'Every stone tells a story': the uses of classical texts by seventeenth-century English visitors to Greece and Asia Minor

Abstract

This article analyses the uses made by seventeenth-century travellers to the Greek world of their knowledge of classical texts. It refers to a range of travellers—in particular, Levant Company employees and individual adventurers or gentlemen travellers—and describes their educational background. It discusses the various purposes for which they incorporated quotations from and references to classical literature in the texts which resulted from their visits to Greece. Among these purposes are: the provision of aids to the identification of ancient sites, literary embellishment, and the drawing of moral lessons. It is clear from reading travel accounts that given the lack of contemporary guide books, authors such as Strabo and Pausanias were also an invaluable help on the ground. At the same time, by their use of classical texts, authors of travel narratives invited their readers to participate in an intellectual network of educated men (women are largely absent from the picture). These author-travellers saw themselves, rather than contemporary Greeks, as inheritors of classical culture. The paper refers in particular to George Sandys, John Covel, George Wheler, and Paul Rycaut.