Periplus

Il Periplo dello Ps.Scilace è un testo controverso. Negli anni ’70 Aurelio Peretti lo definì come “il primo portolano del Mediterraneo”,  facendo leva su una sua presunta finalità pratica. Successivi studi hanno, però, smentito questa ipotesi, sottolineando piuttosto tutti quegli elementi che rendono il testo inaffidabile nel corso di una traversata marittima. Questo contributo riprende l’ipotesi espressa dal Peretti, ma non col fine di propugnare l’uso pratico del Periplo; si propone, invece, di identificare e analizzare i contenuti probabilmente mutuati da fonti nautiche di epoca precedente al fine di avanzare ipotesi sulla natura della tradizione documentale anteriore.

This article undertakes a critical retrospective of the symbolic appropriation process through which Soqotra was constituted as an imaginative geography, embodying the strategic desiderata of states as well as the ideational fantasies of men over millennia. The island’s location on the threshold of continents (Africa and Arabia), and on a cardinal node on the sea-lanes linking the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and beyond, subjected its internal dynamics to the maelstrom of events in the larger world. Moreover, its physical isolation endowed it with an endemic biodiversity that has spurred reveries about the lost Garden of Eden, and made it a coveted haven for a mosaic of human aspirations. The article examines the strategic interests pursued, and the appropriating discourses deployed, by the European powers vying for political and economic hegemony at the different historical periods surveyed here: Antiquity, Portuguese, British, Soviet and the recent adoption of a United Nations brokered environmental regime for Soqotra. Finally, it draws out the ramifications of this strategic entanglement and symbolic appropriation process on Soqotra’s estimated 50,000 inhabitants at the present historical conjuncture.

This is a compendium of texts on the topic of Yuezhi/Greater Yuezhi/Kushan and related studies.
The texts are quotes from monographs and journal articles ranging from 1738 to 2000.
They are confined to Western languages.
Although the collection is far from complete, most Western authors who contributed to our knowledge of Central and South Asian history from 300 BCE to 300 CE have been brought together here.
More texts will be added in due time.

Polybius’ allusions to Odysseus have often been dismissively attributed to “romantic imagination” in studies of the historian’s purpose and method. This tendency to analyze Polybius’ ‘Homeric’ passages in emotional terms, minimizing their historiographical significance, has obscured a key facet of the historian’s self- characterization. Rather than merely revealing an entertaining aspect of Polybius’ psychology, the Odyssean theme in the Histories suggestively connects the worldly statesman to the spirit and accomplishments of the periplus narratives pioneered by Hecataeus, Scylax, and others. On this foundation, Polybius constructs an ecumenical geography which unites Greek intellectual and cultural prestige with the benefits of Roman hegemony.