The Ancient Mariners: Seafarers and Sea Fighters of the Mediterranean in Ancient Times
by: Casson, Lionel

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan Company, 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, tan cloth covers, 286 pages, map endpapers, b&w illustrations. Lionel Casson, the renowned authority on ancient ships and seafaring, has done what no other author has: he has put in a single volume the story of all that the ancients accomplished on the sea from the earliest times to the end of the Roman Empire. He explains how they perfected trading vessels from mere rowboats into huge freighters that could carry over a thousand tons, how they transformed warships from simple oared transports into complex rowing machines holding hundreds of marines and even heavy artillery, and how their maritime commerce progressed from short cautious voyages to a network that reached from Spain to India. In the process he corrects cherished but erroneous beliefs. Ancient warships, he shows, were never manned with slave rowers; ancient merchant-men did not stick timidly to the shore; and ancient craft were well able to sail against the wind. Embossed stamp to dedication page, otherwise clean, No dust jacket.