Ideals and Ruins: Pausanias, Longinus, and the Second Sophistic

Abstract

Abstract This chapter sets out to explore affinities of mind and attitude between two Greek authors from the Roman Imperial period: Pausanias (fl. A.D. 170) and pseudo-Longinus (henceforth “Longinus”), author of On the Sublime (Ilrpl ihpm). The juxtaposition of these two writers may at first glance seem unlikely. The riddle of the latter’s precise dates and name aside. what might an antiquarian and a literary critic have in common? And yet their very location as Greeks in a Roman world. each gazing longingly upon a distant past. that of Classical Greece. makes the comparison irresistible. Both authors practice a fonn of travel (in the first instance) through time, and they seek out monuments as their landmarks. Longinus tours the literary remains of his heritage in much the san1e way as Pausanias collects a material record of the pastitsmonumental, historical, mythological, and religious remains-in an attempt to hold that record together in his imagination. Each in his o\Vl1 way writes a guidebook to the great monuments of Greece. In doing so, they share and exhibit a cultural imaginary that is typical of Greek writers in the Imperial period who are conventionally grouped together under the rubric of the “Second Sophistic.”

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