10 Badass Travelers Throughout History

These trailblazers staged epic journeys across new lands, broke cultural barriers, and revealed the radical diversity of the world around us.

ByGeorge W. Stone

April 20, 2017

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The Classical Traveler: Homer (Eighth Century B.C.)“Homer was like Shakespeare, [and the Iliad and Odyssey] were regarded like the Bible. Going to Troy was like a pilgrimage to Jerusalem,” says travel historian Tony Perrottet, author of Route 66 A.D. and an expert on the amblings of the ancients. Greek poet Homer lived an epic life, and the Trojan War stories he put to verse created a vivid classical road map that’s been assiduously followed by travelers for nearly 3,000 years. Imperial Romans were among the world’s first committed tourists, making multiyear trips to the Athenian Acropolis and the Pyramids of Egypt, among other Mediterranean stops. But no tour was complete without a visit to Troy (in present-day Turkey), site of the storied battle that Homer turned into one of the touchstone events of Western civilization.

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn