tourism
tourismWell-known Greek tourists include Solon, said (Herodotus 1. 30) to have visited Egypt and Lydia ‘for the sake of seeing’ (theōria), and Herodotus himself. Sea-borne trade and sightseeing were surely companions from an early date, as they still were in the 4th cent. (Isocrates Trapeziticus 17. 4). A genre of Greek periegetic (‘travel’) literature arose by the 3rd cent., from which date fragments survive of a descriptive work, On the Cities in Greece, by Heraclides Criticus (ed. F. Pfister (1951); for partial trans. see Austin 83); the only fully preserved work of this type is the Roman Pausanias. Under Rome ancient sightseeing came into its own. A papyrus (Tebtunis Papyri 1. 33 / Bagnall and Derow 58) of 112 BC gives instructions to prepare for a Roman senator's visit to the Fayūm, including titbits for the crocodiles; the...
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