Spring is fast approaching, and the weather’s warming up.
For some of us, that means heading for the beach. For others, it means seeking adventure out in the cool mountain air, hiking through forested hills, or jetting off to cosmopolitan cities for chilled weekend breaks. Particular prestige awaits those who immerse themselves in the “authentic local culture”: that tantalizing, eternally elusive prize for any inquisitive traveller in today’s globalised world.
Along the way, we keep journals of our journeys; snap idyllic photos for Instagram; leave glowing or scathing reviews of our lodgings on TripAdvisor and Airbnb. But wherever we roam, and however we choose to market our adventure to others, we all go with one common aim: to relax.
How do these modern concepts stack up against travel in the Classical period? Did many affluent ancients aspire to hit the beach in the spring and summer, or was this a pursuit reserved exclusively for the wealthy?
Would ancient Greek and Roman voyagers recognise our concept of “travel” — or of a “holiday?” What about undertakings like sightseeing, aspirational travel, or even sustainable tourism?
These are some of the questions we’ll be answering over the course of this five-part series. Because when we examine the ancient sources closely, we find that our holiday ideals have more in common with Greek and Roman ones than we might expect — but also that our concepts of vacationing differ from those of our ancestors in some surprising ways.
Ancient travel and the yearning for adventure
The urge to travel was woven deep into ancient Greek consciousness from the beginning. The Iliad and the Odyssey, which were recited orally as early as the eighth century BCE, and hearken back to the world of the Mediterranean Bronze Age centuries earlier, describe a psychological conflict many modern travellers would recognise: the battle between the yearning for adventure and the comforts of home.
The Homeric poet continually returns to the juxtaposition between Achilles’ desire for kléos (κλέος), fame and glory, and Odysseus’ nóstos (νόστος), or longing to return home — the latter of which gives us the root of our word “nostalgia.”
Granted, travelling to achieve immortal glory in battle is not exactly the stuff of modern holiday brochures. But Odysseus’ epic island-hopping reflects a genuine curiosity about the wider world, which manifested itself in ancient Greek culture in many ways. As early as the Greek Archaic Period, in the seventh century BCE, we find material evidence of travel among Hellenic city-states — and it only continued to expand from there.
In the early days of pre-Classical Greece, religious pilgrimage seems to have been the biggest call to adventure and the most widespread reason for wandering.
The famed sanctuaries at Delphi and Delos, both made famous by the Homeric epics, offered not only the promise of personalised oracles (for those willing and able to spend a fortune on temple offerings), but also shrines and pilgrimage sites for travellers who couldn’t afford to splurge on a solid-gold chariot for the gods.
Amid towering marble buildings and burbling fountains, pilgrims would dedicate small clay figures and other votive objects to their favourite divinities, with the aim of obtaining heavenly favour and blessings.
Health pilgrimages also drew vast crowds, from the earliest Hellenic periods onward. The afflicted might travel great distances to consult specialists in cities like Kos, the birthplace of Hippocrates, or Epidaurus, where the medicine-god Asklepios himself was said to make his home.
Medical cures were closely bound up with divine favour in the ancient Greek mind; so it’s no surprise that natural wonders like caves, springs and groves also became famous for their enchanted healing properties, and drew throngs of hopeful sufferers.
But long-distance travel in the Archaic period wasn’t to be undertaken lightly.
In tumultuous times of shifting alliances between bellicose city-states, travelling across the Greek peninsula was fraught with all sorts of danger.
Highway robbery was widespread; and if one was endowed with obvious wealth, kidnapping and ransom were likely, unless one travelled with an armed guard — and even then, safety was not guaranteed.
In Sophocles’ play, Oedipus Rex, the ill-fated Oedipus slew his father, Laius, along with most of his father’s guards, at a three-way crossroads between the cities of Thebes, Delphi, and Daulis.
Of course, the Oedipus story is the stuff of legend, and we should be careful using it to make historical assumptions. But Sophocles didn’t need to give Laius a retinue for the plot to work. More likely, kings travelling the perilous roads of the ancient world in armed company represented common practice. And Sophocles’ audience knew it.
On a larger scale, of course, there was the ever-present threat of inter-city warfare, which could turn any plain or valley into a battlefield at very short notice.
By sea, logistics became still more complicated. Tourist ships wouldn’t exist until the early centuries CE, which meant an aspiring traveller in the early Hellenic era would have no option but to try to talk a trader into accommodating a guest belowdecks. Piracy was so commonplace that ancient Greek authors considered it a perfectly honourable maritime profession.
And even if a marine voyager could stomach the seasickness, rumbling storm clouds on the horizon must surely have made sea travel a queasy proposition, no matter how close to the coast the captain hewed.
But for those who braved these dangers to set off on their adventure, the rewards could be remarkable. In my next post about the birth of tourism, we’ll be deep-diving into what these rewards were and where you could find them.
