Sea, a journey into the ancient world between dangers and opportunities

GIANFRANCO MOSCONI, 'SEA' (INSCHIBBOLETH EDITIONS, pp. 276 - 20 euros) Hostile, unpredictable, dangerous, yet an instrument of wealth and exchanges of ideas: in the ancient world the sea hid monsters terrible but it was also the means to gain power, riches and culture. The Greeks and Romans saw the sea as space of opportunities and enrichment, the path through which one they spread news and ideas, goods and pleasures, a tool of military domination superior to the terrestrial one and the scope in which the best human qualities, intelligence and ability were manifested to collaborate for the common good. In the book 'Mare' of the The Words of the Ancients series, the historian Gianfranco Mosconi addresses the role of the sea in the imagination of the ancient world, especially of the Greeks and Romans, for whom it had a meaning ambivalent of fear and suffering and at the same time of challenge and of cultural opportunities. In the ancient world the stories of the shipwrecks are recurrent, as is the Odyssey, where the sea is protagonist, opens with Ulysses always sailing off course to the edge of the world, where the sea is with the forces of the winds and the waves to dominate man. Yet the curse of the navigation is nothing but the reverse of indispensability and advantageousness of the sea, which "would not be so feared if it were not was used in this way", we read in the text of Mosconi's book. On the other hand, going to sea also shortened the journeys of the ancients. time of travel: they did not give it up even if they feared it. In fact, in the Odyssey, next to the scenes of shipwrecks, there are even the descriptions of a happy navigation like that of Telemachus with the wind at his back. In Homer's masterpiece there are realistic maritime elements in a recognizable Mediterranean and fantastic elements with unexpected adventures and creatures monstrous like the sirens and Scylla and Charybdis, 'monsterifications' of the dangers of the sea. The author explores the representations mythological, such as Scylla and Charybdis, and the fear of going against the rocks and being sucked into them; and analyzes the role of the Sirens, that is the danger of abandonment to tiredness and those of rest during navigation. It also tells the episode of Aeolus and the dream of dominating the winds, a great gift that the god Greek makes to Ulysses to take him to Ithaca. The shipwreck is a literary element, a recurring topos in the narrative world of the ancients; even in the New Testament there is talk of a journey difficult journey of St. Paul heading to Rome when his ship shipwreck in Malta before arriving in Sicily. In the Latin literature the Romans reproduce the same themes of the unpredictability of the sea but also underline the exaltation of the advantages of navigation: Cicero, for example, explain that Rome would not have become a great Empire if it had not been close enough to the sea to be able to enjoy the benefits that come with it. "Being on the sea corrupts, but being close to it gives the power of domination", we read in book. The sea thus becomes a space of economic opportunities and of knowledge, a sign of civilization and ingenuity