The Periplus Maris Erythraei — an open comparative edition
The Periplus Maris Erythraei (Περίπλους τῆς Ἐρυθρᾶς Θαλάσσης) is a first-century merchant's guide to the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian coast, East Africa as far as Rhapta, and India as far as the Ganges. Its 66 chapters survive in a single ninth- or tenth-century codex at Heidelberg — Palatinus graecus 398 — from which every printed edition ultimately descends.
This site presents a four-way comparison. The public-facing text is Müller's Greek (1855), an embedded English text digitally attributed to Schoff (1912), and Brodersen's German translation (2021). The local audit did not identify the Schoff 1912 print PDF, so that attribution and the exact printed wording remain unresolved. Casson's Princeton edition (1989) remains in copyright and is therefore offered only as a gated apparatus: lemma-level citations you can reveal on demand for scholarly comparison, under fair-use principles, never as a continuous text.
The four editions
Müller — Greek (1855)
public domainbase text
Karl Müller, Geographi Graeci Minores I (Paris: Didot, 1855), supplied here in the TLG-encoded XML distributed by First1KGreek. Preferred as the base text because it is openly licensed, canonically citable (stable TLG URNs, chapter divisions used in the scholarly tradition), and 170 years of commentary refer back to its paragraphing.
Embedded English — attributed to Schoff (print identity unresolved)
public domaintranslation
The embedded field is locally described as a ToposText-derived digitisation of Wilfred H. Schoff, The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (New York: Longmans, Green, 1912). No actual Schoff 1912 print PDF was identified in the bounded local search, so neither the digital attribution nor exact printed wording is certified here. Each chapter now exposes a fail-closed audit status; the inherited English remains visible as evidence, not as a verified translation of the displayed Müller field.
Brodersen — German (2021)
by permissiontranslation
Kai Brodersen, Periplus Maris Erythraei / Reise durch das Rote Meer (Wiesbaden: Marix, 2021), reproduced here by the kind permission of the translator. Brodersen's Greek text and facing German translation represent the modern critical consensus; his Greek closely tracks Casson's readings, so the German provides an edition-sensitive comparison with the embedded English. It does not establish the identity of that English field with Schoff's printed pages.
Casson — Greek & English (1989)
in copyrightapparatus only
Lionel Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Princeton University Press, 1989). The standard modern critical edition; in copyright to PUP until 2085. Not licensed for reproduction here. Short lemma-level citations appear in the apparatus only after the reader clicks through a fair-use acknowledgement, and are never used as a continuous text.
Why these comparisons
The apparatus carries four comparisons, each answering a different scholarly question:
Mitigation strategy and fair-use position
The copyright and provenance constraints are asymmetric: Müller is public domain, the embedded English carries a public-domain attribution whose printed identity remains unresolved, Brodersen is licensed to us, and Casson is not. The mitigation strategy is documentary rather than textual — everything that the reader would otherwise lose by not having Casson on the page is pointed to in an open apparatus. Specifically:
- Casson's Greek is not typeset as a column; instead, every reading that differs from Müller is flagged as a Müller ⇄ Casson variant, word for word, with ten words of surrounding Greek context so the locus is unambiguous.
- Casson's English is not reproduced; where his rendering materially clarifies a difficult passage, a short gloss appears in the apparatus under fair use, always keyed to a specific Greek lemma.
- All Casson citations are blurred by default. Revealing them requires an explicit click-through acknowledgement that they are consulted for scholarship, commentary, and criticism, never as a substitute for the printed edition.
- Every disputed reading in the apparatus is backed by the Palatinus folio that carries it — each chapter view includes the image(s) of the exact folio, clickable to enlarge, so the reader can test any editor's choice against the manuscript itself.
Brodersen's Greek text is covered by the same permission as his German, but it exists only on paper; we therefore use the TLG/Müller Greek digitally and note Brodersen's Greek readings in the apparatus where they bear on a disputed locus.
Manuscript witnesses
Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Palatinus graecus 398 (9th–10th c.) — the sole independent witness. The Periplus occupies ff. 40v–54v. Heidelberg has imaged the codex under an open licence, and each chapter on this site carries the folio image(s) that carry its text — 93 folio crops in all, with exact folio labels drawn from the Numbers collation. Original imaging: digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpgraec398.
British Library, Add. MS 19391 (14th–15th c.) — a late apograph of the Palatinus, of value only at the handful of loci where its reading is independently cited. Catalogue and imaging: bl.uk · Add. MS 19391.
How to use this page
- Navigation. Click any chapter below, use the §-dropdown in the header, or press ←/→ (or j/k) to walk through the text. Esc returns to this home tab.
- Columns. Toggle any of the four translation/edition columns in the toolbar. Brodersen's Greek is off by default but available; turning it on is useful when investigating a disputed reading.
- Apparatus. Toggle the three apparatus layers — Müller⇄Casson variants, translation deviations, headline glosses — to produce either a lean reading view or a full critical view.
- Casson. Click Reveal Casson apparatus… in the toolbar and confirm the fair-use notice; the blurred Casson lines become readable. Click again to re-hide.
- Sharing. The URL updates with
#ch=n, so any chapter is directly linkable.
Acknowledgements
This page is inspired by working with Andrea Nanetti in building the Periplus edition for Engineering Historical Memory. Data collection was carried out by Ching-Yuan Wu with the following volunteer collaborators:
- LANG Yuchen — Harvard University, Department of the Classics
- LI Chun — Beijing Foreign Studies University, Department of Latin
- LI Shuo — Peking University, Department of History
- TANG Yu — Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Département d'Histoire de l'art et archéologie
- WANG Xizhi — Peking University, Department of History
- XIE Sisi — University of Edinburgh, Department of Classics
- YANG Jie — LMU München, Classical and Ancient Studies
Jump to a chapter
Brown ring = chapter has flagged translation deviations · amber fill = chapter has a headline gloss