Greg Nagy
Last updated at
July 8, 2020, 2:55 p.m.
{"blocks":[{"key":"3gtda","text":"Our first impression, as we read the name Patroklos, may be that the referent here is the Homeric hero Patroklos. As we read on, however, we are quickly defamiliarized: this Patroklos is a historical figure, stemming from the Hellenistic era—which is the period of time starting with the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE and lasting up to the time when the Roman Empire takes possession of Hellas or ‘Greece’ in the second century BCE. I think that Pausanias, by way of his defamiliarizing gesture in introducing the name of Patroklos, is creating a signature, as it were, for the genre in which he is expressing himself. I agree with Cohen 2001:95 when she says that the work of Pausanias is one of the few surviving examples of this genre, which has “a Hellenistic background.” [[GN 2014.04.03.]]","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[{"offset":42,"length":9,"style":"ITALIC"}],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}}],"entityMap":{}}