
Rome looked very insignificant indeed.

20 Heer () –.

DeBlois. 104_DeBlois. Proef 1. 18-12-2003:12.24, page 56.