Pagan Holiday

Zusatztext Perrottet is a nearly unflappable traveler and a terrifically funny writer; this history-cum-travelogue is as enjoyable as it is informative and twice as quirky. The Boston Globe An appealing...mix of the zany and the arcane! juggling an energetic account of ancient Roman travel habits with a witty record of [the author's] own modern journey. The New York Times Required reading...a charming popular history of ancient Roman sight-seeing. Forbes FYI A splendid trip...a whimsical trek through classical history! famous sites and arcane trivia...provides a rich cache of information about ancient Roman life. The Washington Post Informationen zum Autor Tony Perrottet Klappentext The ancient Romans were responsible for many remarkable achievementsRoman numerals, straight roadsbut one of their lesser-known contributions was the creation of the tourist industry. The first people in history to enjoy safe and easy travel, Romans embarked on the original Grand Tour, journeying from the lost city of Troy to the Acropolis, from the Colossus at Rhodes to Egypt, for the obligatory Nile cruise to the very edge of the empire. And, as Tony Perrottet discovers, the popularity of this route has only increased with time. Intrigued by the possibility of re-creating the tour, Perrottet, accompanied by his pregnant girlfriend, sets off to discover life as an ancient Roman. The result is this lively blend of fascinating historical anecdotes and hilarious personal encounters, interspersed with irreverent and often eerily prescient quotes from the ancientsa vivid portrait of the Roman Empire in all its complexity and wonder. Leseprobe Chapter 1 Jupiter's Panorama It must have been like a film premiere at Cannes. Throngs of excited spectators filed their way into the heart of Rome, shamelessly ogling the latest fashions and pointing out the celebrities in their midst. An impatient crowd was soon milling outside the venue-an elegant, column-lined arcade called the Vipsania Colonnade, expressly built as a sort of open-air art gallery-where a sensational new opus was about to be unveiled. White-robed priests were busy sacrificing animals to guarantee the ongoing favor of the gods. Choruses of youths sang patriotic anthems. Silver fountains burbled in nearby gardens, while food vendors and beggars noisily worked the crowd. At last, this colorful audience of ancient Romans-everyone from perfumed aristocrats in their silk gowns and brilliant togas to impoverished slum dwellers in their grimy tunics-jostled to the foreground, all trying to have their observations heard above the cacophony. Looming above them was a dazzling spectacle-a map of the world as large as a drive-in movie screen, showing the three known continents, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Two thousand years later, it's easy to imagine the frisson of that heady scene-especially if you happen to be, as I was, piecing it together in the fabulous halls of the New York Public Library in midtown Manhattan, a modern-day Roman temple whose interior gleams with marble and ceilings swarm with depictions of the pagan gods. I'd fled there to escape the first heat wave of summer-steam was rising from the sidewalks like the fumes from Hades-and besides, New York reality was starting to close in on me, in more ways than one. But in that silent refuge, surrounded by piles of musty, leather-bound volumes, I found myself easily transported back to that moment in Imperial Rome, circa 5 b.c., when the world's horizons suddenly opened. Few ancient citizens had even seen a street map before that day, let alone a chart of such divine ambition. The image would have been as futuristic then as the first satellite photos from NASA. Exhaustive research for the map had been orchestrated by a man named Marcus Agrippa-a Roman war her...

Autorentext

Tony Perrottet

Klappentext

The ancient Romans were responsible for many remarkable achievements—Roman numerals, straight roads—but one of their lesser-known contributions was the creation of the tourist industry. The first people in history to enjoy safe and easy travel, Romans embarked on the original Grand Tour, journeying from the lost city of Troy to the Acropolis, from the Colossus at Rhodes to Egypt, for the obligatory Nile cruise to the very edge of the empire. And, as Tony Perrottet discovers, the popularity of this route has only increased with time.

Intrigued by the possibility of re-creating the tour, Perrottet, accompanied by his pregnant girlfriend, sets off to discover life as an ancient Roman. The result is this lively blend of fascinating historical anecdotes and hilarious personal encounters, interspersed with irreverent and often eerily prescient quotes from the ancients—a vivid portrait of the Roman Empire in all its complexity and wonder.

Leseprobe
**Chapter 1
Jupiter's Panorama
**
It must have been like a film premiere at Cannes. Throngs of excited spectators filed their way into the heart of Rome, shamelessly ogling the latest fashions and pointing out the celebrities in their midst. An impatient crowd was soon milling outside the venue-an elegant, column-lined arcade called the Vipsania Colonnade, expressly built as a sort of open-air art gallery-where a sensational new opus was about to be unveiled. White-robed priests were busy sacrificing animals to guarantee the ongoing favor of the gods. Choruses of youths sang patriotic anthems. Silver fountains burbled in nearby gardens, while food vendors and beggars noisily worked the crowd. At last, this colorful audience of ancient Romans-everyone from perfumed aristocrats in their silk gowns and brilliant togas to impoverished slum dwellers in their grimy tunics-jostled to the foreground, all trying to have their observations heard above the cacophony.

Looming above them was a dazzling spectacle-a map of the world as large as a drive-in movie screen, showing the three known continents, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Two thousand years later, it's easy to imagine the frisson of that heady scene-especially if you happen to be, as I was, piecing it together in the fabulous halls of the New York Public Library in midtown Manhattan, a modern-day Roman temple whose interior gleams with marble and ceilings swarm with depictions of the pagan gods. I'd fled there to escape the first heat wave of summer-steam was rising from the sidewalks like the fumes from Hades-and besides, New York reality was starting to close in on me, in more ways than one. But in that silent refuge, surrounded by piles of musty, leather-bound volumes, I found myself easily transported back to that moment in Imperial Rome, circa 5 b.c., when the world's horizons suddenly opened.

Few ancient citizens had even seen a street map before that day, let alone a chart of such divine ambition. The image would have been as futuristic then as the first satellite photos from NASA.

Exhaustive research for the map had been orchestrated by a man named Marcus Agrippa-a Roman war hero who must qualify as one of the great anal retentives of history. In order to measure the world's dimensions, Agrippa had summoned the leading scientists to Rome and provided them with archives full of field coordinates accumulated by the Imperial Army. An elite corps of land surveyors was dispatched to plot every uncharted corner of Rome's domain; in addition, the captain of every ship was required to file charts of the coastlines he had navigated. This new geographical database was then applied to the accepted mythological model of the earth. (Ancient geographers knew the world was round, but believed that terra firma occupied only the northern hemisphere, and was surrounded by the uncrossable river ocean.)

The result was, not surprisingly, a map of unprecedented accuracy.

The emperor Augustus was presented with a miniature version for his palace; it was engraved in solid gold, with the provincial capitals marked…