This chapter presents new, annotated translations of various surviving works by Markianos of Herakleia, who is probably the man of that name who lectured at Constantinople just before and just after AD 400. The chapter introduction shows that it is to him that we owe one of the two collections of geographical works that survive from antiquity (perhaps built on foundations laid by Menippos); its sole surviving copy, though incomplete, includes several works translated in the present volume. The main work presented here is the partly extant abridgement of Markianos’ Circumnavigation of the Outer Ocean, dealing first (book 1) with the lands from eastern Africa to western China, and then (book 2) with the coasts of the northern Atlantic. To this are appended over 40 citations of Markianos by Stephanos of Byzantion and others, as well as the theoretical opening sections of Markianos’ epitome (précis) of Menippos (the whole epitome is in Chapter 21 of this volume). His perceptive preface to Ps.-Skylax is printed in Chapter 7. At many points, such as when discussing how to present distances that display systematic errors, he shows himself to be one of the most self-aware and methodologically astute of ancient writers, as well as exceptionally widely read. New maps explain his presentation of the Far East and northern Europe.

This full introduction compares geography today and in antiquity, and characterizes its place in modern Classical scholarship. It asks whether Greek geographical writings have been classified correctly, and offers new perspectives on the social context in which they were composed, emphasizing their grounding in lived experience. Concepts such as periplous are explained, but the use of ‘genre’ to account for the forms of prose writing that we possess is questioned. This leads to a discussion of the helpful notion of ‘common sense geography’. The characteristic topics covered by Greek geographers are surveyed, with a particular focus on change and instability. Discussion of techniques of distance measurement on land and at sea, the role of maps in antiquity, and ‘mental mapping’ is followed by a detailed survey of extant geographical writings and of geographical material within ancient philosophy, historiography, and poetry. I complete the chapter with a discussion of the texts selected for the volume, the fragile transmission process by which these mainly short or fragmentary texts have survived, the organization of the volume, and how the translation process has been managed.

This chapter discusses responses to Thucydides’ History in the thousand-year period between the foundation of Constantinople in 330 CE and the appearance of the first translations of Thucydides in the late 14th century. The chapter describes the processes by which the text was preserved and transmitted and how it was read and understood in this period. It also explores the question of why the Byzantines were interested in Thucydides and the creative ways in which some Byzantine authors adapted or redeployed Thucydides’ work in their own writing.

Arderne’s writings retained their popularity in both Latin and English after 1500, showing the artificiality of the supposed division between medieval and early modern. This chapter investigates surviving manuscripts made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, commissioned or owned by practising surgeons and medics, rather than by university teachers or scholars. These manuscripts were heavily illustrated within or alongside the text-block, reinforcing the textual bias towards visualisation and personal witness. As case studies, the chapter will also consider the single printing (1588) of Arderne’s writings on fistula in ano, edited by the barber surgeon John Read, and a manuscript owned c.1645–8 by the ship’s surgeon Walter Hamond, who reflected on the continued usefulness of Arderne’s surgical techniques and recipes, suggested some improvements, and also commented on the financial charges Arderne made for his services and their contemporary equivalents.

Between the eleventh and twelfth centuries a new class of authors specifically interested in classical philosophical texts appeared in Byzantium. After a long hiatus, these authors embarked upon a new adventure by producing commentaries on ancient philosophical texts. Their works are highly sophisticated and came to shape the Byzantine cultural landscape in this period and beyond. This chapter presents a survey of the middle Byzantine commentaries on philosophical works. For the first time, issues such as the conception of authoriality displayed in these commentaries, the different textual approaches, the transmission of these texts and the peculiar way of life of the Byzantine commentators are discussed and investigated from the point of view of the material and social conditions that favoured the production of these new texts.

Overview of scripts, and the ways in which scripts spread across geographical space and through time. Various scripts’ biographies are overviewed, showing the diversity of possible scripts in early medieval Europe: their longevity and functionality