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

The Romans were surprisingly like we are today. They were mostly a moral people whose women, Tony Perrottet reports, covered their breasts while making love. There existed, however, an upper class that dedicated itself to hedonistic pleasures of the most carnal order, a class that attracted the rebuke of middle class Empire citizens such as the apostle Paul. Evidence from sites such as Pompei and Ephesus reveal that upper class Romans would have formed something very much like certain sectors of the InterNet. Instead, however, they had to walk, ride, or sail places. It took longer and a journey into pleasure could take years. Still, with one's copy of Pausanias in hand, you could spend this time well-occupied, either in prayer at the various shrines along the way or in joyful debauch.

Perrottet both describes the life of the Roman traveler of 66 A.D. and the modern tourist of today who tramps over the same roads that toga-clad philosophers and bacchanalians took. This, Perrottet claims, is the most heavilly touristed part of the world today, as it was in the beginning. Tourists go to the same sites for pretty much the same reasons: to Pompei to enjoy the pornography; to Athens to look at the ancient ruins; to the Peloponnese to visit the notable shrines such as Olympia and hidden monasteries in the mountains; to Ephesus to marvel at the city; to Troy and nearby Gallipoli to remember dead forebears; and to Egypt to see the pyramids. He compares and contrasts things such as lodging, dining, the problem of booking ship passages, the problem of being sick on the road, and the purchase of souvenirs inscribed or engraved with mementos of the sites seen along the way.

Though most of the places he mentions are in ruins, Perrottet sees them as living still. We walk, ride, float, and ride with him through all the magical places that the Romans loved to see and to some new ones bearing the imprint of Christianity and wars in the centuries subsequent to the original travelers' accounts. We meet men who are pilgrims, others who are patients, and others who are simple bohemians seeking variety. We follow the Emperor Nero among the Greeks (the only people, he felt, who knew how to appreciate him) and get to know them today. We get a taste of the cocksuredness of young Julius Caesar taken in by the pirates (he made them quintuple the ransom they were asking for him because he felt it was too low for a man of his quality) and we get to see his modern versions, the ugly Americans, Israelis, Koreans, Japanese, Australians, Englishmen, and what ever else he falls across along the way.

This book has caused me to revisit my own experiences along the part of the road that Tony Perrottet and I shared. And it has rekindled in me a long dormant love for the Roman and Greek classics, those prototypes of the modern novel, short story, travelogue, and poem rescued for us by monks from the book burnings of the Middle Ages or simply laid to rest in an impromptu archaeological cemetery. As I read Perrottet, I often found myself being back in Greece, my memories projected against a marble cliff face part-overgrown with struggling cypresses. I'm not quite so crass about the Greek people, but then I have also visited some of the places that foreign tourists seldom go. Perrottet is often dead on in his descriptions of Greece today. And though sometimes he becomes disgusted with the commercialism of the tourist stops and the people who inhabit them, he retains a sense of fondness, both for what was and what is today. It's a true book, an honest book about a man in time and trying to see between times, a journey full of the pleasures both of the flesh and of the spirit.

At the time of this writing, the hardcover edition is selling at 30% off. It's a good read to take along as you face the crowds of summer in those secret places that everyone knows about now.