Roman Mythology: A Traveler’s Guide from Troy to Tivoli

Traveling has become tourism, taken a downward plunge as one-day visits to glimpses of the past barely skim the surface. But restoration is at hand in David Stuttard’s Roman Mythology: A Traveler’s Guide from Troy to Tivoli. An elegant profusion of material, cultural, and legendary history, his interpretation of the Roman world is blessed with the bounty of David Bezzina’s drawings.

The adventure explores a complex, wide-ranging path from Troy to Tivoli, less than twenty miles from Rome, with stories revealed at steps along the way. Chapters from Troy, Delos, Carthage and onward all end with a chronology of how they existed in centuries past and what remains to be seen today.

The descriptions have a behind-the-scenes quality, allowing readers or visitors a chance to see more than the visual image before them. In Rome, ‘The Lago di Torre Argentina is no ordinary Roman square’ and is now a sanctuary for cats. The Roman forum, always a center of activity, has become a popular tourist objective. In 2016 the city hosted over six million visitors, six times the population at its historic height.

Roman mythology is mostly derived from the Greeks and dates back to the Augustan age shortly after Caesar breathed his last. Over the centuries the region underwent several considerable ups and downs. The probable site of Troy, n northwestern Turkey, underwent its most extensive restoration in the 1860s, led by the German Heinrich Schliemann. The findings drew global attention admiration despite the excavation destroying irreplaceable treasures.