The Ancient Shore

by Paul J. Kosmin

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 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.

Genres: History

416 pages, Hardcover

Published October 8, 2024

About the author

Paul J. Kosmin is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is coeditor of Spear-Won Land: Sardis from the King’s Peace to the Peace of Apamea. Kosmin has been a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellow and a PAW Fellow at Princeton University, as well as an Oliver Smithies Lecturer at Oxford University.

Reviews

[Anatolikon · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's an amazing book in here, but unfortunately it's buried under a mass of tedious, obfuscating jargon. We know you're smart, Paul, but I have a PhD from an Ivy League university in an adjacent subject and *I* thought this was painful to read, so I can't imagine who the intended audience is here. Lots of excellent content, and nice job drawing material from the Near East and India before Greece and Rome, but the writing is agonizing.

[William Ballantyne-Rice · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting ideas on the shore line when not awash with references.

[Daniel]

lrb review.

[Reagan Taylor]

DNF page 102

Unnecessarily verbose and hard to comprehend for an actually really interesting subject