The beach wasn’t always a vacation destination - for the ancient Greeks, it was a scary place

Beach vacations only became popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries as part of the lifestyle of the wealthy in Western countries.

Early Europeans, and especially the ancient Greeks, thought the beach was a place of hardship and death. As a seafaring people, they mostly lived on the coastline, yet they feared the sea and thought that an agricultural lifestyle was safer and more respectable.

Greek literature emphasizes the intense smell of seaweed and sea brine. In the “Odyssey,” an eighth century B.C.E. poem that takes place largely at sea, the hero Menelaus and his companions are lost near the coast of Egypt. They must hide under the skins of seals to catch the sea god Proteus and learn their way home from him. The odor of the seals and sea brine is so extremely repulsive to them that their ambush almost fails, and only magical ambrosia placed under their noses can neutralize the smell.