- D. Kidd 1997, 222, commenting on Aratus Phaen.110, one of the few Greek
texts to speak explicitly of sailing as an evil that did not exist in the Golden Age, well
speaks of “the Latin poets’ theme of seafaring as a crime.” My thanks to Peter Brown
and to Robert Knapp and the Berkeley classics majors for stimulating discussion of
why the ship was such a dangerous subject for the Romans. - A passage alluded to by Aratus (Phaen.110–13).
- The second simile is another technological simile, comparing the sizzling of the
eye to the noise from water into which a smith has dipped iron to temper it (391 – 94).
For shipbuilding and navigation as the supreme emblem of human intelligence, and for
Odysseus as their supreme exponent, see Detienne 1981. - Griffith 1999, 181, well elucidates the ode ’s interest in “the ambiguous moral
character of ‘technology’... and of human ingenuity in general.” - Solon fr. 13.43 – 46; Eur. IT408 – 21: my thanks to Donald Mastronarde for
pointing out the significance of these passages to me. - Horden and Purcell 2000, 278; cf. 300, 342. For extensive material on views of
seafaring in the ancient world, see Heydenreich 1970, 13 – 62. - Pl. Phd.109b.
- Polyb. 1.20.12; cf. Casson 1971, 121; Finley 1973, 129 – 30. Note the qualifica-
tions of the Roman view in Cornell 1995, 388, documenting Roman naval and maritime
interests before 264 b.c.e. - Casson 1971, 173.
- Horden and Purcell 2000, 134 – 35, on Cic. Prov. cons.31; see Aelius Aristides’
Encomium of Rome(200 – 201) for an evocation of Rome as the center of trade from all
over the world, together with the satiric countervision of the Romans as “consuming
the world” with their shipborne trade in Petronius’s civil war fragment (Sat.119: see
Connors 1998, 104 – 14). More than trade is involved. Scheidel (2004, 26) remarks on
the distinctively Roman character of large-scale population movements: “Short lives
were common to all pre-modern populations. By contrast, physical mobility far
beyond one ’s native environment was a much more specific and culturally contingent
determination of what it meant to be ‘Roman’.” On this Roman “diaspora,” see Pur-
cell 2005. - Finley 1973, 42 – 61, on Cic. Off.1.150 – 51. For the plebiscitum Claudianumof 218
b.c.e., which banned senators from owning ships that were bigger than needed to trans-
port produce from their own agricultural estates, see Livy 21.63.2, with the discussion
of D’Arms (1981, 31 – 39), on its causes and impact: my thanks to Harriet Flower and
Brent Shaw for these references. For ancient (and modern) double-think about the sup-
posed gulf between Mediterranean trade and agriculture, see Horden and Purcell 2000,
342 (“The gulf is as unhistorical as the Golden Fleece”); D’Arms 1981 is a general study
of the whole “relationship between upper-class attitudes towards commerce and the
realities of behavior” (17). The Athenians of the 440s already embody this double-
notes to pages 120 – 121. 265