The whole art of Ancient History is reconstructing plausible accounts of the distant past from fragmentary written and archeological sources (with, these days, a bit of help from the hard sciences for dating, DNA and isotopes in tooth enamel). As a result, ancient historians usually go where the sources are best preserved and in the Western tradition that has meant a Mediterranean-centric focus. In The Far Edges of the Known World however, Owen Rees shows us how many of those same sources can, with a bit of a shake, be made to yield other stories of areas and peoples who we may have thought were beyond recovery.

Rees begins with the peripheral Greek settlements on the Black Sea and the Scythian tribes in the steppes beyond. Here Herodotus still can be used but Rees skilfully weaves the epigraphic, archeological and literary evidence to provide a useful picture of life on the ‘edge’ of the Mediterranean world. This is particularly impressive given that some of our sources – such as the poet Ovid, who was exiled to Tomis on the Black Sea (possibly for taking his love poetry a bit too literally with Augustus’s daughter) and was so disgusted by his place of exile as to be almost useless as a source on actual conditions there.

From the Black Sea Reece takes the reader to other remote parts of the Greek world – Naucratis in Egypt, Massalia in France and then remote parts of the Roman world in Morocco, and Hadrian’s Wall. He then ventures beyond the physical edges of the classical world to places that were known to it but fantastically remote – Pakistan, Vietnam and Ethiopia. In this section he traverses similar territory to Dalrymple’s The Golden Road and the fact that Roman envoys probably got as far as Vietnam in about 166CE suggests a world that was bigger and more connected than we have traditionally believed.

This is a terrific read for anyone with an interest in the ancient world and Rees is a skilled practitioner of his art.

Reviewed by Grant Hansen

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Owen Rees is the founder and lead editor of Bad Ancient. He holds a PhD in Ancient History from the Manchester Metropolitan University. His specific research interest lies in the transition of soldiers from civilian life to the battlefield and back again. He also studies the treatment of the ancient Greek war dead.

Owen works as both a lecturer and as a freelance writer, regularly contributing to publications specialising in ancient history. He originally created #badancient as a way to collect examples of ancient history being misused, or appropriated, in the modern day as a way of showing his students the importance of ancient history in everyday life.

Visit badancient.com to fact check claims that are made about the ancient world.