Database “Images in Pausanias”

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Database  “Images in Pausanias”

The Greek author Pausanias, who was active in the 2nd century CE in the intellectual atmosphere of the Second Sophistic, wrote his “Description of Greece” (perihegesis tes Hellados) with the aim of dealing with “all Greek things” (panta ta Hellenika). Under this classicist premise, he mentioned and described many things worth seeing (theoremata), not least being works of art, together with oral and literary narratives (logoi) associated with them which were collected by Pausanias in the cities and sanctuaries of Greece during the Roman era.

The purpose of the database “Images in Pausanias” is to register systematically all figurative works of art found in Pausanias and make them accessible for combined online research. Bibliographical notes are provided in order to facilitate access to the respective scholarship. Regarding bibliography, Book X is still a work in progress, due to the fact that the volume in question of the commented edition “Pausania, Guida della Grecia” has not yet appeared (August 2014), the latter being an important source for the database.

For original Greek works of art that have survived and have been plausibly identified, links are given to the meta-database “Arachne” (in progress). Roman works of art, which are considered by modern scholarship to be copies of Greek originals mentioned in Pausanias, have not been taken into consideration because of the hypothetical nature of the majority of these attributions and without a clear borderline between plausible and improbable identifications being present.

The content of the database for every work of art provides the text passage of Pausanias in question, together with a German translation of the text (E. Meyer, in some cases modified). Moreover, it contains information in the following categories: place and context of original setting (e.g. sanctuary, public space), function (e.g. cult statue, commemorative monument, honorary statue), genre (e.g. sculpture in the round, relief), theme, artist, commissioner, material, and date. A combined search is possible via the extended search function of “Arachne".

This project was realized under the direction of Tonio Hölscher at the Institute of Classical Archaeology of the University of Heidelberg. The task of compiling and processing the data was in the hands of Katharina Bolle, Gunnar Dumke, Johannes Fouquet, Werner Schneider and Nicolas Zenzen. All work in Heidelberg was financed by the Institute of Classical Archaeology and from funds of the Manfred Lautenschläger Research prize awarded to Tonio Hölscher.

The implementation of the database “Images in Pausanias” into the meta-database “Arachne” was initiated and supervised by Reinhard Förtsch. The data import was prepared and coordinated by Marcel Riedel. Benjamin Gelhaar and David Neugebauer executed the implementation. The present page was developed by Karen Schwane. To all sponsors and promoters as well as to all collaborators and contributors we express our warmest thanks.