Pausanias’ Dead Poets Society

This chapter examines the tombs of poets in Pausanias’ Description of Greece. It argues that the buried bones of ancient poets, and of heroes featured in their poetry, function as a kind of root system that, in Pausanias’ imagination, nourishes the sacred landscape of Greece, ensuring that the memories it holds always stay lush with life. For Pausanias, poets, through their deaths and their graves, become part of the mythical history that is itself a product of the poets’ imaginations. That history is, within the discursive topography of Pausanias’ Description, embodied—and entombed—in a landscape defined by its numinous places and monuments.