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After some remarks on the relation that links travel and literature together, and a short investigation of the vocabulary of travel, which reveals some interesting symbolic meanings, the paper considers how the journey is represented in some literary texts dating back to Late Antiquity. The symbolic meaning of the travel can be examined with reference to the ideas of time and space (because of its direction and the timing of its stages), centre and periphery, identity and difference, flight and return, sedentariness and nomadism, truth and fiction, reality and imagination, and so on. In the case of Christianity, it widely enriched the symbolism of travel and journeys: they became a metaphor for the entire life and represented the human road to heaven, namely through pilgrimage and preaching. Journeys preserved their symbolic meanings for pagans, too, especially with respect to the emperors’ journeys and celebration of triumphs. Travelling was also typical of many barbarian tribes: their nomadism was felt to be just the opposite of the Romans’ sedentarism. Finally, travelling has an important symbolic function in the descriptions of imaginary places and especially of the heavens, both in Christian and pagan literature: the journey, which usually aims at a joining together, can also emphasize the differences and the distance and keep ideal places and reality apart. [Author]