Although it was first published more than a century and a half ago (1855–61), K. Müller's two-volume Geographi Graeci minores (GGM) remains the standard (and, in some cases, the only) edition of the texts ascribed to the group of authors known pejoratively as the Minor Greek Geographers. This is a problematic state of affairs for two main reasons. First, GGM is, in more ways than one, only partially complete. Müller himself was cognisant of the many lacunae in his project and planned – though never managed – to produce several supplementary texts and maps. Moreover, in the time that has since elapsed, advances in textual and literary criticism, as well as new discoveries in archaeology, epigraphy and papyrology, have made it necessary to revise a good number of his interpretations and editorial interventions. Second, GGM is replete with serious obstacles to utility. Not only do the texts lack an apparatus criticus (leaving textual problems to be dealt with alongside other matters in the commentaries), but, more pressingly, all translations and commentaries are printed in particularly punishing Latin. As G. Shipley recently remarked, ‘in an age of interdisciplinary study, Müller's introductions, translations, and commentaries are hard going even for those of us who do read Latin, and wholly inaccessible to specialists in most other fields’ (Shipley, Syllecta Classica 18 [2007], 242).
That there is a pressing need to revise – or, indeed, to replace – GGM is not breaking news to anyone working in or adjacent to the field. Several of the individual texts collected by Müller now have their own updated editions and commentaries, and more ambitious projects on some of the subgroups comprising the corpus (e.g. F. González Ponce's anticipated three-volume Periplógrafos griegos) are currently underway. Indeed, Shipley is presently at work (alongside R. Talbert and the University of North Carolina Press) on an ambitious project entitled Selected Greek Geographers (SSG), which aims to produce new English translations and commentaries of the texts included in GGM as well as others passed over by Müller (especially the fragments collected in the long-forthcoming Part 5 of Felix Jacoby's Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker). To this collective effort we may now add R.'s volume, which offers fresh translations and commentaries (in English) for two texts included in GGM (the Periplous of Hanno and the King Nikomedes Periodos) as well as an additional work of Latin geographical verse outside of Müller's ambit (Avienus’ Ora Maritima).
R.'s ambitions are significantly less extensive than those of his competitors. His book is structured around a self-avowedly pointillist assembly of texts designed to give, on one level, a series of snapshot close-ups of the ways in which geographical information was textualised at various points in antiquity, and, on another, an overarching impression of the trajectory along which ancient geographical writing transformed between the fifth century bce and the fourth century ce. Thus, ‘[c]overing as they do hundreds of years of Greek scholarship (even if, in one case, represented in the Latin language), the three texts allow understanding of the evolution of the genre throughout Graeco-Roman antiquity’ (p. x). What R. means here by ‘genre’ is the periplous – ‘the coastal sailing guide that formed the original Greek basis of geographical interest’ (p. ix) – which he sees as the elementary structural and generic basis of his three texts.
Herein, however, lies the major weakness with the book. R. operates on the assumption that it is possible to trace a clear, evolutionary trajectory along which periplography developed, beginning in the distant past as a now-unattested species of nautical guidebook and becoming, by late antiquity, a fully-fledged literary genre. Leaving aside the vexed question of the appropriateness of ‘genre’ as a critical framework within which to situate these texts, the evolutionary paradigm has long been the object of serious critique – beginning as early as the rebuttal mounted in R. Güngerich's often overlooked 1950 Die Küstenbeschreibung in der griechischen Literatur (absent from R.'s bibliography) – and, even so, there are now available alternative scenarios of the history of the form (e.g. P. Kaplan's ‘Function of the Early Periploi’, Classical Bulletin 84 [2008]). Moreover, R. bases this schematic development on the hypothesis of an extremely early date for the Periplous of Hanno. Readers of his other work (especially Through the Pillars of Herakles [2006]) will be familiar with his views on the authorship, translation and (re)discovery of the text: in sum, that it began life as a Punic original and was translated into Greek by the middle of the fourth century (probably earlier) when it was utilised by Ephorus. There is, however, no good evidence that Ephorus had ever seen a copy of the text (and the passage cited in support – Eph. F 30 = Strab. Geog. 1.2.28 – indicates nothing of the sort). Nor, for that matter, is it clear that any of the ancient authors who mention Hanno were getting their information from our Periplous. Whatever the reality about Hanno's text, any speculative chronology is bound to be a shaky foundation for a longue durée genealogy of periplography.
R.'s translations are, for the most part, accurate and, to the extent that it is possible given the material, elegant. This is, however, often difficult to substantiate given the odd decision (presumably a convention of the series?) not to print facing texts in the original languages in the fashion, for example, of the Loeb Classical Library. One passage in which this poses a particular challenge appears in the famous prologue to the King Nikomedes Periodos. There is, as R. rightly observes, a substantial lacuna in the section of the manuscript comprising the putative vv. 119–25 (replicated in all subsequent apographs). Here, R. follows D. Marcotte in simply omitting the section of damaged text, but makes mention neither of the issues of sense that this raises nor of B. Bravo's substantial reconstruction of the entire section in La chronique d'Apollodore et le Pseudo-Skymnos (2009). While this reviewer would not necessarily advocate the adoption of Bravo's rather speculative suggestions, it would have been helpful for the possibility of additional text to have been flagged in the commentary to allow readers to make an informed decision for themselves (without having to purchase additional – and expensive – tomes).
This too raises a question of audience and accessibility. For a roughly 200-page book, containing no Greek or Latin text, intended to make abstruse works available to a wider readership, the £120 (US$160) price tag is excessive. One wonders how Routledge expect ‘undergraduate students with an interest in Greco-Roman literature and ancient geography’ (in the words of the preface) to gravitate here. Moreover, given that a two-volume paperback reprint of GGM is currently available from Cambridge University Press for a fraction of the price, it is difficult to imagine why specialists would bother shelling out the extra money for this.
In sum, this is a book that, in one sense, achieves what it sets out to do. It solves a single element of the GGM problem by providing a series of accessible translations of three important but neglected texts, from which new readers (especially those unable to do business with Müller's Latin) will benefit. Regrettably, however, the commentaries and introductions are too often grounded in speculative interpretations of scanty evidence (especially concerning the history of the text of the Periplous of Hanno and the content of Juba II of Mauretania's lost Wanderings of Hanno), and the picture the book paints of the history of periplography reproduces a tired narrative about the gradual emergence of the genre from humble, practical beginnings. Given this, as well as the exorbitant price for which it currently retails, readers would be better placed to wait for a paperback (assuming one is projected) – or, indeed, for the eventual publication of Shipley's SSG.
