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Il periplo del Mare Eritreo di anonimo del I. sec. D. C. e altri testi sul commercio fra Roma e l'Oriente attraverso l'Oceano Indiano a la Via della Seta. By STEFANO BELFIORE. Rome: SOCIETÀ GEOGRAFICA ITALIANA, 2004. Pp. 278, illus. (paper).
A periplus was a sailor's descriptive geography or coastal gazetteer, but the Greek genre permitted considerable scope for incidental information, including mythological associations. Even the sober Arrian of Nicomedia, Roman military governor of Cappadocia, ca. 131 ce., could, in his periplus addressed to his friend, the emperor Hadrian, fill out his dry report of sailing directions in the Black Sea with comments on a given port's attempt to discover somehow a connection with mythological traditions and hence profit from tourists. These periploi date from the late fourth century b.ce. forward and are the genetic literary ancestors to the itineraria of which the Stathmoi of Isidore (see below) is an example. The first reliable scholarly edition of these texts was presented in a minor jewel of nineteenthcentury classical scholarship, Karl Otfried Miiller's Geographi Graeci Minores, 2 vols. (Paris: Didot, 1853-54): brief geographical and historical commentary, with a facing, serviceable (but only that) Latin translation.
The Periplus Belfiore expertly presents here is a different sort of guide: not so much for the pilot's...