Travel At Your Peril! So many of us fear travel because we fear the unknown. What is beyond the horizon? What will it be like? Will we find food, water, shelter? Will we be safe? Will we be in danger?…………Of course there are many risks in travelling as there are in every day life. However we’ve all experienced acts of kindness and hospitality when we have been far from home and in need of shelter, food and water.
Maybe a car breakdown on a secluded country road and a stranger prepared to tow you to the nearest town……or an hotel overbooking and someone offering a room in their home………
Or a man with his pregnant wife on a donkey…..being offered a stable!………..
A boy with his donkeys
Travel and Hospitality as we know it today carries a code of conduct which originates in ancient Biblical, Hebrew and Greek times . In ancient times, as travellers wandered the earth in pursuit of knowledge, greener pastures, as merchants or for whatever reason, they relied upon and were at the mercy of strangers for food, water and shelter. As these strangers were obliged to extend their hospitality to the travellers, so too were the travellers obliged to respect their hosts and the offerings that were extended to them and so hospitality as we know it was born.
As I embark on my travels as a 57 year old solo female traveller in the midst of a midlife crisis, I am putting my trust in the Ancient Code of Conduct of Hospitality “Xenia” and pray that Zeus will take care of me as I go.
“Xenia is the ancient Greek concept of hospitality, the generosity and courtesy shown to those who are far from home and/or associates of the person bestowing guest-friendship. The rituals of hospitality created and expressed a reciprocal relationship between guest and host expressed in both material benefits as well as non-material ones .
The Greek god Zeus is sometimes called Zeus Xenios in his role as a protector of travellers. He thus embodied the religious obligation to be hospitable to travellers. Theoxeny or theoxenia is a theme in Greek mythology in which humans demonstrate their virtue or piety by extending hospitality to a humble stranger (xenos), who turns out to be a disguised deity (theos) with the capacity to bestow rewards. These stories caution mortals that any guest should be treated as if potentially a disguised divinity and help establish the idea of xenia as a fundamental Greek custom. The term theoxenia also covered entertaining among the gods themselves, a popular subject in classical art, which was revived at the Renaissance in works depicting a Feast of the Gods.
Xenia consists of two basic rules:
Xenia was considered to be particularly important in ancient times when people thought gods mingled among them. If one had poorly played host to a stranger, there was the risk of incurring the wrath of a god disguised as the stranger. It is thought that the Greek practice of theoxenia may have been the antecedent of the Roman rite of Lectisternium, or the draping of couches.
While this particular origin of the practices of guest-friendship are centralized around the divine, however, it would become common practice among the Greeks to incorporate xenia into their customs and manners for very much all of ancient Greek history. Indeed, while originating from mythical traditions, xenia would very much become a standard practice throughout much (if not, all) of Greece as customarily proper in the affair of men interacting with men as well as men interacting with the Gods.”
