Periegesis

a periegesis of Greece

Dionysius, a learned geographer, to whom is attributed a Periegeſis, or Survey of the Earth, in Greek verse.

[H]ad we been able to obtain a periegesis of Greece for the year 776 b.c., we should have discovered from one end of the country to the other nothing but legends, preached by the men of genius, received both with earnest emotion and with sincere faith by the hearers.

Where did Cassiodorus read that the Huns were the neighbors of the Seres, supposedly the Chinese? There is little doubt that his source was one of the popular compendia which, directly or indirectly, went back to Dionysius [Periegetes]' Periegesis. Cassiodorus recommended "the map of Dionysius" to his monks. It is not particularly significant that in both the Getica and the Periegesis the Caspian Sea is a gulf of the ocean; this was a belief held and combatted since the time of the Ionian geographers.

There is not a single ancient Greek source that depicts someone using maps in a practical situation. […] '[G]eographical knowledge' did not depend on maps, but on other media, such as travel reports, sea journeys and periegeses, descriptions of a particular country. Geography relied on words and discourses, on human memory.

A periegesis is usually understood to be a geographical catalogue, cast in the form of a tour, often of a local area but sometimes more extended in scope. The form is related to local history. Modem scholarship has established that there was a specifically periegetic form of historiography, stretching back at least to the third century b.c.; […]

This inquiry into Pausanias' generic affinities may seem to have come up with mostly negative results: the Periegesis is not a travel guide; it is not a geography; it is not a work like that of Herakleides Kritikos; it is not a full-blown imitation of Herodotean historiography, nor of Arrianic epistolography; it is not a periplous, and it is not, finally, a periegesis.

Few readers approach Pausanias' Periegesis from the beginning, sailing round Cape Sounion and arriving in Athens, before following his convoluted routes through Greece. Not many, in fact, have read the whole work, but almost anyone with an interest in ancient Greece will have 'come across' Pausanias – usually by looking up particular passages: the Periegesis contains useful material for many purposes.