The Ancient Shore
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Paul J. Kosmin
About this book
Winner of the AHA Prize in History prior to CE 1000
An esteemed historian explores the natural and social dynamics of the ancient coastline, demonstrating for the first time its integral place in the world of Mediterranean antiquity.
As we learn from The Odyssey and the Argonauts, Greek dramas frequently played out on a watery stage. In particular, antiquity’s key events and exchanges often occurred on coastlines. Yet the shore was not just a site of conquest and trade, ire and yearning. The seacoast was a singular kind of space and was integral to the cosmology of the Greeks and their neighbors. In The Ancient Shore, award-winning historian Paul Kosmin reveals the influence of the coast on the inner lives of the ancients: their political thought, scientific notions, artistic endeavors, and myths; their sense of wonder and of self.
The Ancient Shore transports readers to a time when the coast was an unpredictable, formidable site of infinite and humbling possibility. Shorelines served as points of connection and competition that fostered distinctive political identities. It was at the coast—ever violent, ever permeable to predation—that state power ended, and so the coast was fundamental to theories of sovereignty. Then too, the boundary of land and sea symbolized human limitation, making it the subject of elaborate and continuous philosophical, scientific, and religious attention.
Kosmin’s ancient world is expansive, connecting the Atlantic to the Straits of Malacca, the Black Sea to the Indian Ocean. And his methods are similarly far-ranging, integrating accounts of statecraft and commerce with intellectual, literary, religious, and environmental history. The Ancient Shore is a radically new encounter with people, places, objects, and ideas we thought we knew.
Reviews
-- Josephine Quinn London Review of Books
-- Georgia L. Irby Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Innovative…the first study of coasts as distinct transitional zones between land and sea, with particular
emphasis on their significance in politics and culture during the Hellenistic Period….Highly recommended.
-- S. M. Burstein Choice
-- Alain Bresson, author of The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy
-- Sitta von Reden, author of Money in Classical Antiquity
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Preface
ix -
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Introduction
1 -
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1. UNITY
24 -
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2. CLAIM-MAKING
81 -
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3. COSMOS
162 -
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Epilogue
253 -
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Abbreviations
259 -
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Notes
263 -
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References
323 -
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Maps and illustrations
381 -
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Index
387
