Winner of the AHA Prize in History prior to CE 1000 An esteemed historian explores the natural and social dynamics of the ancient coastline, demonstrating for the first time its integral place in the world of Mediterranean antiquity. As we learn from The Odyssey and the Argonauts, Greek dramas frequently played out on a watery stage. In particular, antiquity’s key events and exchanges often occurred on coastlines. Yet the shore was not just a site of conquest and trade, ire and yearning. The seacoast was a singular kind of space and was integral to the cosmology of the Greeks and their neighbors. In The Ancient Shore, award-winning historian Paul Kosmin reveals the influence of the coast on the inner lives of the ancients: their political thought, scientific notions, artistic endeavors, and myths; their sense of wonder and of self. The Ancient Shore transports readers to a time when the coast was an unpredictable, formidable site of infinite and humbling possibility. Shorelines served as points of connection and competition that fostered distinctive political identities. It was at the coast―ever violent, ever permeable to predation―that state power ended, and so the coast was fundamental to theories of sovereignty. Then too, the boundary of land and sea symbolized human limitation, making it the subject of elaborate and continuous philosophical, scientific, and religious attention. Kosmin’s ancient world is expansive, connecting the Atlantic to the Straits of Malacca, the Black Sea to the Indian Ocean. And his methods are similarly far-ranging, integrating accounts of statecraft and commerce with intellectual, literary, religious, and environmental history. The Ancient Shore is a radically new encounter with people, places, objects, and ideas we thought we knew. “An exemplary instance of an underserved genre: the beach book for academics…[Kosmin] moves well beyond studies of the state. He also bypasses the current fad for global antiquity, with its focus on human history, to engage directly with the ‘planetary’: ‘vast, untameable and heedless geological, climatic and astronomical processes’.” ― Josephine Quinn , London Review of Books “Offers a fresh appreciation of the coast as a ‘type’ of place (instead of simply a line between water and land): one where history begins and cedes to nature…A sophisticated book, which is a delight to read, it should have a broad appeal to experts, students, and educated lay readers alike.” ― Georgia L. Irby , Bryn Mawr Classical Review “Innovative…the first study of coasts as distinct transitional zones between land and sea, with particular emphasis on their significance in politics and culture during the Hellenistic Period….Highly recommended.” ― S. M. Burstein , Choice “In this exceptional book, which is both an erudite work of history and a very personal work by an immensely learned scholar, Kosmin has revealed an ancient shore that is real and imaginary, created by the discovery of new spaces, lands, and people. This is a refreshing and most welcome book for both historians of the Hellenistic world and anyone interested in antiquity.” ― Alain Bresson, author of The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy “A stimulating, innovative, and impressive work that will surely find an avid readership among both scholars and a wider public.” ― Sitta von Reden, author of Money in Classical Antiquity Paul J. Kosmin is Philip J. King Professor of Ancient History at Harvard University and the award-winning author of The Land of the Elephant Kings and Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire.