You think tourism is a modern idea? Think again!
It’s summer vacation time again! My wife Marcia and I were looking at Mediterranean cruises, and that made me think of those inveterate tourists, the ancient Romans. (OK, so my mind travels in odd directions.)
Years ago I read Tony Perottet’s marvelous book, Route 66 A.D., and I have him to thank for most of what I know about this topic.
(Perottet has since changed the title to Pagan Holiday – evidently too many people thought it was about the historic U.S. highway!)
The more I study the ancient world, the more I learn about just how smart and creative those people really were. It's amazing how many of our “modern” ideas were actually around thousands of years ago.
Take the idea of tourism, for instance. Thousands of years ago, long before flashy Aloha shirts and ugly knee-sox were invented, there was a flourishing tourist industry around the Roman Empire. Plenty of Romans had the itch to travel, and, as citizens of the richest, most powerful nation in the world, quite a few of them were wealthy enough to scratch that itch.
And Roman and other entrepreneurs were ready to fill their needs.
For instance:
Today, when we begin planning our vacations, we often get out our Lonely Planet Guides and our AAA Tour Guides to determine what sights to see, and to find what hotels are recommended. Hotels are rated by AAA, for instance, at 1 to 4 diamonds, depending on their quality.
Ancient Romans had their choice of several guides, written by scholars instead of travel writers, and exhaustively detailed. One fellow, Pausanius, devoted almost thirty years to his guidebook of Greece, and it’s so detailed that archeologists still consult it today. Pausanius may be the most widely-read travel guide in human history.
The Peutinger Table, shown above, named after its modern discoverer Konrad Peutinger, is a travelers’ map of the entire Roman Empire. It shows the location of all inns and hostelries, and, like AAA, rates them for quality – a little picture of one tower means acceptable lodging, two towers is middle of the road, and a four-sided building is a first-rate inn, where you won't have to share your bed with strangers, and there's a good chance the food will be reasonably fresh and the wine drinkable. (This is the only surviving travel map- there were probably many, many competitors a couple of millennia ago.)
Now today, when we arrive at our destination, we often rent a car to travel around in, to see the local sights. The Romans did, too. And just like today, you could rent an economy car- a 2-wheeled buggy, or the Lincoln Town Car of its day- a cozy covered wagon pulled by a team of mules.
Roman tourists tended to pick the high-end option, because they tended to be rich, and carried a lot of luggage. They also had a couple of slaves, and 2 or 3 bodyguards to guard all the cash they had to carry around. Roman bankers hadn’t invented a “Roman Express Card” – but you can bet they had already thought of it. It’s just that plastic hadn’t been invented yet. (“Don’t Leave Rome Without It!”)
One reason we travel today is to visit ancient historical sites, and with the Romans it was no different. Now, you might be thinking “But the Romans are PART of the ancient world- what would they visit?”
Well, consider this little factoid: When Julius Caesar sailed to Egypt in 47 BC, the Pyramids were MORE ANCIENT TO HIM THAN HE IS TO US! And the Egyptian tourism industry was ready and waiting for Julius and his cronies when they landed.
Some of you may remember the days before selfies--wherever you would go, from Las Vegas to London, there would always be some photographer ready to snap your picture and sell it to you.
The Egyptians may have been the first to come up with this idea. They had no cameras, of course, but they did have Speed Painters. These guys hung around the Pyramids with several already-finished paintings of the monuments. For a few drachma, they would paint your smiling face in the foreground, and you would have a personalized souvenir to take home and hang on the wall of your villa. When people came to visit, they would say “Oh, I see you’ve been to Egypt. My wife and I are thinking of going next year. How did you like it?” And thus might begin a conversation that has been repeated countless times over the millennia.
So next time you have a souvenir photo taken at the Luxor, remember that this was already being done in front of the REAL Pyramids.
AT LEAST 2000 years ago.
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