'A tour of those far-flung places where Romans rarely dared to venture' The Times 'A
strikingly original take . . . uncovering forgotten stories of life on the periphery' Spectator
'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.
