The Periegesis attests to a form of cultural tourism we would still recognise: it is animated by the desire to see for oneself distant places previously only read about.

He also demonstrates how myths guided curious travellers to particular places, the kinds of responses they provoked, and the ways they could be tested or disputed. He shows us that the physical landscape was nothing without the stories of heroes and gods that made sense of it, and reveals what was at stake in claims to possess the past. Pausanias gives us the clearest glimpse of ancient Greek myth as a living, local tradition. Our best source for the ways that local communities told and used these stories is a travel guide from the second century AD, the Periegesis of Pausanias. Greek myth comes to us through many different channels.