GRAND TOUR OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

When Marcus Sidonius Falx insults the Emperor Caligula there is only one possible outcome. He has to leave Rome in a great hurry. With the help of his amanuensis Jerry Toner he decides to write an eyewitness travel guide to the whole Roman Empire, the first of its kind. Toner helpfully provides a commentary on each chapter, explaining where the facts for this fictional travelogue originated in the literature of the Roman world. Falx first heads to his villa on the bay of Naples at Baiae, playground for the Roman elite. He travels light with only twenty slaves, his head chef and team of apprentices, a barber and a cobbler, carrying his map on a long scroll which is a guide to the road network without being a realistic representation of the topography. Greece is the first port of call, the first destination Olympia, home to the eponymous Games, with respects paid to Phidias's gigantic statue of Zeus on the way. Sparta and Athens follow, where Falx is tricked into staying in a low-life inn, setting up his travelling commode in a corner and desperate to avoid the attentions of bedbugs. On Rhodes he experiences an earthquake and in Troy relives highlights from Homer's great epic. Judea is mounting determined resistance against the Roman occupation, but Egypt has a more laid back atmosphere, popular with Roman travellers ever since first Caesar and then Mark Antony became lovers of Cleopatra, while Alexandria with its numerous population of Jews and Greeks is one of the empire's most cosmopolitan cities. The writings of Hadrian, Diodorus Siculus and Pliny provide local colour. From Africa Falx sails to Hispania, then through the bleakness of Gaul to the outpost of Britannia and Hadrian's Wall, where he surprisingly notes that the Britons cheerfully bear the taxes and conscription imposed by the Roman occupiers. A highly entertaining window on the ancient world. 287pp, sources, line drawings.