Some time in the second half of the first century B.C.E., the poet Horace made the journey from Rome to Brundisium. He later wrote a verse account of his trip in a book of Satires, in which he lampooned, among others, the slaves and boatmen, the annoying animals along the way, and his fellow travelers, some of whom he liked and some of whom he despised. The following excerpt is just the first twenty-nine lines of an immensely entertaining tale, describing not only what an Italian journey might be like, but the attitudes of the travelers, as well:

Departing mighty Rome, I took lodging / in a modest inn at Aricia. / My/companion there was the rhetorician / Heliodorus, by all odds the most / learned of the Greeks. Thence to Forum Appi / boiling with boatmen and rascally tavern-keepers. / Lazily we...