The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean

by David Abulafia

  4. Warmington, Carthage, p. 80.

  5. M. Finley, Ancient Sicily (London, 1968), p. 71; Andrewes, Greek Tyrants, p. 129; Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, p. 126 (for a Carthaginian inscription commemorating the fall of Akragas).

  6. Warmington, Carthage, pp. 83, 87; Finley, Ancient Sicily, pp. 71–2, 91–3.

  7. Warmington, Carthage, p. 91; Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, pp. 127–8.

  8. Warmington, Carthage, pp. 93–5; Finley, Ancient Sicily, pp. 76, 78, 80, 82.

  9. Warmington, Carthage, p. 94.

  10. Plutarch, Parallel Lives, ‘Timoleon’; Finley, Ancient Sicily, p. 96.

  11. Warmington, Carthage, pp. 102–3; Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, pp. 136–7.

  12. R. J. A. Talbert, Timoleon and the Revival of Greek Sicily, 344–317 BC (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 151–2; Finley, Ancient Sicily, p. 99.

  13. Plutarch, ‘Timoleon’; Talbert, Timoleon, pp. 156–7, 161–5; Finley, Ancient Sicily, p. 99.

  14. Finley, Ancient Sicily, p. 104; Warmington, Carthage, p. 107.

  15. Warmington, Carthage, p. 113.

  16. Finley, Ancient Sicily, p. 105.

  17. J. Serrati, ‘The coming of the Romans: Sicily from the fourth to the first centuries BC’, in Sicily from Aeneas to Augustus: New Approaches in Archaeology and History, ed. C. Smith and J. Serrati (Edinburgh, 2000), pp. 109–10.

  18. Livy 2:34.4; B. D. Hoyos, Unplanned Wars: the Origins of the First and Second Punic Wars (Berlin, 1998), p. 28; G. Rickman, The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome (Oxford, 1980), p. 31.

  19. R. Cowan, Roman Conquests: Italy (London, 2009), pp. 8–11, 21–5.

  20. R. Meiggs, Roman Ostia (2nd edn, Oxford, 1973), p. 24.

  21. Rickman, Corn Supply, p. 32.

  22. K. Lomas, Rome and the Western Greeks 350 BC–AD 200 (London, 1993), p. 50.

  23. Livy 9:30.4.

  24. Disagreeing with Lomas, Rome and the Western Greeks, p. 51.

  25. Lomas, Rome and the Western Greeks, p. 56.

  26. Hoyos, Unplanned Wars, pp. 19–20.

  27. J. F. Lazenby, The First Punic War: a Military History (London, 1996), p. 34; Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, pp. 162–5.

  28. Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, pp. 107–11, 160–61.

  29. E.g. A. Goldsworthy, The Fall of Carthage (London, 2000), pp. 16, 65, 322.

  30. Hoyos, Unplanned Wars, pp. 1–4; Goldsworthy, Fall of Carthage, pp. 19–20.

  31. Polybios 1:63; Hoyos, Unplanned Wars, p. 1; on devastation: Goldsworthy, Fall of Carthage, pp. 363–4.

  32. J. Serrati, ‘Garrisons and grain: Sicily between the Punic Wars’, in Sicily from Aeneas to Augustus, ed. Smith and Serrati, pp. 116–19.

  33. Lazenby, First Punic War, pp. 35–9; Goldsworthy, Fall of Carthage, pp. 66–8; Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, pp. 171–3.

  34. Polybios 10:3; Lazenby, First Punic War, p. 37; Hoyos, Unplanned Wars, pp. 33–66.

  35. Polybios 20:14; Lazenby, First Punic War, p. 48; Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, p. 174.

  36. Diodoros 23:2.1.

  37. Lazenby, First Punic War, pp. 51, 55.

  38. Polybios 20:1–2; Hoyos, Unplanned Wars, p. 113; Lazenby, First Punic War, p. 60; Goldsworthy, Fall of Carthage, p. 81.

  39. Cf. though Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, p. 175.

  40. Polybios 20:9; Lazenby, First Punic War, pp. 62–3.

  41. Polybios 20:9–12.

  42. Ibid. 22:2.

  43. Lazenby, First Punic War, pp. 64, 66 and 69, fig. 5.1; Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, pp. 181–3.

  44. J. H. Thiel, Studies on the History of Roman Sea-power in Republican Times (Amsterdam, 1946), p. 19; Goldsworthy, Fall of Carthage, pp. 109–15; also Lazenby, First Punic War, pp. 83, 86–7.

  45. Cf. Lazenby, First Punic War, p. 94.

  46. J. Morrison, Greek and Roman Oared Warships, 339–30 BC (Oxford, 1996), pp. 46–50.

  47. Goldsworthy, Fall of Carthage, p. 115.

  48. Polybios 37:3; Lazenby, First Punic War, p. 111; Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, p. 181.

  49. Polybios 62:8–63.3; Lazenby, First Punic War, p. 158.

  50. Warmington, Carthage, pp. 167–8; Hoyos, Unplanned Wars, pp. 131–43.

  51. M. Guido, Sardinia (Ancient Peoples and Places, London, 1963), p. 209.

  52. B. D. Hoyos, Hannibal’s Dynasty: Power and Politics in the Western Mediterranean, 247–183 BC (London, 2003), pp. 50–52, 72, 74–6; Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, pp. 214–22.

  53. Hoyos, Hannibal’s Dynasty, p. 53.

  54. Ibid., pp. 55, 63–7, 79–80; Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, p. 224, citing Polybios 10:10.

  55. Hoyos, Unplanned Wars, pp. 150–95, especially p. 177 and p. 208.

  56. Goldsworthy, Fall of Carthage, pp. 253–60.

  57. Serrati, ‘Garrisons and grain’, pp. 115–33.

  58. Finley, Ancient Sicily, pp. 117–18; Goldsworthy, Fall of Carthage, p. 261.

  59. Thiel, Studies on the History of Roman Sea-power, pp. 79–86; Goldsworthy, Fall of Carthage, pp. 263, 266.

  60. Finley, Ancient Sicily, p. 119.

  61. Goldsworthy, Fall of Carthage, p. 308.

  62. Thiel, Studies on the History of Roman Sea-power, pp. 255–372.

  63. Goldsworthy, Fall of Carthage, p. 331.

  64. Warmington, Carthage, pp. 201–2.

  65. Goldsworthy, Fall of Carthage, pp. 338–9.

  66. Rauh, Merchants, pp. 38–53.

  67. Virgil, Aeneid, 4:667–71, in Dryden’s translation.

  8. ‘Our Sea’, 146 BC–AD 150

  1. N. K. Rauh, Merchants, Sailors and Pirates in the Roman World (Stroud, 2003), pp. 136–41.

  2. Lucan, Pharsalia, 7:400–407, trans. Robert Graves.

  3. R. Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1939), pp. 78, 83–8.

  4. P. de Souza, Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 92–6.

  5. L. Casson, The Ancient Mariners: Seafarers and Sea Fighters of the Mediterranean in Ancient Times (2nd edn, Princeton, NJ, 1991), p. 191; de Souza, Piracy, pp. 140–41, 162, 164.

  6. Cited in de Souza, Piracy, pp. 50–51.

  7. Livy 34:32.17–20; Polybios 13:6.1–2; both cited in de Souza, Piracy, pp. 84–5.

  8. de Souza, Piracy, pp. 185–95.

  9. Rauh, Merchants, pp. 177, 184; but maybe these tyrannoi (and not Etruscans) were the Tyrrhenoi active near Rhodes – an easy etymological confusion.

  10. Strabo, Geography, 14.3.2; Rauh, Merchants, pp. 171–2.

  11. Plutarch, Parallel Lives, ‘Pompey’, 24.1–3, trans. John Dryden.

  12. de Souza, Piracy, pp. 165–6.

  13. Plutarch, Parallel Lives, ‘Pompey’, 25:1, trans. John Dryden.

  14. Syme, Roman Revolution, p. 28.

  15. Cicero, Pro Lege Manilia, 34; G. Rickman, The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome (Oxford, 1980), pp. 51–2.

  16. de Souza, Piracy, pp. 169–70.

  17. Rickman, Corn Supply, p. 51; Syme, Roman Revolution, p. 29.

  18. Plutarch, Parallel Lives, ‘Pompey’, 28:3; de Souza, Piracy, pp. 170–71, 175–6.

  19. Syme, Roman Revolution, p. 30.

  20. Hoc voluerunt: Suetonius, Twelve Caesars, ‘Divus Julius’, 30:4.

  21. Syme, Roman Revolution, p. 260.

  22. F. Adcock in Cambridge Ancient History, 12 vols. (Cambridge, 1923–39), vol. 9, The Roman Republic, 133–44 BC, p. 724; Syme, Roman Revolution, pp. 53–60.

  23. Syme, Roman Revolution, pp. 260, 270.

  24. Ibid., pp. 294–7; C. G. Starr, The Roman Imperial Navy 31 BC–AD 324 (Ithaca, NY, 1941), pp. 7–8; J. Morrison, Greek and Roman Oared Warships, 339–30 BC (Oxford, 1996), pp. 157–75.

  25. Virgil, Aeneid, 8:678–80, 685–8, in Dryden’s rather loose version.

  26. Syme, Roman Revolution, pp. 298–300; Rickman, Corn Supply, pp. 61, 70.

  27. Res Gestae Divi Augusti, ed. P. A. Brunt and J. M. Moore (Oxford, 1967), 15:2.

  28. Rickman, Corn Supply, pp. 176–7, 187, 197,
205–8.

  29. Ibid., p. 12.

  30. Rauh, Merchants, pp. 93–4.

  31. Plutarch, Parallel Lives, ‘Cato the Elder’, 21.6; Rauh, Merchants, p. 104.

  32. Rauh, Merchants, p. 105.

  33. Rickman, Corn Supply, pp. 16, 121.

  34. Ibid., pp. 6–7; also P. Erdkamp, The Grain Market in the Roman Empire: a Social and Political Study (Cambridge, 2005); P. Garnsey, Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World: Responses to Risk and Crisis (Cambridge, 1988).

  35. Rickman, Corn Supply, p. 16.

  36. Museu de la Ciutat de Barcelona, Roman section.

  37. Rickman, Corn Supply, pp. 15, 128.

  38. Acts of the Apostles, 27 and 28.

  39. Rickman, Corn Supply, pp. 17, 65.

  40. Josephus, Jewish War, 2:383–5; Rickman, Corn Supply, pp. 68, 232.

  41. Rickman, Corn Supply, pp. 61, 123.

  42. Ibid., pp. 108–12; S. Raven, Rome in Africa (2nd edn, Harlow, 1984), pp. 84–105. Other sources included Sicily: Rickman, Corn Supply, pp. 104–6; Sardinia: ibid., pp. 106–7; Spain: ibid., pp. 107–8.

  43. Rickman, Corn Supply, pp. 67, 69.

  44. Raven, Rome in Africa, p. 94.

  45. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 18:35; Rickman, Corn Supply, p. 111.

  46. Raven, Rome in Africa, pp. 86, 93.

  47. Ibid., p. 95.

  48. Ibid., pp. 95, 100–102.

  49. Rickman, Corn Supply, pp. 69–70 and Appendix 4, pp. 231–5.

  50. Ibid., p. 115 (AD 99).

  51. Ibid., pp. 76–7, and Appendix 11, pp. 256–67.

  52. Seneca, Letters, 77:1–3, cited in D. Jones, The Bankers of Puteoli: Finance, Trade and Industry in the Roman World (Stroud, 2006), p. 26.

  53. Jones, Bankers of Puteoli, p. 28.

  54. Ibid., pp. 23–4; and Strabo, Geography, 5:4.6.

  55. Jones, Bankers of Puteoli, p. 33.

  56. Cited in R. Meiggs, Roman Ostia (Oxford, 1960), p. 60.

  57. Jones, Bankers of Puteoli, p. 34.

  58. Petronius, Satyricon, 76; Jones, Bankers of Puteoli, p. 43.

  59. Jones, Bankers of Puteoli, p. 11.

  60. Ibid., pp. 102–17.

  61. Ibid., Appendix 9, p. 255.

  62. Rickman, Corn Supply, pp. 21–4, 134–43; G. Rickman, Roman Granaries and Store Buildings (Cambridge, 1971).

  63. Rickman, Corn Supply, p. 23; Rickman, Roman Granaries, pp. 97–104.

  64. Meiggs, Roman Ostia, pp. 16–17, 41–5, 57–9, 74, 77.

  65. M. Reddé, Mare Nostrum: les infrastructures, le dispositif et l’histoire de la marine militaire sous l’empire romain (Rome, 1986).

  66. Tacitus, Histories, 3:8; Starr, Roman Imperial Navy, pp. 181, 183, 185, 189; Rickman, Corn Supply, p. 67.

  67. Starr, Roman Imperial Navy, p. 188.

  68. Ibid., p. 67.

  69. Cited ibid., p. 78.

  70. Aelius Aristides, cited ibid., p. 87.

  71. Oxyrhyncus papyrus cited ibid., p. 79.

  72. Ibid., pp. 84–5.

  73. Reddé, Mare Nostrum, p. 402.

  74. Raven, Rome in Africa, pp. 75–6; Reddé, Mare Nostrum, pp. 244–8.

  75. Reddé, Mare Nostrum, pp. 139, 607, and more generally pp. 11–141.

  76. Tacitus, Annals, 4:5; Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ‘Augustus’, 49; Reddé, Mare Nostrum, p. 472.

  77. Reddé, Mare Nostrum, pp. 186–97; Starr, Roman Imperial Navy, pp. 13–21.

  78. Reddé, Mare Nostrum, pp. 177–86; Starr, Roman Imperial Navy, pp. 21–4.

  9. Old and New Faiths, AD 1–450

  1. B. de Breffny, The Synagogue (London, 1978), pp. 30–32, 37.

  2. R. Meiggs, Roman Ostia (Oxford, 1960), pp. 355–66, 368–76.

  3. R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century AD to the Conversion of Constantine (London, 1986), pp. 428, 438, 453.

  4. M. Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem: the Clash of Ancient Civilisations (London, 2007), pp. 26–8, 421, 440–43.

  5. Ibid., pp. 469–70: coins inscribed FISCI IVDAICI CALVMNIA SVBLATA.

  6. Ibid., pp. 480, 484–91.

  7. S. Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People (London, 2009), pp. 130–46, seriously underestimates the scale of this diaspora.

  8. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, pp. 450, 482.

  9. Ibid., p. 487.

  10. Sand, Invention, pp. 171–2.

  11. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, p. 492.

  12. A. S. Abulafia, Christian-Jewish Relations, 1000–1300: Jews in the Service of Christians (Harlow, 2011), pp. 4–8, 15–16.

  13. R. Patai, The Children of Noah: Jewish Seafaring in Ancient Times (Princeton, NJ, 1998), pp. 137–42.

  14. Ibid., pp. 70–71, 85–100.

  15. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, pp. 609–62.

  16. G. Bowersock, Julian the Apostate (London, 1978), pp. 89–90, 120–22; P. Athanassiadi, Julian the Apostate: an Intellectual Biography (London, 1992), pp. 163–5.

  17. Bowersock, Julian, pp. 79–93; R. Smith, Julian’s Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (London, 1995).

  18. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, p. 31.

  19. G. Downey, Gaza in the Early Sixth Century (Norman, OK, 1963), pp. 33–59 – much of this book is the most dreadful waffle.

  20. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, p. 270.

  21. Downey, Gaza, pp. 17–26, 20–21, 25–9.

  22. For his career, see Mark the Deacon, Life of Porphyry Bishop of Gaza, ed. G. F. Hill (Oxford, 1913); Marc le Diacre, Vie de Porphyre, évêque de Gaza, ed. H. Grégoire and M.-A. Kugener (Paris, 1930).

  23. Sand, Invention, pp. 166–78, though overstated.

  24. Severus of Minorca, Letter on the Conversion of the Jews, ed. S. Bradbury (Oxford, 1996), editor’s introduction, pp. 54–5; J. Amengual i Batle, Judíos, Católicos y herejes: el microcosmos balear y tarraconense de Seuerus de Menorca, Consentius y Orosius (413–421) (Granada, 2008), pp. 69–201.

  25. C. Ginzburg, ‘The conversion of Minorcan Jews (417–418): an experiment in history of historiography’, in S. Waugh and P. Diehl (eds.), Christendom and its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion, 1000–1500 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 207–19.

  26. Severus of Minorca, Letter, pp. 80–85.

  27. Bradbury, ibid., pp. 34–6.

  28. Severus of Minorca, Letter, pp. 84–5.

  29. Ibid., pp. 82–3.

  30. Bishop John II of Jerusalem, ibid., p. 18; also Bradbury’s comments, pp. 16–25.

  31. Ginzburg, ‘Conversion’, pp. 213–15; Bradbury in Severus of Minorca, Letter, pp. 19, 53.

  32. Severus of Minorca, Letter, pp. 124–5.

  33. Ibid., pp. 94–101.

  34. Ibid., pp. 116–19.

  35. Ibid., pp. 92–3; but cf. Bradbury’s comment, p. 32.

  36. Bradbury, ibid., pp. 41–2.

  10. Dis-integration, 400–600

  1. B. Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilisation (Oxford, 2005), p. 32.

  2. Ibid., pp. 1–10; P. Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: a New History (London, 2005), p. xii.

  3. C. Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome: a History of Europe from 400 to 1000 (London, 2009).

  4. Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 130.

  5. G. Rickman, The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome (Oxford, 1980), pp. 69, 118.

  6. B. H. Warmington, The North African Provinces from Diocletian to the Vandal Conquest (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 64–5, 113.

  7. Ward-Perkins, Fall of Rome, pp. 103, 131.

  8. Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, pp. 277–80.

  9. Warmington, North African Provinces, p. 112; S. Raven, Rome in Africa (2nd ed, Harlow, 1984), p. 207.

  10. H. Castritius, Die Vandalen: Etappen einer Spurensuche (Stuttgart, 2007), pp. 15–33; A. Merrills and R. Miles, The Vandals (Oxford, 2010).

  11. Raven, Rome in Africa, p. 171.

  12. C. Courtois, Les Vandales et l’Afrique (Paris, 1955), p.
157.

  13. Ibid., p. 160; cf. H. J. Diesner, Das Vandelenreich: Aufstieg und Untergang (Leipzig, 1966), p. 51 for lower estimates.

  14. Courtois, Vandales, pp. 159–63; Castritius, Vandalen, pp. 76–8.

  15. Courtois, Vandales, pp. 110, 170; Wickham, Inheritance of Rome, p. 77.

  16. A. Schwarcz, ‘The settlement of the Vandals in North Africa’, in A. Merrills (ed.), Vandals, Romans and Berbers: New Perspectives on Late Antique North Africa (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 49–57.

  17. Courtois, Vandales, p. 173; A. Merrills, ‘Vandals, Romans and Berbers: understanding late antique North Africa’, in Merrills (ed.), Vandals, Romans and Berbers, pp. 4–5.

  18. Merrills, ‘Vandals, Romans and Berbers’, pp. 10–11.

  19. R. Hodges and D. Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe (London, 1983), pp. 27–8; also Wickham, Inheritance of Rome, p. 78: ‘the Carthage-Rome tax spine ended’.

  20. J. George, ‘Vandal poets in their context’, in Merrills (ed.), Vandals, Romans and Berbers, pp. 133–4; D. Bright, The Miniature Epic in Vandal North Africa (Norman, OK, 1987).

  21. Merrills, ‘Vandals, Romans and Berbers’, p. 13.

  22. Diesner, Vandalenreich, p. 125.

  23. Courtois, Vandales, p. 208.

  24. Ibid., p. 186.

  25. Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 373.

  26. Castritius, Vandalen, pp. 105–6.

  27. Courtois, Vandales, pp. 186–93, 212.

  28. Some authors reject the bubonic explanation; see W. Rosen, Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire and the Birth of Europe (London, 2007).

  29. A. Laiou and C. Morrisson, The Byzantine Economy (Cambridge, 2007), p. 38; C. Morrisson and J.-P. Sodini, ‘The sixth-century economy’, in A. Laiou (ed.), Economic History of Byzantium from the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, 3 vols. (Washington, DC, 2002), vol. 1, p. 193.

  30. C. Vita-Finzi, The Mediterranean Valleys: Geological Change in Historical Times (Cambridge, 1969); Hodges and Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne, pp. 57–9.

  31. C. Delano Smith, Western Mediterranean Europe: a Historical Geography of Italy, Spain and Southern France since the Neolithic (London, 1979), pp. 328–92.

  32. Morrisson and Sodini, ‘Sixth-century economy’, p. 209; P. Arthur, Naples: from Roman Town to City-state (Archaeological Monographs of the British School at Rome, vol. 12, London, 2002), pp. 15, 35; H. Ahrweiler, Byzance et la mer (Paris, 1966), p. 411; J. Pryor and E. Jeffreys, The Age of the : the Byzantine Navy ca 500–1204 (Leiden, 2006).