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Navigation et géographie dans l'antiquitégreco-romaineAnthony Jones Papalas aa East Carolina UniversityPublished online: 29 Jul 2013.

To cite this article: Anthony Jones Papalas (2013) Navigation et géographie dans l'antiquité greco-romaine,The Mariner's Mirror, 99:3, 351-352, DOI: 10.1080/00253359.2013.785157

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2013.785157

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Navigation et géographie dans l’antiquité greco-romaine by Jean-Marie KowalskiÉditions Picard, Paris, 2012, €38 (pb)256 pages, with 46 black-and-white maps and diagrams, bibliography, indexisBn 9782798409163

Kowalski begins by discussing how the Greeks imagined the sea. It was the realm of pirates; it separated lovers, and nurtured shady merchants. Plato compared the Greeks to frogs never far from water and lamented the sea’s corrupting influence on Greek civilization. But Kowalski’s main purpose is to analyse the works of the Greek geographers rather than the writers who provided a metaphorical view of the sea. His chief source is Strabo (about 64 Bc–ad 24). Although Strabo’s main aim was to establish systematic geographic principles based on mathematics, he labelled Homer ‘the father of geography’ and assumed the Homeric epics were historical events from which geographical information could be gleaned. He attacked Eratosthenes (275–196 Bc) who eschewed myths as sources for geography.

In classical antiquity there was a shortage of useful knowledge related to dangers and distances. Eventually a series of guides for seamen, periploi, appeared. Strabo, as a secondary aim, endeavoured to provide useful information to help minimize losses at sea. Kowalski cites Marcian of Heraclea, about 350 ad, author of a periplous and an admirer of Strabo , who complained that there was much conflicting information in the works of his predecessors. In an effort to reduce inconsistencies he provided a fundamental fact: a sail ship with a favourable wind could do about 60 nautical miles a day. Kowalski tends to focus on sources like Strabo and Marcian who measured distances in terms of wind rather than oar power. For military purposes the Greeks generally deployed oared galleys and measured distances by oar power rather than sail. For instance, Xenophon (Anab. 6. 4. 2) wrote that a trireme, a ship propelled by 170 oarsmen although on certain occasion sail-power came into play, could cover 129 nautical miles (236 km) the distance between Byzantium to Heraclea, in a long day voyage. That is more

than twice the distance a ship strictly under sail could cover.

Kowalski is at a loss as to how the Greeks defined maritime regions such as the Icarian Sea, the open stretch of the Aegean between Myconus and Icaria. It was by feel. Anyone sailing through the Icarian Sea senses a turbulence beginning just past Myconus which persists until the lee of Icaria. But the focus of the second chapter is on the role of vision in spatial cognition. Kowalski notes that the toponyms of some islands were based on clear recognizable shapes but many other visual signs were ambiguous. Kowalski argues that Strabo’s descriptions tended to be vague but he also brings the Greek language to task maintaining that terms such as cape, promontory, gulf, bay, are imprecise. Furthermore, anyone following Strabo’s directions ‘toward the south’ or ‘near or in front of some place,’ tends to get lost. Perhaps Strabo, who stated that his work was meant for the educated class particularly for those trained in mathematics, tried too hard to be scientific reducing some sites to bizarre geometric images such as triangular pro montories. But other writers were equally ambiguous. Homer’s detailed description of the topography of Ithaca does not match with the modern island of Ithaca. Thucydides’ (4.8.6) account of the island of Sphacteria and its relation to Pylus does not correspond to the present day sites. In view of these problems we may wonder if the works of Strabo and other Greek writers on geography and the sea served mainly armchair navigators. Greek pilots most likely learned, as did Mark Twain, their trade not from books but experienced seamen. In Life on the Mississippi Twain quotes his mentor, Captain Horace Bixby, ‘There is only one way to be a pilot and that is to get this river by heart.’ Bixby advised him to know it as if you were walking through a dark room in your house.

In chapter three Kowalski discusses Greek maps which generally displayed land, rivers and sea. Kowalski is surely right in arguing that maps throughout the ancient Greek period lacked the detail requisite for military campaigns. But since this work is organized topically rather

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352 The Mariner’s Mirror

than diachronically it is not always clear how Greek notions of geography and navigation evolved in the 800-year period this book covers. Greek concepts in these matters were rather unsophisticated in the early fifth century as is indicated by the effort of an Ionian envoy about 500 Bc to persuade King Cleomenes of Sparta to dispatch an expedition to Asia Minor by showing him a bronze map, presumably the first one he had seen. The Spartan King vetoed the expedition when he realized the distances involved. (Herodotus 5. 48) After the Battle of Salamis in 480 Bc again Herodotus (8. 132) informs us that when the Greek fleet was stationed at Delos the sailors were initially afraid to proceed to Samos thinking that it was as far from them as the Pillars of Heracles. Some two centuries later Greeks were more knowledgeable about distances and navigation as is indicated by Pytheas’ circumnavigation of Britain and Eratosthenes’ relative accurate calculation of the earth’s circumference.

Overall, this is a solid scholarly work which offers many valuable insights into the Greeks’ under standing of the sea and their naval experience. There are two useful appendices, one dealing with Greek geographic terms and the other an analysis of the important primary sources.

anthony jones papalaseast carolina university

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2013.785157© Anthony Jones Papalas

The Maritime Landscape of Roman Britain: Water transport on the coasts and rivers of Britannia by James Ellis JonesArchaeopress, Oxford, 2012, £35 (pb)iv + 213 pages, with numerous black-and-white illustrations, bibliography, indexisBn 9781407309583

Water transport was an important part both of Roman army logistics and of the civil economy of Roman Britain. Given that Britain was an island, and one not only with many accessible shore areas, but also with rivers allowing access far inland, this appears to be rather self-evident. Yet even so, water transport has not featured prominently in the

literature on Roman Britain. In fact, the only study directly dedicated to it so far has been Jones’s own dissertation on water transport off the Western costs which was pub lished in 2009 as The Maritime and Riverine Landscape of the West of Roman Britain (BAR British Series 493, Oxford). This new study follows Jones’s earlier work in that the author tries to collect all the available evidence for mari time transport activity; this approach has made his earlier 2009 study eminently useful for anyone working on the maritime history of Roman Britain, and Jones’s new book is no less so.

Jones begins his study with a chapter on changes in the maritime landscape, making the important point that only a proper under-standing of how the coastal and riverine situ-ation in a given place at a given time will lead to a proper understanding of Roman water transport. While landscape change has in recent years gained more attention, its crucial importance for the study of maritime history is in many cases still not fully realized; it is therefore very positive to see Jones put it right at the beginning of his study. He then turns to the trade networks used for the transportation of goods in Roman Britain. In doing so, Jones does not confine himself to the discussion of waterways, but also looks closely at road networks and how these were interconnected. This is a particularly important issue, the study of which is still in its infancy. More research is needed into how transport operations actually worked at the changing points where different types of networks met. Jones then discusses, in chapter 3, the archaeological evidence for ships and boats found around Roman Britain before turning from the mechanics of the trans portation of goods to the demand of transport. In the following chapters, Jones looks into the supply needs of the Roman army. While chapter 4 mainly summarizes the current state of research on Roman logistics, its inclusion is more than justified as going by sheer volume of goods transported the Roman army was the most important – and most frequent – user of the transport waterways in and around Roman Britain. Jones then gives brief overviews over the military history of Roman Britain and naval operations around Roman Britain, devoting one chapter on the

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