Route 66 A.D.: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists

_Pagan Holiday_ by Tony Perrottet is both an amusing and interesting travel book and an excellent history focused on the very first age of tourism, the age of Roman tourism. With the advent of a massive, highly detailed and for the time very accurate map unveiled in 5 B.C. (completed by the Roman war hero Marcus Agrippa), the completion and extension of Rome's glorious highway system, the acceptance of Roman currency even to the farthest reaches of the Empire, two unifying common languages (Greek and Latin), and the Pax Romana (the longest unbroken period of peace in European history, lasting roughly from 30 B.C. to A.D. 200), the world was open to legions of Roman tourists. These viatores or peregrinatores (wayfarers; also called spectatores or sightseers) would go on what he called the original Grand Tour, journeying to resorts in other parts of the Italian peninsula, to sacred and historical sites in Greece (the Hellenic "greatest hits" including Athens, Delphi, Olympia, Sparta, and Epidaurus), the Olympic games if possible, to the ruins of Troy, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the exotic and fantastic ruins in Egypt (which to first century A.D. spectatores were mostly enigmatic relics from a forgotten epoch, nearly as ancient to the Romans as they are to us today). Across the entire Mediterranean world a complex tourist infrastructure arose to cater to the needs of the Roman traveler. Perottet sought to both describe the experiences of the Roman tourists - who they were, what they saw, how they traveled, and the difficulties they encountered - and to replicate their travels as closely as possible, to show to the modern reader what they might have been like and to describe the ruins as they appear today. I found the parallels between Roman and modern tourism quite striking. Perrottet provided numerous examples of Roman contemporary accounts of stays at roadside inns (where even some of the richest Roman tourists complained of hard mattresses, leaky roofs, and bad food), eating at restaurants serving highly questionable fare, visiting lavish temples (which the author noted were in many ways the equivalent of modern museums as they were often crowded with statues and all manner of artifacts), and sending home letters to friends and loved ones. Another parallel between Roman and modern travel (particularly in the Third World) is the fact that tourists often had to deal with shysters and con artists competing for their attention at every site they visited, each one proclaiming that he can show secrets about the site and provide a true and accurate history (though that was very rarely the case). Perrottet vividly described the hordes of professional tour guides (called mystagogi) that clustered around the most significant tourist attractions, each competing for the attention of the Roman tourist, spouting memorized spiels of "facts" to the tourist, often geared towards the Roman ear by tying in local legends and ruins to Homeric accounts of the Tro

Tony Perrottet has given us a book that bridges good historiography and travel writing--it is intelligent and an entertaining read. I read it over weeks, taking dips into it between tasks, reading gobbets of it without intending to. It is full of wonderfully researched classicist details and relays a compelling story--with the narrator often comparing present Mediterranean tourism with that of the distant past. Perrottet gives a wonderfully fresh perspective on the backyard of Rome, bringing us along a tourist trail that is certainly well beaten. To make this material fresh and new is remarkable. His comparisons reveal as much about his sense of humor as they do about the customs and habits (not always attractive) of the ancient "spectatores" and "viatores" (sightseers and tourists). The voluminous and relevant research is presented by the first person narrator and would never be presented as cogently or as compellingly in an academic history. What he includes (and revels in) are details often discarded from standard histories--descriptions of Greek sideshows and "fleshpots" along with more mundane things like where they ate and how much they paid. A great read.

This is a good antidote to the travel bug, as it describes the discomforts of no star hotels and slow trains in Italy. Turkey, Greece and Egypt with a pregnant mate. (Like other reviewers I'd love to hear her side of the story but it may be a deliberate part of Perrottet's artistry that we are left largely to imagine this). As the title suggests, the theme is ancient Roman tourism, about which he is knowledgeable and entertaining. He is linked to these lands by being a classical scholar and the grandson of an ANZAC hero killed at Gallipoli. These two things separate him from the mere purveyors of comic travel anecdotes in the tradition of Mark Twain's "Innocents Abroad" but he is also tremendously funny. He is a master of the "didn't seem funny at the time" story, like the description of the Egyptian train journey and the telephone calls about disasters in his New York apartment. A nice last sentence.

I picked up this book when I read a couple of Perrottet's stories in the Sunday Times here in London... Like most people, I have a vague working knowledge of ancient history, mostly gleaned from old 'I, Claudius' repeats on BBC, but I love traveling in the Mediterranean (I go every year to Italy or the Greek Islands). I found the book to be an absolute eye-opener, making these great connections between the ancient world and what we see and experience today. The idea of Roman tourists going to all the places that I love, reading papyrus scrolls and fighting with irritating tour guides, and even hiring professional stone cutters to inscribe graffit in Homeric verse, really made me see things in a different way. I think the book is actually side-splittingly funny as well as being incredibly learned and informative, and it probably should be made into a movie of some kind. Perottet's wanderings are just as adventurous as other travel writers who go to remote and supposedly exotic places -- except that he's able to wring some real fun out of places that we've all seen before. If you're going anywhere near the Mediterranean this year, pick up this book. You'll never see the Colosseum (or Parthenon or the Pyramids) the same way again...

This has got to be the most original travel book I've ever read. I bought it because I've been to Italy and Egypt, and am planning a visit to Greece this summer, but I think anyone with a love of travel would enjoy it. It makes ancient history alive and accessible (I used to love 'I, Claudius') through human interest -- sightseeing, food, a fair bit of sex (who knew the Romans were THAT ribald?) I learned a huge amount about the Roman world without even realizing it -- the small details pile up until you feel like you've actually been to the Empire yourself! Anyway, I thought it was a hoot. The bit at the end about his visit to a Nubian wedding actually made me cry with laughter.