Pagan Holiday: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists (Paperback)

Author Tony Perrottet follows the tourist route of the ancient Romans from Italy to Greece to Turkey to Egypt. It's vaguely reminiscent of Eric Newby's ON THE SHORES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN. Newby traveled his route with his long-suffering wife, Wanda. Tony is accompanied by his significant other, Les, who raises the bar on tolerance and patience by enduring the trek through the second trimester of pregnancy into the third. In the Acknowledgments, Perrottet gives his intrepid companion credit: "All of the best jokes in the book are hers."

Starting in Rome, the high points of the itinerary include Naples, Capri, Pompeii, Athens, Corinth, Sparta, Olympia, Delphi, Delos, Rhodes, Ephesus, Pergamum, Troy, Alexandria, Cairo, Thebes, Aswan, and points in between. Tony describes the experiences, both good and bad, of the old Romans on that same pilgrim path, as well as those of Les and himself. Of course, some of the most entertaining for the reader were the worst for the traveler, as when Tony and Les rent a Russian car, a Donco, for tooling around Greece. By the time they approach Sparta:

"... we'd taped a sheet of plastic over the broken window, and tied coat-hanger wire around my door so it wouldn't pop open whenever the car stopped ..."

And the ancients had their own horrors to contend with, as a certain Apollinarius Sidonius experienced during his night's stay in a "greasy tavern":

"His hard-reed bed was hopping with lice; all night, lizards and spiders fell from the ceiling."

Whether diving the ruins in the Bay of Naples, consulting a present-day Delphic oracle, dealing with border customs officials, contending with crowded beaches and erratic ferry schedules, exploring the remnants of Troy or the interior of the Great Pyramid, coping with on-the-road illness, examining mummies up close and personal, barging down the Nile, bar crawling in Alexandria, or changing rooms (five times) at Cairo's Windsor Hotel, Tony and Les proceed with a great, good humor probably stretched thin many times during the odyssey. And what he doesn't experience himself, Tony does his best to describe from the accounts of others, such as the consultation of omens, the Olympic Games, a gladiatorial show, Roman seaside orgies, and a Roman bath.

Perrottet fills his narrative with fun, arcane trivia. Did you know that Delphic love philters included such ingredients as horse sweat and minced lizard's flesh? Or that a twenty-five percent duty was levied on dancing girls brought back as souvenirs? Or that Greek female hoteliers had the occasional reputation of being witches, who turned male guests into frogs or sex slaves?.

The text in PAGAN HOLIDAY is interspersed with illustrations, including some photos taken himself, but more often from other sources. Tony found paintings by Lawrence Alma-Tadena particularly useful. The one photo sorely missing was that of the hardiest trooper of them all, Les.

And Mummy's Armpit? It's the slang name for a smelly Nile wine. You won't find it in your local Tesco.