Μεσόγειος Θάλασσα (Mesogeios Thalassa) in the Reflection of Dizhonghai 地中海: Routes and Connections Between the Greek World and China

From Firenze University Press Book: Navigating the Mediterranean Through the Chinese Lens

Francesca Fariello, University of Naples L’Orientale, Italy

In the first book of Histories, Herodotus — rewinding the narrative thread on the origins of the tensions that escalated into wars between Asia and Europe — refers to the Phoenicians, whom he blames for kidnapping Io, daughter of the king of Argos (I, 5). He reports that “the Phoenicians had come from the sea called Red to ‘this’ sea” (ἥδε ἡ θάλασσα), meaning the Mediterranean Sea. To Herodotus, the sea is θάλασσα: that pool of salty water shaped by Poseidon’s trident (the deity who personifies it) below the temple of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis of Athens, besides the olive tree given to the Greeks by Athena (VIII, 55).

T his is a reference to the ‘sea between the lands’, that the ancient Greeks called Mesogeios (Μεσόγειος): an ante litteram intercultural space, that would later, in Latin translation, be called Mare Nostrum, borrowing the expression from Herodotus. In Book I, the historian proceeds in his exposition stating that the Greeks decided to kidnap the Phoenician princess Europa in revenge for the injustice they had suffered. Greek mythology attributes Europa’s abduction to Zeus, who, in the guise of a white bull, carried her to Crete. From the union of Zeus and Europa came king Minos, marking how the mythologein — the allegory of myth — created a prehistory of the long memory of Mediterranean travels, bringing to the centre of the Mediterranean world ‘that East’ known to the Greeks at the time of Herodotus. By retracing some significant passages from Greco-Roman and Chinese historical sources, this chapter offers a brief review of the places and trajectories that constituted the earliest traces of the so-called silk routes by land and sea. Beginning with the first book of Histories, it is possible to identify the foundations of what would become — to borrow David Asheri’s evocative phrase — the entire “journey of the archaic world in two hundred and sixteen chapters”, where the historical drama will unfold (Asheri 1988, C), and to discover the polychrome civilisations — with their deeds and monumental works — revealed by Herodotus, who portrayed ancient communities from West and East as engaged in a continuity marked by conflicts and transformations.

DOI: 10.36253/979–12–215–0598–6.05

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