Strabo and Pausanias both came from Roman Asia Minor and wrote extensive descriptions of Greece. This is where the similarities seem to end. Since the ‘rediscovery’ of Greece in the early nineteenth century, most scholars have admired Pausanias' detailed Periegesis as an excellent source and guide, while books eight and nine of Strabo's Geography have often been dismissed because, with some exceptions, they look superficial and at times inaccurate in comparison. This paper aims to show that a comparison between the two authors should not merely be based on an assessment and evaluation of factual detail. I ask how the aims and interests of Strabo and Pausanias, influenced by their cultural and historical context, shaped their views of Greece and its past.

Mainland Greece posed a challenge to any author because of its long and widely known literary tradition and the large amounts of secondary literature that needed to be taken into account. Unlike the traditions for other regions of the Roman empire, the literary tradition concerning Greece is fairly well known today, and Second Sophistic literature in particular offers numerous texts that draw on the same material to deal with aspects of Greece and its past. In this literary context Strabo's and Pausanias' interests and preferences become easier to understand. In fact, their approaches to Greece are radically different.