I have always wondered when tourism began, and I have also wondered why. I still don’t know why for sure, but if the Pagan Holiday Web site is right, I not only know when, I also know where. Pagan Holiday is the U.S. title of travel writer Tony Perrottet’s book, Route 66 A.D., which grew out of Perrottet’s discovery of the oldest guidebook in the New York Public Library, a tract from the second century A.D., called Description of Greece.

It seems the ancient Romans first had the idea of going places just to take in the sights, but that was after they had conquered those places first, of course. So, that’s my conjecture—that tourists are basically the conquerors’ relatives who go to the lands of the conquered to order dinner and drinks. In case you’re wondering, yes, I am a socialist and a bleeding-heart liberal.

Of course, I have been a tourist, too, but I suppose I try to justify it by making sure I learn something about the places I visit. When I went to Rio, I learned that Brazil used to be the capital of Portugal, and that “Ipanema” means “dirty water.” One of our tour guides there delighted in telling us that he got a lot of his ideas from an American Web site that told businessmen where all the good strip clubs were.