Pausanias

Pausanias traveled Greece around 110–180 AD, when Rome ruled and the classical world had begun its long fade. He wrote Description of Greece, a firsthand account of what he saw: crumbling sanctuaries, forgotten rituals, the physical traces of a culture slipping into legend. The work is part travelogue, part salvage operation. Where ancient literature mentioned a site or statue, Pausanias often supplied the coordinates. Centuries later, archaeologists digging in the places he described found the stones exactly where he said they'd be, rescuing details that might otherwise have stayed lost or di…