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Talk:Tourism in ancient Rome/GA1

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Latest comment: 5 months ago by UndercoverClassicist in topic GA Review

GA Review

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Latest comment: 5 months ago127 comments2 people in discussion
Passed. UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:57, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Nominator: Graearms (talk · contribs) 23:37, 13 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

Reviewer: UndercoverClassicist (talk · contribs) 19:14, 29 April 2024 (UTC)Reply


Will give this one a look over the next few days. Hat off to you for attempting to bring such a broad, synthetic topic within the sometimes unruly constraints of a Wikipedia article. UndercoverClassicist T·C 19:14, 29 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for your time and patience with this review. I think we're now at the point where it passes all GA criteria -- it has certainly come on tremendously over the stages of this process. Passing now - congratulations. UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:56, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I enjoyed reading this one: it does a good job of moving smoothly over a great deal of material. A few initial thoughts:

  • The biggest thing that stands out to me, at the moment, is the lack of chronological markers or acknowledgements of change over time. Roman history begins (at least) c. 500 BCE, but parts of the article read as if Rome was always a Mediterranean-spanning empire, that piracy was never a problem, or that people could always visit the Colosseum. Similarly, we have Hippocrates and Galen in consecutive sentences, as if they were contemporaries; they lived about half a millennium apart. I would suggest that each section should follow more or less a three-part plan: start off with what we know of travel in the early periods of Roman history (the Republic, at least), then the major part on the late Republic/high empire, more or less in chronological order, then anything we know about how things changed (or didn't) in Late Antiquity as Christianity took off and the emperors' central authority began to weaken.
    • I'm not entirely confident I can implement such a solution. Although I may have missed a great wealth of information, there appears to be little mention of change over time in the sources themselves. Much of the information appears to be generally applied to multiple eras throughout Roman history. When more temporally specific statements are made, it usually refers to an author describing something in the early imperial era. Some of the sources argue that tourism reached its zenith during the Pax Romana, but they don't specify any further change beyond the number of tourists over time. The motivations and attractions seemed to remain relatively constant. Graearms (talk)
      • As far as I'm concerned, this only becomes an issue at GA where it rubs up against C1a: the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience. If a reader would get the impression that two things were contemporary when they weren't, or think that something applied across time when it related to a specific historical period, that will need to be clarified -- perhaps from a source which isn't directly about tourism, but contains the chronological information we need. I'll pick these out when I go through the article in more detail, which I think is probably the next step given the changes made so far. UndercoverClassicist T·C 06:27, 13 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Building on that point, the article tends to treat all Greco-Roman sources as interchangeable, but we need some awareness of when these people wrote and who they were. We can't, for example, give the impression that Varro, Pliny, Lucian and Horace all lived in basically the same world.
    • I have clarified the time frames most of the authors lived in. Hopefully, this edit should alleviate some temporal confusion that article may promote. I have also clarified who these authors were; I added information about what they wrote. Graearms (talk) 20:36, 5 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • The GA criteria don't require comprehensiveness, but I was surprised that the the Bibliography seems to consist largely of older or less scholarly works. There isn't a huge bibliography on the topic of tourism directly, but it does exist: see the bibliography of this paper for a few good bits, and the Oxford Classical Dictionary has a brief entry under "Tourism", as does the Cambridge Dictionary of Classical Civilisation (including a little on Late Antiquity; see below).
  • On which, there are a few citations, such as Lomine 2005 and Elsner and Rutherford 2007, where an edited volume with individual contributors is cited, but it isn't clear who should be credited for the cited text.
    • I have edited the citations; there should no longer be any ambiguity. Graearms (talk) 20:12, 30 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
      • Mostly happy here: I note that Talbert doesn't have volume/issue/page info, and the Ogden citation appears to be WP:PRIMARY in disguise: everything that Ogden's book has on the issue is simply a printed-out passage from Varro. We should always make sure that statements of fact are backed by the judgement of secondary sources (Varro could have been mistaken, lying or exaggerating about what Baiae was like, or out of step with what his contemporaries thought of it): so Bars dotted the area, and upper-class women were said to pretend to be prostitutes should be verified by a secondary source. It would also be preferable to have a secondary source who uses Varro's evidence in this manner, to avoid the charge of WP:SYNTH. UndercoverClassicist T·C 06:18, 1 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
        I have edited the Talbert source; It should now contain enough information. I have also edited the statements about Baiae to clearly showcase the source comes from Varro. I could not identify any secondary source citing archaeological evidence proving that there were bars at Baiae. However, I did find other secondary sources mentioning a few Roman primary sources which make similar claims to Varro. This source cites Seneca claiming that living in Baiae is like living in a bar. Graearms (talk) 11:56, 1 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
        All good there -- edited volume back with Rich and Shipley, however. UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:42, 1 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • I am surprised to see very little of some of the most famous tourists in the Roman Empire: Pausanias (NB spelling mistake in article: not Pausanius) and Hadrian's entourage immediately spring to mind. On medical tourism, Aelius Aristides seems a curious omission.
    • I have added more information about Pausanias and Aelius Aristedes, however I haven't found much information on Hadrian that I feel belongs in the article. Graearms (talk) 20:29, 6 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
    • That surprises me: Hadrian's extensive travels are extremely well documented and represented in scholarship. For some overviews, see websites here and here, or Elizabeth Speller's book on the topic: his entourage were responsible for, among other things, some of the inscriptions on the Colossus of Memnon, including those Julia Barbilla, which are one of the longest texts we have from a Roman woman writing in Latin. The travels also circumscribed Hadrian's relationship with Antinous and the latter's untimely death. I think there's at least a couple of sentences worth pulling out from all that. UndercoverClassicist T·C 21:07, 6 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
      Upon inspecting the sources you provided, I did find some information I felt was worth including in the article. My earlier research may have been limited by a lack of knowledge of more specific areas to look at (i.e I did not know to search for Julia Barbilla). I did not feel like much of the initial information I found about Hadrian was worthwhile because a lot of it concerned the political context of his travels. For instance, I found a lot of descriptions about him traveling to an area and reforming infrastructure or the military. I did not find much information on his tourism specifically. Graearms (talk) 01:10, 8 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
      Yes, it's a fair question how far Hadrian's travels should be considered "tourism" versus "just being an emperor", but then most emperors didn't travel like he did -- in lots of ways, he is more reminiscent of an early-medieval Charlemagne figure or an early-modern Henry VII than an Augustus or a Nero. UndercoverClassicist T·C 06:26, 8 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Late Antiquity seems conspicuous by its absence, we briefly allude to Christianity in the form of St. Paul, but I otherwise have no indication here that Rome was a Christian empire for hundreds of years.
    As it should: suggest a mention of Egeria, who gives the earliest proper account of a Christian pilgrimage, to go alongside Paula. UndercoverClassicist T·C 06:16, 2 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • When citing an ancient source as quoted in a modern one, it would be useful to provide a link to the ancient source in addition to (not instead of) the secondary quotation. Most can be found freely on Perseus.
    No worries: there aren't going to be online PD translations of everything, especially obscure texts (one of my eternal frustrations seems to be finding a decent edition of Aelius Aristides' Sacred Tales). A link to a Greek or Latin version is fine if no English one exists: that at least allows readers who speak those languages, or are happy using Google Translate, to get something out of it and verify that the source exists. UndercoverClassicist T·C 06:10, 1 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • On piracy: I'm not sure that "piracy was an ever-prevalent problem for Roman travellers" is really the established view in scholarship: see Bruand in this volume, who points out that Roman sources from Augustus to Commodus uniformly said that piracy wasn't a problem, and rightly says that we should take this an an ideological statement above all else: however, that it wouldn't have been possible to say that if piracy was a big and obvious problem. Most treatments of "Pompey's eradication of piracy" now take it from the other direction: that Pompey et al exaggerated the scale of the earlier problem of piracy so as to provide an excuse/justification for extreme measures to combat it. In other words, it's less that piracy remained a serious problem after Pompey, and more that it was never all that serious to begin with. UndercoverClassicist T·C 06:18, 1 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
    I have added more information about piracy. It should be more clear and accurate now. Graearms (talk) 13:39, 1 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
    I'll get to this in more detail when we start going through the article with a more specific lens, but for now we need some kind of temporal qualifier on piracy was likely not as widespread as ancient authors claimed (there's two batches of authors here: those around the Lex Gabinia, such as Cicero in the De Imperio Cn. Pompei, who argued that piracy had been a huge problem, and a second batch after Pompey/Augustus, who claim that piracy was extinct as a problem), and to correct the spelling/typo of Res Gestae. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:04, 1 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
    I clarified that the “ancient authors” in question were centered in the Roman Republic. Graearms (talk) 16:22, 1 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
    OK; we now need the corresponding balance that ancient authors after that period overwhelmingly said the opposite, that piracy wasn't a problem at all (and then the modern caveat that this might not have been entirely true). UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:39, 1 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
    I added a small statement which hopefully makes this clarification. I added the text: "Most ancient authors during the Principate claimed that piracy was suppressed by the emperors." Graearms (talk) 19:53, 1 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Let me know how you get on with these and I"ll give the article a more detailed look. UndercoverClassicist T·C 06:44, 30 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

Full review

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  • Travel was made increasingly difficult: increasingly means it became more difficult over time: for the most part, the body text contradicts this.
  • There is nothing at all in the lead about chronology: in particular, I'm suspicious that Egypt was one of the most popular destinations for Roman tourists was true before about 30 BCE, and the concept of otium is basically unknown in Roman culture until the Late Republic: it really becomes a Thing for people like Cicero and Horace.
  • Given the amount of material on Christianity in the body, it should at least be mentioned in the lead per MOS:LEAD.
  • I think weather is probably an overlink.
  • The section on piracy is a little confusing: it gets into the weeds before establishing the basics (that most travel took place by sea, and that, in the Late Republic, some authors [e.g. Cicero] portrayed piracy as a major threat to shipping).
    The explanation on the DLM is a little odd: However, these claims are certainly ideological in nature; they likely served as propaganda pieces intended to justify and promote Roman leadership and governance.. Seems to be missing the blindingly obvious: that the DLM is a whole speech about how wonderful Pompey is and how we should trust him with huge military power, and that this part of the speech is making that argument by saying that last time we trusted Pompey with huge military power (to clean up the pirates), he saved the day. There's definitely some abstract thought about the nature of Roman imperialism in the speech, but what's going on here is much simpler: Cicero is puffing up Pompey's achievements by puffing up the scale of the "problem" he "solved". UndercoverClassicist T·C 06:28, 21 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
    I've edited and rearranged the sentences in question here. Hopefully, the new version should clearly explain the specific political motivations of Cicero's speech while also retaining the more general detail that this kind of honoring was done in other circumstances. Graearms (talk) 18:57, 21 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • The Res Gestae, a funerary inscription for Augustus,: a little nit-picky, but I wouldn't call the RG a funerary inscription, as it doesn't really relate to his death and funeral: posthumous would be better. We could also do with a date here.
  • The Res Gestae, a funerary inscription for Augustus, claims that piracy had been eliminated under the Julio-Claudian dynasty: this is anachronistic: at the time, there was no dynasty: it claims that Augustus eliminated piracy.
  • The Res Gestae ... claims that piracy had been eliminated ... due to the stability imposed by the Pax Romana.: no, it doesn't: it simply says I made the sea peaceful and freed it of pirates.
  • the continued maintenance of large and expensive fleets implies that piracy remained a threat, albeit a minor one: hm -- not really -- it more implied that Roman emperors liked having the means to move soldiers around the empire, and a large prestige-granting institution to play with. But if the source is completely blunt about this, not a major problem for GA.
  • Very few people would describe Plutarch primarily as a philosopher: our own article on him (using a single source to do so) gives him far more credit for having original or important ideas here than I've seen anyone else do. None of his philosophical texts have been of any real influence. "Writer" or perhaps "biographer" would be better.
  • In Moralia,: the Moralia -- but explain what these are. Same for In Amores (the Amores) etc.
  • When did Varro live?
  • Contemporary tour guides typically: what does contemporary mean here?
  • In Amores, Pseudo-Lucian satirically .... Pliny the Elder ... wrote satirically of: can we do anything about the repetition here?
  • The availability of tour guides in these regions suggests that tourists visited these areas; they likely did not limit their travels to only the most well-known parts of Greece.: there seems to be an obvious question begged here: what reason do we have to think that they were catering primarily (or even at all) to Roman tourists?
    • If I understand correctly, the source does not specify that tour guides exclusively catered to Roman tourists, merely that there must have been a large tourist presence in these areas. The full quote from the source reads as follows: "Pausanias also cites local guides at cities like Troezen (II.31.4), Patras (VII.6.5) and Platea (IX.3.3) as well as countless others at obscure villages throughout Greece. Since the purpose of a guide is to show a visitor around a site and tell him or her about its features, the existence of guides in so many places seems to suggest that visitors frequently came to these places and wanted to be shown around. Graearms (talk) 20:02, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
    Indeed, but if we can't show that the tourists were Roman, it's not obvious what the connection here is to an article about ancient Rome (not Greece). This might be another face of the issue raised elsewhere, that the article seems to insist on a (slightly dubious, in my view) distinction between ancient Greece and ancient Rome, but resists being clear on exactly what that distinction is. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:03, 19 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
    This section has been removed. Graearms (talk) 00:37, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • emphasized descriptions of pre-Roman sites in his work: it's more than that: it's that he goes to places where the Romans had had an impact, and then studiously ignores that impact for the most part. He tells the stories about the places from before the Romans came, but then he stops, as if the Roman conquest never happened.
    The whole Pausanias-Greece section now needs a bit of a look for narrative coherency: we get very quickly into the weeds of a single source before we've really established for the reader what we're talking about. I'd suggest looking over it again afresh, thinking about what's important to communicate as top-level information, and making sure we get that across before going into the minutiae of Pausanias' politics (which still belong in the article, just not in the place they currently are). UndercoverClassicist T·C 09:31, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
    I have reordered the paragraphs. Graearms (talk)
  • The early part of the Greece section is almost entirely sourced to Stark (on whom see below): fortunately, much more has been written about Pausanias, his narrative and his priorities.
  • during the Second Sophistic period ... These philosophers...: there's a disconnect here: we need to back up a bit and explain how we're getting from a period to a group of philosophers. The SS wasn't entirely limited to philosophers, either: much of it was concerned with rhetoric, letters and fiction. It's probably also worth saying that (almost) nobody at the time would have called it that.
  • Isthmian Games is linked on second mention.
  • These temples represented the home of the god through the statue depicting the deity.: this could be a bit clearer: we're gesturing at the idea of a cult statue here, but it's probably worth saying that many of those statues were located in places off limits to most people.
  • Pausanias described a room...: present tense: describes. Also worth clarifying that the Pinakotheke was several centuries older than Pausanias' time (see the Propylaia article for details and bibliography).
  • It's the Propylaia (plural) not the Propylaion. It's also capitalised like Parthenon, Erechtheion etc.
  • Another such display of artwork at the Temple of Hera,: clarify in the text that this one isn't in Athens.
  • the chest of Cypselos: "chest" as in his ribcage?
  • Temples of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, were often visited by individuals seeking medical advice.: not really advice: you visited the temple seeking (often miraculous) healing.
    I've been down a bit of a rabbit hole on this one: we've got to be a bit careful here, because the stelai at these sanctuaries (particularly Epidaurus) do show miraculous cures -- blind people cured by ointments, decapitations to remove worms, and so on. However, other testimonia suggest that more pedestrian things could be prescribed as well (looking in particular through the primary sources collected here): fasting, baths, walking barefoot and (especially) exercise come up a lot. So I'd suggest couching it that pilgrims sought to be cured of diseases, and perhaps adding if you wish that at least some of these cures were believed to be radical and miraculous. UndercoverClassicist T·C 21:02, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
    I made a small edit to the sentence which should clarify that only some were miraculous. Graearms (talk) 23:39, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • People visited Greece to consult the Oracle of Delphi and other "oracles of the dead,: the Oracle of Delphi was neither an oracle of the dead nor located in a cave. Oracles also, generally, didn't allow you to directly contact your own relatives: it was much more about asking questions of the gods (usually Apollo, but depended where you were). I'm also not sure what the focus on nekromanteia (oracles of the dead) is doing here, versus the most famous outside Delphi such as Didyma (to Apollo) and Dodona (to Zeus).
    • When I wrote about Oracles of the Dead initially, I did not mean to imply that the Oracle of Delphi was such an oracle or located in a slave. Although, upon rereading the sentence, I do understand why it was misleading. I have made another edit which should clarify these statements. Graearms (talk) 02:18, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • If we're going to italicise "ephebes" like it's a Greek word, we should use the Greek (epheboi), or just take it out of the italics and stick with the English.
  • By the time of Cicero: which was?
  • The ancient Romans were attracted to sites such ... the Satyr of Protogenes: this was a painting, not a site.
  • Afterward, he erected an altar to his Trojan ancestors: afterwards, I think. It's also worth explaining here where Caesar's (almost certainly imaginary) Trojan ancestors enter the scene.
    Julii is plural: either the Julii, the Julian family or (more authentically) the gens Iulia. UndercoverClassicist T·C 17:24, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Need an and before Caracalla. I'd highlight that all of these were emperors (which itself is slightly odd, isn't it: if we're saying that Troy was a popular tourist destination, shouldn't we be able to find some more ordinary visitors?) and put dates on them. We've jumped forward about two centuries within a sentence.
  • the tomb to Ajax: a tomb is of someone, and I'd add "believed to be that of..." to all of these statements here: Hector and Ajax were mythological.
  • Egypt was the most popular destination for ancient Roman tourists.: that sounds pretty dubious to me. What's the evidence base here?
  • The Romans viewed Egypt as exotic, mysterious, and ancient. These perceptions were, more often than not, misconceptions.: two things here: firstly, I'm very circumspect about assuming that all Romans thought the same way (there were endless millions of them, on three continents, over twenty centuries or so), so something like "Roman writers often portrayed Egypt as..." is more nuanced and safer. Secondly, it wasn't a misconception that Egypt was ancient, or indeed mysterious to those who knew nothing about it. I think it would be wise to go back to the sources, work out exactly what they're saying here and on what grounds, and give this one another go.
  • The ancient Romans misconstrued a statue in Thebes, likely of Amenhotep II, as a statue of Memnon.: who was Memnon?
    He was also believed to have been Ethiopian, which is probably relevant as to why people would believe he had statues in Egypt. UndercoverClassicist T·C 12:36, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • These statues were famed throughout the ancient world for their supposed ability to talk.: in the last sentence, there was only one of them (there aren't: there's two). Suggest linking and possibly naming the statues.
    • I clarified the number of statues in the article. I also clarified the links; there was already a link to the Colossi of Memnon, except for whatever reason the word “Memnon” contained that link. I have replaced this link with another one leading to the article for Memnon themselves, and also added a separate link for the Colossi. Graearms (talk) 12:00, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Strabo, a 1st century BCE Roman geographer, recounts visiting the statues and hearing noises; however, he remained skeptical about whether the sounds were produced by the noise: produced by the statues, surely?
    Strabo gets introduced quite a long time after his first mention: could that little gloss be moved up? UndercoverClassicist T·C 06:50, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
    Made a small edit that hopefully fixed this error. Graearms (talk) 18:07, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • The statues were covered with ancient graffiti left by Roman tourists: at the time, it wasn't ancient, and I'm not sure all of it was Roman, either.
    • According to Rosenmeyer, the earliest inscription is dated to 20 CE and the latest is dated to 205 CE. However, I have changed the sentence to read "Roman-era tourists" instead of "Roman tourists." I have also removed the word "ancient" from the sentence. Graearms (talk) 19:31, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • she argues why the statue refused to speak: not quite grammatical: do we mean she argues about it or argues that the statue refused to speak (because...)?
  • Roman visitors created their own unique mummification ritual: this section is a bit confused. Firstly, aren't all mummification rituals unique? Secondly, the Fayyum portraits are not a creation of tourists: they mostly seem to depict local people, including native Egyptians and the descendants of Greek settlers.
    • I have removed this statement. Upon rechecking the original source, it did specify that it was Roman settlers in the region. I have chosen to remove it because it doesn't seem to have to do much with tourism if it was exclusive to settlers in the area. Graearms (talk) 23:23, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Many of the common folk of ancient Rome left the city during summer due to the oppressive heat. : there's a contradiction here: we earlier said that only the wealthy could afford to be tourists.
  • or see the many monuments of Rome such as the Colosseum: not until the 80s, they didn't.
    • The original source meant that monumental structures in Rome attracted travelers, some of which visited the Colosseum for gladiatorial games. I seem to have transcribed the slightly different meaning that visitors could "see" or tour the Colosseum. I have edited the sentence to hopefully clarify this. Graearms (talk) 18:40, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • The town of Bacoli is near Baiae, but Baiae isn't in it (though it is in the commune). The modern town is also called Baiae.
  • During the reign of Augustus tourism and leisure assumed a more prominent role in Roman culture.: need a date here. I would join the dot to otium here as well: you talk about it later, but it isn't really clear that the rise of the concept is part of this whole Augustan thing. I'd also clarify that, while leisure became a fairly large part of Roman culture, tourism was never a major cultural force -- putting the two in hendiadys is a little misleading.
    • I have clarified that the influence of "otium" was restricted to the Imperial era. I'm not sure it needs to be specified that tourism was not a major cultural force, as the article does state in other areas that most people could not engage in tourism. Graearms (talk) 21:27, 17 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Traveling this often may have been too expensive and dangerous: not sure I understand this: how often?
    • This sentence was supposed to imply that a "Grand Tour" would have been inaccessible for most people. I have rewritten the sentence to better clarify this meaning. Graearms (talk) 01:30, 17 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • According to Pseudo-Lucian, tourists could acquire obscene pottery as a souvenir: there's no according to here; sexually graphic pottery was part and parcel of Greek and Roman art. Equally, though, it wouldn't necessarily have been considered obscene: images of phalluses, in particular, were part of everyday life, public art and people's clothing.
    • I have edited the sentence to read "sexually explicit" instead of obscene. I'm not sure it's necessary to remove the statement "According to Pseudo-Lucian" as he provides evidence for the more the specific claim that tourists acquired them as souvenirs. Graearms (talk) 21:38, 17 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • In The Book of Acts: Biblical books aren't italicised: Acts is generally given either as e.g. "the New Testament book of Acts" or "The Acts of the Apostles". In either case, make sure it's obvious to a reader not versed in Christian scripture what it is. It's worth putting a date both on the book and on St Paul (they aren't the same).
  • On the point about graffiti: the Roman tourist graffiti in Egypt is almost totally confined to the Colossi of Memnon, as far as I know, so it's a bit misleading to say that they never left any in Greece: they never really left any anywhere, and the stuff on the Memnon statues has a very particular context (usually, recording claimed divine experiences). There certainly are examples of graffiti from Pompeii that at least claim to have been left by tourists: CIL IV.4957 is probably the best example (mentioned here and discussed at length here, p. 27f and here).
    • According to Stark, Roman tourists left graffiti at various sites throughout Egypt such as the tombs in the Valley of Kings. According to our article on the Valley of the Kings and this source there are over 1000 inscriptions of graffiti found at the site written in Greek, Latin, and Coptic. This information is corroborated by pages 55 and 56 of this source as well as 206-208 of this source. Lomine also cites two examples of graffiti in Egypt on page 70. I found this source which provides additional information on the topic. I'm also unsure if the graffiti from Pompeii constitutes tourist graffiti. The cited example seems to be more of a mockery of Roman hospitality traditions; it is not necessarily connected to tourism. Graearms (talk) 19:00, 17 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Text in Latin should be in language templates for the benefit of screen readers and the Wiki software.
    • I have added the language templates. Graearms (talk) 16:45, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
      • Being picky: when using transliterated Greek, use the transl template, not lang, as you're not using the Greek alphabet. The language code for ancient Greek is grc, not el (that's modern Greek). Also, you still need language tags even for a link. UndercoverClassicist T·C 17:36, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
        I added transliterations for the Greek text and another lang template for a Latin word I missed in the lead section. The transliterations were derived from the Greek Wiktionary pages for φιλομάθεια and καταγώγιο as well as the Wikipedia page for ataraxia. I initially refrained from using the "grc" code because the Wikipedia page for ancient Greek said the language fell out of use by 300 BCE and also because these words still have modern Greek meanings. However, I have now corrected this. 19:16, 15 May 2024 (UTC) Graearms (talk) 19:16, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Pliny described this phenomenon amongst Augustan tourists: no, he didn't: Pliny lived decades after Augustus's death.
  • Many wealthy and important Romans, such as Hadrian, Germanicus, and Septimius Severus, traveled throughout the eastern parts of the Roman Empire : Hadrian and Septimius Severus at least also travelled through the western parts of the empire: both visited Britain and Septimius died there.
  • He noticed that tourists hoped for excitement in their travels; they wished to escape the mundanity of ordinary life.: I think noticed is a misunderstanding of what Seneca (and other Roman philosophical writers) were doing: they usually argued, claimed or straightforwardly made up these observations to support broader philosophical points.
  • The word was initially attached to negative connotations: when exactly is initially? More grammatically, words acquire connotations or have connotations associated with them, but are not attached to connotations.
    • According to Foubert, "initially" refers to the time before the Hellenistic period. I have also rephrased the sentence in question here, hopefully fixing any writing issues. Graearms (talk) 18:53, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • However, beginning in the Hellenistic period: that's a long time. We also don't really have any Latin literature (at least, not any surviving in any quantity) from before the Hellenistic period, so I'm not sure how we are claiming to be able to chart a change here.
    • The source makes the same claim about this change in time, stating "Yet, from the Hellenistic period onwards writers also attached a positive connotation to ‘curiosity.’" It does cite sources for this matter which indicates that there is a paper trail to follow. The sources are as follows: André Labhardt, ‘Curiositas. Notes sur l’histoire d’un mot et d’une notion’, Museum Helveticum 17 (1960): 206–24; Robert Joly, ‘Curiositas’, AC 30 (1961): 33–44; and Peter G. Walsh, ‘The Rights and Wrongs of Curiosity (Plutarch to Augustine)’, G&R 35 (1988): 73–85. Graearms (talk) 21:44, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
    You'll need to follow them, then: I would suggest that the source is almost certainly talking about Greek writers before the Hellenistic period, as the oldest surviving Latin literature is from the early 3rd century BCE. Before that, you've only got dubious texts or short inscriptions. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:53, 4 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
    I found the ultimate source for the claim made by the original source I used. Its this article which does seem to be talking about Greek writers before the Hellenistic period. It actually cites Polybius to prove the point about changing views on curiosity. Graearms (talk) 00:21, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Positive views of travel and curiosity were likely limited to male tourists: that is a big claim, and ambiguous: do we mean that only men had positive views of travel and curiosity, or that female tourists were not positively regarded? In either case, someone should tell the empress Helena.
    • The negative views were supposed to be of women who travel for primarily intellectual purposes. According to Foubert, people like Helena or Egeria did not experience these negative attitudes because they were motivated by piety. Foubert cites the autobiographical accounts from Egeria and other descriptions of female pilgrims, all of which emphasize the religious motivations for their travels. Graearms (talk) 02:00, 17 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Quoted, italicised Latin or Greek should not also have speech marks. Very pedantically, when we do use quote marks, they should be straight: " or '.
  • Petronius describes a fictional woman named Tryphaena, who sails across the world in search of pleasure. Although her motivation is explained as originating from curiositas, it is likely intended to be more selfish instead of the intellectual motivations praised by Seneca: this is a little confusing to me. How can we speak of the "real" motivations of a fictional character? On a point of verification, the word curiositas and its derivatives are surprisingly common in the Satyricon, but never used of Tryphaena. She's portrayed really as a sex-seeking libertine, but the Satyricon is a tricky text to use for the kind of work you want: it's self-consciously presented as the work of an unreliable (and himself morally depraved) narrator and constantly draws attention to the warped nature of his world-view and the wonkiness of his perceptions.
    There are still real problems with using that text to get at Roman attitudes, though. You've got so many layers of unreliable narration: this is Encolpius (fictional, hedonistic, over-educated and under-sensed, young and Greek-speaking), filtered through Petronius (real, old, aristocratic, heavily cultured and heavily satirical) -- trying to go from Petronius alone to "the Romans" is really tricky, as Petronius is both within that society and positioning himself outside it (was he 'normal'? Were the views he portrayed as 'typical' really anything of the sort?), but it's even trickier (and arguably inherently absurd) to try to find Petronius himself in a many-layered work of fiction written by him. If you can't find evidence for this line of reasoning outside Petronius, I would be very cagey about going down it: if you can, I would substitute that evidence in rather than trying to walk this particular tightrope. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:07, 19 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
    I've removed the section. Graearms (talk) 21:31, 20 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • However, it is known that people would travel across the Empire after winning notable battles or notable achievements: people seems quite broad here: do we mean generals and similar?
  • Ancient inscriptions reveal that there were Roman pilgrims: as you allude later, we don't just know this from inscriptions, so I'd cut the first bit: it's also out of keeping with the rest of the article, where we've simply stated facts without immediately giving how we know them.
  • Similarly, Augustine-a 4th century CE Christian theologian-: hyphens here should either be spaced endashes or unspaced emdashes (MOS:DASH)
  • Tertullian, a Christian author: seems to be one of the only authors not given a date.
  • There's no dot after "St": it's a shortened form of the word, not an initialism (as the t is the last letter).
  • Medical tourism was popular in the ancient Roman world. Travelers sought the advice of oracles,: two things are odd here. Firstly, oracles are not medical tourism, so it's strange to go from there, to oracles, then back again. Secondly, this follows on from our discussion of Christianity, so comes across as anachronistic: Christians were not flocking to oracles, and we don't hear much from the one at Delphi after the 1st century CE (there are two well-known prophecies from the early C4th, but their authenticity is pretty dubious).
  • Give dates for Hippocrates and Galen. I'd suggest changing allegedly to something slightly less accusatory like was believed to have -- very little about Hippocrates' biography is known for sure, but he's generally believed to have been a real person, and nobody has really put forward a case that we should reject the association with Kos.
  • Correct the link to the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste (currently links to Sant'Omobono Area, which is in Rome).
  • These descriptions most likely do not accurately reflect the medical value of the therapies offered by the sanctuary: I think, if we're going to go down this road, we need to be a bit more nuanced. Most people generally say that the temples' healing was as good as you could get anywhere -- cleanliness, food, attention, rest and time could cure most things that could be cured. In an article of this nature, however, you might wisely decide simply not to engage with the question of how effective healing sanctuaries were, or what exactly the purpose of the stelai was.
  • Following the Roman conquest of Greece: when was this? I notice that the chronology in this paragraph is darting around a lot.
  • In both Classical Greece and Ancient Rome: for most of the article, we have wisely not drawn too sharp a distinction between these two things. When/where does Classical Greece end and Ancient Rome begin? I would take this chronologically instead, and talk about pre-Roman and Roman Greece, if indeed that distinction is important (which I'm not sure it is here).
    • In this scenario, I was trying to imply a level of continuity between Classical Greece and Roman Greece. The structure was constructed in pre-Roman times and continued to be used following the Roman conquest. Graearms (talk) 21:34, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • One such spring was the Aquae Sulis: not quite: Aquae Sulis (no "the) was the town, which is Bath nowadays.
  • Aelius Aristedes, a 2nd century CE Greek rhetorician, traveled his experiences with medical tourism in his work: something has gone awry here with the meaning.

Sourcing

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More to follow.

  • Another sourcing note: I picked up a copy of Route 66 AD the other day, and I'm not convinced it meets RS standards. The key to WP:RS is whether it is likely to have been reliably fact-checked: as a popular travel book, by a non-expert in the field, it's very unlikely that anyone will have scrutinised or changed it for scholarly accuracy, as the point with a book like that is the prose and the author's voice. However, if Perrottet uses or references more academic works, we could go straight to the source for them. UndercoverClassicist T·C 08:04, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
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