The author begins his article with the observation that Alexander the Great conquered precisely those lands which were previously described by Greek travellers which warrants the conclusion that the travel book had not only an economic but also a cultural-political significance. The travel books of Hellenic writers are described in the continuation of the article. The author targets famous works which are analysed for the extent that they exibit the features of the travel book and with the purpose of coming up with a historical poetics of this genre within a given period of time. At times these travel books are periegesis across Greece written to facilitate travelling through Greek temples and to orientate the travellers. Some of the travel books are reports written by Roman clerks who used the Greek language and sent their reports to Rome in this language. Among the Hellenic travel books there is quite a number of those which were supported by the Egyptian state interested in the expansion of its markets. Other travel books such as the one attributed to Strab were written with the intention to describe the known world as a world dependent on Rome as its center. In two cases, in the case of Pythagoras and Antenor, we are dealing with travel books whose originals were probably lost so that they have been handed down to us in very free translations. Lukian's travel book derives from the shamanistic Greek journeys into the other world. Such journeys are to be found in myths and in the Odyssey. Lucian intellectualized his journey to the other world, distancing himself from the mythic mentality and writing a satire on the contemporary world. A common element in these texts is that the strong writerly individuality does not appear as the central relational point of the travel book. The author with his experience keeps in the background. Instead of this we find an emphasis on his scholarly endeavours with a simultaneous appreciation of Homer's Odyssey. In this travel book an image of the world finally came into being which, as the continuation of the image of the world inscribed in the Greek travel books, became the first image of the world in existence. This image of the world had a world-wide circulation from Thule in the northwest to Taprobana in the southeast.
