This collection of essays looks beyond the focus of existing works on ancient travel and its documentation, to examine its social and cultural implications. For travel (and the reasons behind it) offers a window on to many features of ancient societies - sense of place, perceptions of space, administration, relations with foreign powers, engagement with other cultures, and representation of homelands. Also of import is the study of ancient geographical knowledge, as well as ancient travel writing (an increasingly popular genre today), its popularity and purpose. All of the papers presented here show that ancient travel was considerably more widespread than is often assumed.

这本论文集超越了现有的关于古代旅行及其文献的重点，来研究其社会和文化影响。因为旅行（以及旅行背后的原因）为了解古代社会的许多特征提供了一个窗口--地方感、对空间的看法、行政管理、与外国势力的关系、与其他文化的接触以及对家乡的表述。同样重要的是对古代地理知识的研究，以及古代旅游写作（今天越来越流行的体裁）、其受欢迎程度和目的。这里介绍的所有论文都表明，古代旅行比人们通常认为的要广泛得多。