Customer Reviews

Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World

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Casson's book is an essential read for anyone interesting in the history of seafaring. It has been used as a text for nautical archaeology for decades now and has a well-deserved reputation for clarity and completeness. I noticed that the other reviewer of this text took exception to the inclusion of original Greek and Latin sources. In fact, the inclusion of these texts, along with the publication of often hard-to-find illustrations, is one of the great strengths of Casson's book. For those interested in seeing what the ancients actually wrote, Casson has saved us searching the texts out ourselves.

If you are turned off by foot notes that take at times three quarters of the page, don't get it. This is a scientific work, but never dull.

This book is an overview of the evolution of ships in the ancient Mediteranean and middleast from rafts and inflated animal skins to behemoth grain carriers that plied courses from Alexandria to Rome. I thought the chapter that dealt with the ships built by the inheritors of Alexander the Great's empire was amazing in their size. However, I felt that the use of footnotes which were in some instances quotations of ancient Geographers and Historians could have been better incorporated into the subject matter. I also felt that the photos and illustrations while valuble as visual aids to the book should have been included in the relevant chapters rather than an appendix at the end of the book. The use of several pages of Greek followed by the translation I felt was a waste of bookspace. But as an introduction to a somewhat neglected facet of ancient history I feel this book has definite merits.