I have been thinking a lot lately about place: the significance of actual, physical locations. Ancient Greece and Rome are often described as essentially imaginary places. The ability to conduct a productive career in Classics with only occasional, brief visits to modern Greece and Rome supports that idea to a certain extent.
Yet the popular imagination inevitably connects the civilization and the place. Innumerable articles make cutesy references to Zeus or Socrates before getting down to a discussion of the current economic crisis. Visitors flock to an Athenian cave because it's billed as 'Socrates' prison'.
Entirely fictional worlds can seem real too, with a wealth of invented detail often substituting for a basis in real-world history. There are no doubt many classicists who loathe the fiction of Tolkien and George R.R. Martin, but many more who find these fictive environments highly congenial, with their emphasis on myth and the moral imagination.
Ultimately we may love visiting the places where our favorite authors and historical figures lived for the same reason that we once loved tree houses and backyard forts.* They allow our imaginations, so often squelched in the pursuit of scholarly rigor, free rein.
*I'm thinking primarily of literary scholars rather than archeologists, although I'm sure they also experience an imaginative connection to their work.
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