Contrasting Fortunes: The Reception of Athens and Sparta within Travel Writing of the Mid-Twentieth Century

Abstract

Despite the recent interest in the genre amongst scholars from a variety of disciplines, travel writing has been relatively neglected as a source for understanding the reception of Ancient Greece in the twentieth century. This paper, using accounts published in Britain in the mid-century period, analyses travellers' reactions to what were regarded as the two most powerful cities of the Greek Classical world. At the Athenian Acropolis, the responses of travel writers were focused upon the monuments' aesthetics, and upon the Acropolis-as-symbol. In contrast, viewing the meagre remains of Sparta produced more negative responses and musings upon more recent totalitarian regimes. It can be demonstrated that these reactions stem not simply from viewing these sites, but from the importance afforded to these ancient cities within guidebooks and other ‘factual’ accounts of the time.