Travel in ancient Greece.

April 22, 2004 4:58 PM

Travel in ancient Greece. [more inside]

Nowadays, if one were going to be travelling for several days in the wilderness, one might bring, among other things, a backpack. Did ancient Greeks/Macedonians/Hellenes/whatever, circa 600 BC, have backpacks, or backpack equivalents? If so, do you know the actual greek word for it, and can you describe it? (How did it close?) If not, how would Greeks lug foodstuffs around?

Also, what was the common method for carrying a sword around? Suppose one was walking from Sparta to Athens. Would one have a scabbard/sheath, or did one just wrap their weapon in rags, or what?

[Please don't flame me for my ignorance of history; can you believe I've lived 26 years and didn't think to wonder about these things until now? I've been waiting weeks for a book on travel in ancient greece to show up at my local library, but the Seattle libraries have been very bad lately about fulfilling hold requests. And google was no help at all.]

posted by evinrude to travel & transportation (16 comments total)

is this any help? With his traveling staff in hand, Hermes dons his characteristic broad-rimmed traveling hat (petasos) and short cloak (chlamys). Hekate, dressed in an open-sided peplos, guides the way with lighted torches.
Women and men in ancient Greece wore the chiton, peplos, and himation in various configurations. With belting, girding, and different methods of draping, they were able to transform the essentially simple construction and configuration of these garments. Many of these variations became codified, and persisted as preferred styles for centuries.

I'm thinking they just rearranged/redraped/"zhoozed" what they wore to travel in, for each new day or new event. (but i bet there were servants carrying bundles of other cloaks/fabrics for the rich)
posted by amberglow at 5:10 PM on April 22, 2004

here is an 8th century BC sword from italy, with scabbard.

its only $2300. not a bad deal...less than a dollar per year of its life.
posted by th3ph17 at 5:28 PM on April 22, 2004

just found this cool page as well.
posted by th3ph17 at 5:37 PM on April 22, 2004

Any self respecting Spartan would have his slave carry it. No luggage necessary.
posted by jmgorman at 9:29 PM on April 22, 2004

Um, I'm pretty sure the above sword is fake. Really, really fake. That or it's the steal of the century for the most complete pre-Roman, Roman sword ever.
posted by jmgorman at 9:32 PM on April 22, 2004

That sword is not authentic, in the slightest.
posted by Keyser Soze at 10:02 PM on April 22, 2004

Not to mention that the 8th century was ~ 1300 years ago, not 2300.
posted by whoshotwho at 10:16 PM on April 22, 2004

Oh, my, whoshotwho. The sword purports to be from the 8th century BC, between 2703 and 2803 years ago by my count.
posted by nicwolff at 11:56 PM on April 22, 2004

And evinrude's original question is still up for grabs - if you were hoofing it around Greece before the rise of the city-states, what did you carry your crap in? Given that you probably wore a simple draped cloak over your naked body, it's hard to imagine that you had any kind of pack strapped to your back. Looking at other ancient cultures, maybe an open bag with a one-shoulder strap?
posted by nicwolff at 12:16 AM on April 23, 2004

The Greeks did have bags and packs, of course: the general terms are skeuos, meaning "baggage" or derma "skin." But I can't think of any Greek word that would be like our backpacks.

When the Greek armies marched, they went with a full camp of servants and pack animals who took care of the heavy lifting. And given the rocky terrain, most of their long-term travel was via their swift black ships over the winedark sea. In fact, you don't often hear solitary travel stories from the Greeks. And when you do they only tell you about the people they met, not about how they carried their cheese.

Most likely any kind of backpack would have been made from animal skins or possibly of fabric that has long-since deteriorated. A lot of the research that's done on the topic of the Greeks' material culture is based on evidence from their pottery. The Perseus Project is a terrific place to look. (But it's often very slow.) Otherwise the book you want seems to be Travel in the Ancient World.
posted by eatitlive at 1:46 AM on April 23, 2004

Did ancient Greeks/Macedonians/Hellenes/whatever, circa 600 BC, have backpacks, or backpack equivalents?

Yes, the backpack equivalent was called a "slave." You had to be pretty no-account to have to carry your own stuff; if you did, I imagine the traditional bag-on-a-stick was used. But I would be interested to see what the book says.
posted by languagehat at 8:04 AM on April 23, 2004

I know there's a passage in some ancient greek text that is translated along the lines of 'every man carries a pack in front and a pack on his back' - it's a metaphor for our temporal awareness and how it weighs us down. But it implies that ancient greeks carried packs, or the metaphor wouldn't work...
posted by mdn at 8:56 AM on April 23, 2004

unfortunately, my little "intro to ancient greek" doesn't cite from where the story of "the two packs" is taken, but the word used for packs is "peras" - it starts out "ekastos anthropos duo peras ferei, ten men emprosthen, ten d'opisthen" - each man carries two packs, the one in front, the other behind. Maybe someone with better knowledge of the language knows in what other contexts that word might be used...
posted by mdn at 9:14 AM on April 23, 2004

"Yes, the backpack equivalent was called a 'slave.' ..."

OK, so what sort of pack/container/etc did the slave use for carrying around the supplies?
posted by tdismukes at 9:40 AM on April 23, 2004

eatitlive, that's the book that I'm waiting on from the library.

So, OK, it would appear that, possibly fake roman sword notwithstanding, swords did indeed have scabbards at the time. Backpacks are another story. A very casual browsing of the Perseus Project linked above suggests that roman legionaries used the sack+stick approach. This suggests to me that a pack worn on the body hadn't been invented yet, which I find very hard to believe, because it's such a useful idea, and requires not much more than a sack and a leather strap or two.
posted by evinrude at 11:19 AM on April 23, 2004

mdn, heurekas! I think I remember that book. It's the one with all those great short fables, at least a third of which end with the sentence, "And then he died."

Pêra seems to be what we're looking for. LSJ gives the definition as a "leathern pouch for victuals, etc., wallet." Phaskôlos is a synonym. And kôrukos — one of those Greek words with a variety of interesting definitions — is a another.

evinrude, you might find some interesting details about these pouches in the citations of pêra or kôrukos. (Most have English translations. Couldn't find any links for phaskôlos in Perseus.) I, too, would be interested to hear about that book - if it ever comes in. Keep us posted.
posted by eatitlive at 11:57 PM on April 23, 2004