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Mirage of Greek Continuity 291
appreciation of the physical remains of ancient Greece, there is
an attempt to take a closer look at the modern Greeks and to
unearth, from beneath the surface of Turkish corruption, some
traces of the virtues of their ancestors. Finally, while pretending
to throw some light upon classical authors by careful observation
of the manners of the present day, romantic travellers
succeeded in fact in accomodating reality to their dreams.
They achieved the kind of completion of their quest 26 by creating
for themselves and for their readers carefully edited portraits
of modern Greece that transformed the present into the
living image of the past. An examination of these arbitrary, if
not totally imaginary, constructs constitutes a necessary preamble
for modern anthropologists as well as for the historians
who attempt to use investigations of contemporary societies to
generate hypotheses about past societies—if they want to evade
the dangers of circularity.
check-list of travel narratives
Babin (1674/1854): le père Jacque Paul Babin, Relation de l’état présent
de la ville d’Athènes (Lyon, 1674, repr. by Laborde in his Athènes
(Paris, 1854)).
Belon (1553): Pierre Belon, Les observations de plusieurs singularités et
choses mémorables trouvées en Grèce, Asie, Judée (Paris).
Biddulph (1609): William Biddulph, The travels of certaine Englishmen
into Africa, Asia, Troy, Bythinia (London).
Chandler (1775): Richard Chandler, Travels in Asia Minor (Oxford).
—— (1776): Richard Chandler, Travels in Greece (Oxford).
Charlemont (1749/1984): Lord Charlemont, The travels of Lord Charlemont
in Greece and Turkey (London, 1749, ed. W. Stanford and E.
J. Finopoulos (London, 1984)).
Chishull (1747): Edmund Chishull, Travels in Turkey and back to
England (London).
Choiseul-Gouffier (1782): Comte M. G. A. F. Choiseul-Gouffier,
Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce (Paris).
Covel (1676/1893): John Covel, Extracts from his diary in Early
Voyages and Travels in the Levant (ed. J. T. Bent, Hakluyt Society
87, London, 1893).
26 On travel as ‘pilgrimage’ and as ‘quest for a transcendental vision’ see
J. Elsner’s and J. P. Rubiès’s introduction to their edited book Voyages and
Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel (London, 1999).