The Periplus of Hanno/Advert2
From the Press of the Commercial Museum, Philadelphia
The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea
Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First Century
Translated from the Greek and annotated
by WILFRED H. SCHOFF, A. M.
Secretary of the Commercial Museum, Philadelphia
With numerous illustrations and a map in colors, showing the entire known world at the date of this work, political divisions, national boundaries, leading commercial centers, and trade-routes.
8vo. pp. vi— 328: $2.00, net. By mail, $2.17
The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea is one of those human documents, like the journals of Marco Polo and Columbus and Vespucci, which express not only individual enterprise, but the awakening of a whole race, toward new fields of geographical discovery and commercial achievement. It is the first record of organized trading with the nations of the East, in vessels and commanded by subjects of the Western World.
The author of the Periplus was an Egyptian Greek, a Roman subject, who traded from the Red Sea down the East African coast and as far as Southern India, in the second half of the first century after Christ. Like Hippalus, who taught the Roman world the use of the monsoons, he steered his course straight across the ocean before the trade-winds, without compass or other aids to navigation. The Periplus is a merchant-captain's log, an original and truthful record of navigation and trade.
The notes comprise an exhaustive survey of the international trade between the great empires of Rome, Parthia, India and China, at the beginning of intelligent interaction from end to end of the continental mass; of the mediation of the lesser kingdoms, in Abyssinia (the first known record of that African state), Arabia, Southern India and Further India (the first accurate record of those regions in the Roman world), Ceylon and Central Asia; of the articles dealt in, the methods of trading, the trade-routes and trade-centers; of the political and commercial alignment of the world's powers of the 1st century; and include numerous new identifications of articles and places, important to the history of the period.
The book contains a historical introduction, an inquiry into the date and authorship of this Periplus, and a complete bibliography. Also, a classified list of articles of trade mentioned in this Periplus; a list of articles subject to duty at Alexandria in the Roman period; a summary of opinions of various commentators regarding date and authorship; a list of rulers of various kingdoms mentioned in this Periplus, with identifications; and an alphabetical index.
LONGMANS, GREEN. AND CO
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
1912