Pausanias's description of his travels through Greece provides modern archaeologists with valuable information about the location of particular monuments. His anecdotes concerning the buildings and monuments he visited are also a useful resource for historians. Any nonacademic travelers going to Greece today for a simple vacation might find him useful for the very, reasons he originally wrote: to explain the sights, as a tour guide, to curious tourists. The following representative excerpt suggests that the ancient Olympic Games could be as scandalous as they sometimes are today, and stories of a landmark's past had a ready audience among ancient travelers:

[If you are walking through the sight of the athletic competitions at Olympia] "on the way to the racing- track from the Mother's sanctuary, on the left at the edge of Mount Kronion, there is a stone platform against...