The Syracusia as a giant cargo vessel

Turfa, Jean MacIntosh; Steinmayer, Alwin G.

doi:10.1111/j.1095-9270.1999.tb00826.x

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…First, with a capacity at least an order of magnitude greater than the largest Greek shipping vessel so far found, the Alonnesos wreck (Hadjidaki 1996), some have doubted the vessel existed at all. Page 1981: 26-27 finds the parallels with later literature suspicious; Turfa and Steinmayer (1999), however, defend the internal consistency of the description. (Still, their defense is mitigated because consistency doesn't prove veracity, and because the description of the parallel enormous grain vessel from antiquity, the Isis in Lucian, is probably bunk as Houston 1987 argued.)…”

Section: History Of the Alexandrian Librarymentioning

confidence: 94%

A New History of Libraries and Books in the Hellenistic Period

Johnstone

2014

Classical Antiquity

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Classical Antiquity.Discarding the unreliable late evidence for the Library of Alexandria in the Hellenistic period, I establish a new history of libraries and books on more secure primary sources. Beginning in the second century bce at various places across the eastern Mediterranean, rich, powerful men began to sponsor collections of books. These new public displays of aristocratic and royal munificence (euergetism) so transcended earlier holdings of books-which had been small, vocational, and private-that in an important sense they constitute the invention of the library. As political institutions, these libraries depended on a revaluation of books, treating them as valuable irrespective of their content, and in various domains people increasingly attended to books as formal objects. Romans accelerated the pace and scope of this biblio-political revolution and extended the revaluation of books, transformations which gave a deeply anachronistic imprint to the frequently cited late stories about Hellenistic libraries.

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Section: History Of the Alexandrian Librarymentioning

confidence: 94%

A New History of Libraries and Books in the Hellenistic Period

Johnstone

2014

Classical Antiquity

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“…In spite of these reservations, Casson was followed by Jean MacIntosh Turfa and Alwin G. Niemeyer, who based their numerous calculations on his estimation (Turfa-Steinmayer, 1999: note 9).…”

Section: The Estimation Of the Cargo With Medimnimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…the load capacity of the ship that is dedicated to the cargo, notwithstanding that the ship could be intentionally under-or overloaded. This approach should not be mistaken with the calculations intended to estimate displacement, which relies not only on the weight of the cargo, but also the weight of the ship itself, including the hull, the rigging, the crew, etc (Turfa-Steinmayer, 1999). Of course, these kinds of calculations rely on many unknown parameters and should be considered with caution.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Tonnage of the Syracusia: a metrological reconsideration

Nantet¹

2020

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The tonnage of the Syracusia, the biggest ship built in the ancient Mediterranean, has been much discussed by scholars. Indeed, the various merchandise the ship carried are detailed by Athenaeus, who relies on a text previously written by Moschion. However, the value of the units of measurements used in Athenaeus' account are not well known. So far, scholars have suggested only either Athenian or Roman units of measurement. The present report aims at exploring the possibility of local metrological systems, such as Ptolemaic or Sicilian ones, as Moschion and Athenaeus respectively lived in Sicily and in Alexandria.

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2015

A Companion to Food in the Ancient World

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The Syracusia as a giant cargo vessel

Cited by 6 publications

References 7 publications

A New History of Libraries and Books in the Hellenistic Period

A New History of Libraries and Books in the Hellenistic Period

The Tonnage of the Syracusia: a metrological reconsideration

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