References to classical literature and history are found throughout the writings of the earliest women travelers to Greece from Western Europe. While the study of ancient languages among women was limited at the time, and they were much more likely to know Latin than Ancient Greek, these writers were able to access classical literature both through contemporary works of scholarship and literature that made frequent reference to the ancient past. Additionally, translation of classical texts into modern languages was a booming industry. Several of these translations, such as the Homeric ones of George Chapman, Alexander Pope, and William Cowper, were also regarded as significant achievements of English poetry read for their own sake. Even with a relatively small set of classical touchstones, preferred authors and passages are discernable, and there is a wide variety in how the women understand the Greece of their texts to relate to the Greece of their own experience. Some are specific in their classical citations, others are rather vague. Some see modern Greece align perfectly with its classical past, while to others the two could not be more different. These travelers come from a range of times and backgrounds and no two of them have the same relation to the classical literary tradition. But they all have some relation to it.

“We travellers are in the very hard circumstances. If we say nothing but what has been said before us, we are dull, and we have observed nothing. If we tell any thing new, we are laughed at as fabulous and romantic, not allowing for the difference of ranks… But the truth is, people judge travellers, exactly with the same candour, good nature, and impartiality, they judge of their neighbours upon all occasions.” — Mary Wortley Montagu, Turkish Embassy Letters (1763), Vol.  2, 160-1

“... and I am so angry with myself, that I will pass by all the other islands with this general reflection, that 'tis impossible to imagine any thing more agreeable than this journey would have been two or three thousand years since, when, after drinking a dish of tea with Sappho, I might have gone the same evening to visit the temple of Homer in Chios, and passed this voyage in taking plans of magnificent temples, delineating the miracles of statuaries, and conversing with the most polite and most gay of mankind. Alas! art is extinct here; the wonders of nature alone remain…” — Mary Wortley Montagu to the Abbot —, July 31, 1718 Vol. 3, 70-1

“It is said Varna was the place where Ovid was sent into banishment; it might be so; but the chief part of his exile was passed in Moldavia; the borders of a lake, where he often walked, have become famous; the gentleness of his manners, and the sweet tone of his voice have been recorded from father to son, down to the present inhabitants of that part of Moldavia—” — Elizabeth Craven, A Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople, Letter 59

“Pliny has much anxious thought also on the subject of the Christians, already very numerous in his province of Bithynia. He cannot see the justice of the accusations of their enemies, and his long letter to Trajan on this topic is esteemed by the Church as a strong testimony in favour of the oppressed community.” — Mary Adelaide Walker, Eastern Life and Scenery (1886), 94-5

“…for the Athens of old I would refer the student to the Attica of Pausanias, or the excellent translation of a part of it by Mrs. Verrall and Miss Jane Harrison.” — Isabel Armstrong, Two Roving Englishwomen in Greece (1893), 100. [Jane Ellen Harrison (1850-1928) was one of the first women archaeologists to make a name for herself. She was a scholar of the anthropology of religion and art; her scholarship in both fields was highly influential.]