Pausanias was motivated by his interest in religion, mythology, and the local legends around religious sites. His work has been regarded as some kind of "journey into identity", referring to that of the Greek beliefs and heritage. Pausanias describes the religious art and sacred architecture of many famous sites such as
Olympia and
Delphi. Although as a critic of art and architecture he is usually vague and frustratingly brief, his few words are often or usually the only surviving literary source from antiquity, and of great interest to historians and archaeologists. Even in the most remote Greek regions, he was fascinated by many kinds of holy relics, depictions of deities, and other mysterious and sacred things. For example, at
Thebes, Pausanias views the ruins of the house of the poet
Pindar, the shields of warriors who died at the famous
Battle of Leuctra, the statues of
Arion,
Hesiod,
Orpheus, and
Thamyris. He also visited the grove of the
Muses on Helicon and saw the portraits of
Polybius and of
Corinna at
Tanagra in
Arcadia. Pausanias was mostly interested in relics of antiquity, rather than contemporary architecture or sacred spaces. As
Christian Habicht, a modern day classicist who wrote a multitude of scholarly articles on Pausanias, says: "He definitely prefers the sacred to the profane and the old to the new, and there is much more about classical art of Greece than the about contemporary, more about gods, altars, and temples, than about statues of politicians or public buildings." Although he was no naturalist, he often gives brief comments on the physical aspects of the ancient landscapes he passed through. Pausanias wrote about the pine trees located on the coast of
Ancient Elis, the wild
boars and the deer in the oak woods of
Seliana (Phelloe), and the crows amid the oak trees in
Alalcomenae. Towards the end of
Description of Greece, Pausanias touches on the fruits of nature and products, such as the date palms of ancient
Aulis, the wild strawberries at
Mount Helicon, the olive oil in
Tithorea, as well as the "white blackbirds" of
Mount Kyllini (Cyllene) and the
tortoises of Arcadia. Pausanias includes multiple passages referring to the Jews, whom he generally designates as "
Hebrews." In one instance (1.5.5), he mentions the
revolt of the "Hebrews beyond Syria" against Emperor
Hadrian. In another passage (8.16.5), he describes the wondrous
tomb of Helena in
Jerusalem, which he notes was a city in the "land of the Hebrews" that had been
entirely razed by
Vespasian. However, Pausanias mistakenly identifies
Helena as a local woman; in reality, she was a royalty from
Adiabene, a kingdom in northern
Mesopotamia, who had
converted to Judaism. and others believe his strange ending was intentional. He concludes his
Periegesis with a story about a Greek author, thought to be
Anyte of Tegea, who has a divine dream. In the dream, she is told to present the text of
Description of Greece to a wider Greek audience in order to open their eyes to "all things Greek". == Reception ==