Pausanias

Pausanias was a Greek traveller and geographer of the second century AD, writing under the Roman Empire. Little is known of his life beyond what his own book reveals: he seems to have come from Asia Minor, and he travelled in Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt and Italy.

His Description of Greece, in ten books, is a guide to the monuments, shrines, statues and cults of mainland Greece, set down region by region and enlivened with local legend, history and myth. It remains the chief ancient source for the sites it describes, and archaeologists still carry it to Greece.