7 - Pseudo-Skylax

Summary

This chapter presents a revised, annotated translation of the Periplous (Circumnavigation) erroneously attributed to Skylax of Karyanda (Chapter 2 of this volume) but most likely written in 338–335 BC (conceivably by Dikaiarchos of Messana, Chapter 9), together with selected testimonia and fragments arranged as seven extracts. The translation reflects recent improvements to the Greek text. The chapter introduction characterizes the author’s conception of continental divisions and of the inhabited world as a sequence of ethnic regions. His focus on coastal topography, baldly enumerated, may reflect the aim of calculating the ‘length’ of each continent. This idiosyncratic work may have been intended for circulation only within Aristotle’s Peripatos (Lyceum); its impact seems to have been limited, other than perhaps upon Dikaiarchos and the late antique Euxine (Chapter 36). A new map summarizes the author’s clockwise ‘progress’ round the Mediterranean and Black Sea, while a second shows the key points in his portrayal of Greece and the Aegean.