Greek travellers tried to take their city with them: travel is typically conducted as a civic act, one justified and defined by one's tie to the city: trade, for example, or martial aggression, or colonization. This article discusses the range of travel experiences reflected in surviving literature. The study of ancient travel focuses on the process of travelling, on individual travellers' movements and their reactions to particular journeys and places. The evidence is therefore mainly literary, with valuable additions from epigraphic sources. The remains of sites that were particularly attractive to ancient travellers, depictions of their means of transport, shipwrecks, and traces of ancient roads can add further information. Greek travel literature had a strong influence on early modern geography and ethnography, and it still has an impact on how people understand the Greek world.
The Limits of Rationalism: Early Modern Geography and the Idea of Europe