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The Far Edges of the Known World by Owen Rees (Hardback)
£25.00
Available
Product Ref. (e.g. ISBN, SKU)
9781526653789
Published:
13 Feb 2025
Format:
Hardback
Number of pages:
384 pages
Dimensions:
234x153mm
Weight:
0.000kgs
Author:
When Ovid was exiled from Rome to a border town on the Black Sea, he despaired at his new bleak and barbarous surroundings. Like many Greeks and Romans, Ovid thought the outer reaches of their world was where civilisation ceased to exist. Our fascination with the Greek and Roman world, and the abundance of writing that we have from it, means that we usually explore the ancient world from this perspective too. Was Ovid's exile really as bad as he claimed? What was it truly like to live on the edges of these empires, on the boundaries of the known world?
'A tour of those farflung places where Romans rarely dared to venture' The Times
'This is the book for expanding your ancient history horizon' Tristan Hughes, host of 'The Ancients' podcast
What was it like to live on the edges of ancient empires, at the boundaries of the known world?
When Ovid was exiled from Rome to a border town on the Black Sea, he despaired at his new bleak and barbarous surroundings. Like many Greeks and Romans, Ovid thought the outer reaches of his world was where civilisation ceased to exist. Our fascination with the Greek and Roman world, and the abundance of writing that we have from it, means that we usually explore the ancient world from this perspective too. Was Ovid's exile really as bad as he claimed? What was it truly like to live on the edges of these empires, on the boundaries of the known world?
Thanks to archaeological excavations, we now know that the borders of the empires we consider the 'heart' of civilisation were in fact thriving, vibrant cultures - just not ones we might expect. This is where the boundaries of 'civilised' and 'barbarians' began to dissipate; where the rules didn't always apply; where normally juxtaposed cultures intermarried; and where nomadic tribes built their own cities.
Taking us along the sandy caravan routes of Morocco to the freezing winters of the northern Black Sea, from Co-Loa in the Red River valley of Vietnam to the rain-lashed forts south of Hadrian's Wall, Owen Rees explores the powerful empires and diverse peoples in Europe, Asia and Africa beyond the reaches of Greece and Rome. In doing so, he offers us a new, brilliantly rich lens with which to understand the ancient world.
About the Author: Owen Rees is an interdisciplinary researcher at Birmingham Newman University with a core specialism in ancient history. He studied at the universities of Reading and Nottingham before completing his PhD at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2018. Previously, Owen held postdoctoral fellowships at the Institute of Medical Humanities at the University of Durham, and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Nottingham. Owen is also the founder and lead editor of badancient.com, which brings together a growing network of specialists to fact-check common claims made about the ancient world.
| Number of pages | 384 |
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