In writing his Description of Greece, Pausanias sought to put together a lasting written account of "all things Greek", or panta ta hellenika.

Pausanias's pilgrimage throughout the land of his ancestors was his own attempt to establish a place in the world for this new Roman Greece, connecting myths and stories of ancient culture to those of his own time.

[7] Unlike a modern day travel guide, in Description of Greece Pausanias tends to elaborate with discussion of an ancient ritual or to impart a myth related to the site he is visiting.

While he never doubts the existence of the deities and heroes, he criticizes some of the myths and legends he encountered during his travels as differing from earlier cultural traditions that he relates or notes.

Following their presumed authoritative contemporary Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, classicists tended to regard him as little more than a purveyor of second-hand accounts and believed that he had not visited most of the places that he described.