Aelius Aristeides, in a likely somewhat exaggerated praise of Rome from the second century CE, comments on how much easier the Romans have made travel: the Mediterranean world is safe, it’s connected, it’s been filled with bridges and roads that keep it accessible, and as long as you’re either a Roman or under Roman rule you won’t have any problems.

Officials and the Roman elite both benefitted from this accessibility, and even non-elite people likely had some access to travel to places like high profile festivals like the Olympic games (local decrees on the requisition of transport and hospitality offer guidance on what was required for officials, soldiers, senators, and equestrians, but also make a point of specifying what was or was not to be made available for other civilians). With the ability to travel relatively quickly and relatively safely, there was indeed interest in sites of historical, religious, and cultural importance around the Mediterranean, especially among the wealthy and educated.

The modern guidebook or its equivalent didn’t really exist in the ancient world. Wealthy Romans could and did take literature with them when they travelled, but books were heavy, expensive, and highly impractical, and we have no mentions anywhere of anyone actually taking a codex on site with them to carry around (notable also that while the codex was the only small, portable format for books, for the period of highest levels of tourism around the Roman world, the 2nd century CE, it was not yet dominant format for physical literary production although it had been introduced by that time). Travelers could read travel narratives - Pausanias’ Periegesis was a ten book description of Greece, organized by region - before they arrived on site in preparation, but they wouldn’t take it with them when they went. While Pausanias’ geographic descriptions are generally quite accurate and demonstrate firsthand familiarity with the sites, it would be difficult to use them for directions, even if a pocket version existed.

Which brings us to guides.

In the absence of any other source of information, explication and education around a site relied on the people who could tell you about it. Local guides might show a visitor around a site or just inform them of the local traditions. There are two different images that emerge of tour guides in antiquity, the difference between them being the kinds of sites they are associated with and the evidence we have for them.

The first of these is less similar to what we think of when we think of modern tour guides. More likely found outside of major sites, this model of tourism was dependent on a traveler’s local connections and hospitality. Generally, a wealthy Roman wouldn’t often be staying at a random inn and finding just anybody off the street to show them around. As we can see in Pausanias’ writing, the wealthy had networks of friendship and hospitality that could connect them to local elites at whatever place they were visiting. This existing network, already connected with local monuments and traditions, also served to show him around sites and at least fill him in on local stories. One scholar has even noted that the language Pausanias uses for many of his often unnamed local guides indicates that they are relaying an oral rather than a written tradition, in keeping with a less formalized system of hospitality. Pausanias generally only expresses disapproval of the information he gets from his guides when they seem to be reporting speculative rumors, generally treating them as reliable sources. And some of our only epigraphic evidence for guides outside of Olympia include “guide” as a description alongside others indicating that the person being described was a member of local aristocracy.

On the other side of things, a very different picture emerges from some of our major sites. At Olympia, we have the greatest amount of epigraphic evidence for tour guides, as they are included on lists of cult personnel, likely to guide a visitor through the performance of a sacrifice. This suggests that, as a major site where tourism was both frequent and reliable, Olympia had dedicated guides. This is in keeping with what we see in Lucian’s satirical works, where tour guides are nothing more than nuisances that demand money who swarm visitors at major sites and cities.

However, the wholesale scholarly acceptance of this interpretation of guides in the ancient world as unknowledgeable, unreliable, and un-respected is based in large part on the philosophical dialogue De Pythiae Oraculis from Plutarch’s Moralia. In the dialogue, the speakers are fairly dismissive of the generic speeches their local guides are making and note that they are unable to respond when the visitors start with more philosophical conversation. Recent pushback against this interpretation has suggested that the local guides could still be local magistrates or local connections, who are simply unable to keep up with the level of conversation and who can’t deviate from their scripted knowledge. Given that Delphi was notorious in the ancient world for the extortionate price of consulting the oracle and the elitism of the site (Kurke sums up the situation well when she notes that Delphi itself was a byword for greed in the ancient world), heavy reliance on Plutarch’s representation is problematic at best because of the issues surrounding Delphi in particular, compounded by the biases built in by the presentation of the speakers.

So while the local situation and how major a site was influenced how formally established the tourism around a certain place was, local guides were everywhere. In the absence of the ability to carry around information in book form, knowledge had to come from local experts.