The Ancient Mariners; Seafarers and Sea Fighters of the Mediterranean in Ancient Times byLionel CassonReview by: Chester G. StarrIsis, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Dec., 1959), pp. 495-496Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/226444 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 495

half the text (48 pages). Although by title and purpose the essay focuses on the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, Nissen actually devotes about half the essay to earlier manuscript herbals, be- ginning in pre-classical cultures. He is at his best when discussing the history of plant illustrations and when dealing with the rather complex bibliography and tradition of herbal literature. This comes as no surprise to readers who know Nissen's remarkable works on the history of illustration in natural history.

Within such a restricted space, some- thing has to be sacrificed in level and scope when the comparative content, relative merits, pharmaco-medical uses, and botanic contributions of herbals are being discussed. And there are a few points where clarification would have been welcome. For example, Nissen says, "It was sheer coincidence that a change in the methods of medical science took place at approximately the same time when a technical revolution was brought about in the field of book production" (p. 2). Elsewhere he obscures a line and time of development by saying that, after the early nineteenth century, "in- terest was no longer focussed on phar- macognosy but gradually turned towards the chemical analysis of drugs" (p. 47).

Yet, in general, the essay serves its intended purpose in a commendable and scholarly way. Its purpose is neither to offer new material nor new viewpoints. Rather, the manual before us finds its place in the literature as companion and guide to an accompanying portfolio of fifty leaves torn from incomplete copies of herbals by the three antiquarians who sponsored the project.

A portfolio of the plates was not sup- plied to the reviewer, perhaps under- standably so in view of their market value. We did see one collection of pages briefly elsewhere and thev ap- peared to be well chosen, in fine condi- tion, elegantly mounted individually, and carefully identified. The collection be- gins with a sample from the Herbarius Patauie . . ., the 1485 Passau version of the Herbarius Moguntinzts, and ends in the mid-nineteenth century with Otto Berg's work on official medicinal plants of Prussia. Between these two we find

leaves from some of the significant and best known printed herbals. Ten of the fifty plates are drawn from late books, of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and not all of them conform to Nissen's definition that an herbal is first of all "a book on medicinal plants...."

It is understood that each set of orig- inal leaves accompanying a copy of the manual will be different, but they are drawn from the same herbals, with which Nissen integrates the text to give them their proper historical setting and meaning. This format does not permit him to refer the reader to specific illus- trations, as is possible with the repro- ductions that point up the text in works such as those by Eleanor Rohde and particularly by Agnes Arber. The man- ual itself is unillustrated, except for a frontispiece.

Following the essay, we find a useful genealogic chart of herbals reproduced from A. Schmid's Ober alte Krduter- biicher; a fine list of reference works (4 pages); an excellent descriptive and bibliographic section on the herbals from which the plates are drawn (25 pages); genealogic charts for the more important manuscripts of Dioscorides and Pseudo- Apuleius; and a name and title index.

Readers who already have Agnes Arber's Herbals, Their Origin and Evo- ltion . . . 1470-1670 (revised edition, Cambridge, 1938) and Claus Nissen's Die botanische Buchillustration. Ihre Geschichte und Bibliographie (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1951) may not find the pres- ent work a satisfying supplement, par- ticularly if they have representative herbals in original or facsimile editions. Anyone who does not have these re- sources in hand or in view might well consider Herbals of Five Centuries and the accompanying portfolio as an alter- native.

GLENN SONNEDECKER

University of Wisconsin * * *

LIONEL CASSON: The Ancient Marin- ers; Seafarers and Sea Fighters of the Mediterranean in Ancient Times. xx + 286 pp., 6 figs., 4 maps, 16 plates in text, Table of Dates, Selected Bibliography, Glossary of Greek & Latin Nautical

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496 BOOK REVIEWS

Terms. N.Y.: The MacMillan Com- pany, 1959. $5.95.

Professor Casson's survey should please the general audience which he has primarily in mind, and one may hope it will replace the antiquated accounts of the subject which are often current. He conveys the excitement of the archeo- logical discoveries which have made his story possible; particularly commend- able are his pages on the recent under- water explorations of the wrecks along the coasts of France and Italy. His prose is simple, almost colloquial, as in the use of "hollering," "shucked off," and the very frequent contraction of "not." While the book surveys warfare and trade all the way from the Ancient Orient to the Byzantine Empire, the Hellenistic and Roman sections are the most rounded.

Commerce and shipping have stimu- lated the author's imagination more than do naval campaigns. The strategic prob- lems of the latter are not always fully set forth, and the great admirals remain colorless shadows. Thus, Wenaman, the hapless Egyptian envoy in search of Lebanese cedars, comes off well; The- mistocles receives only two conventional pages; and the deadly drive of Agrippa's efficiency, so much like that of Robert Blake, is barely noted. The clear de- scriptions of ancient shipping may be recommended, subject to two warnings: the appearance of the pentekonter is probably dated too early; and not every- one has been convinced by Casson's dis- covery of fore-and-aft sails in the Roman Empire.

Every writer of a popular book must face the problems of qualifying his views and of breaking overabruptly with the conventional tradition. One must be positive to gain the reader's interest, yet one should apprise him where the major problems lie. Here Casson could have done more than he has, especially inas- much as he provides notes and a bibli- ography and expects specialists to treat his work seriously. He has travelled in the Mediterranean and is usuallv abreast of recent work; but his account slips at times into old stories and conventional views which have been seriously criti- cized, if not actually disproved. To give

only a few examples of very debatable assertions, Mesopotamian trade here is taken as entirely private; Minoan Crete has a thalassocracy; the Trojan war takes place as Homer describes it; Del- phi directs the Greek colonization; the Roman fleets early in the First Punic War are constructed in two months; Hannibal invaded Italy by land only because he could not come by sea.

The basic question arising out of ancient maritime activity is the degree of its importance in ancient history. With respect to trade, the question is not tackled here, though a reader of page 224 will be misled as to its significance in imperial Rome. On the military side, sea power is sometimes considered to be important (e.g., pages 31, 107 and 141); but there is no detailed discussion of the issue. A reader will early gain an idea that fleets could apply the pressure of blockade and could prey on enemy com- merce on the seas (pages 29-30), and may not notice the later qualifications in which Casson admits that neither was fully possible in view of the poor sea- keeping qualities of galleys (pages 102, 187 and 206).

Proofreading has been excellent. There is an index and a glossary of Greek and Latin nautical terms; the bibliography mainly refers to works in English. The illustrations are ample and well chosen; the Dipylon fragments of plate 4.a, c, and d are better reproduced in C VA France 18 (1954) and the Eleusis ship of plate 3.d in Neue Beit- rage (Festschrift Schweitzer) (Stutt- gart, 1954), plate 2.

CHESTER G. STARR University of Illinois

* * *

HARRISON J. COWAN: Time and Its Measurement; From the Stone Age to the Nuclear Age. 159 pp., 73 ills. in text. Cleveland, Ohio: World Publish- ing Co., 1958. $4.95.

Mr. Cowan has made a great effort to cover the subject of time measurement and its history from the broadest pos- sible viewpoint and to make the story an attractive one by using all the arts of exposition, illustration and quotation, but the book cannot unfortunately be

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