Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: NBN Book of the Day
Episode: Owen Rees, "The Far Edges of the Known World: Life Beyond the Borders of Ancient Civilization" (Norton, 2025)
Description: When Ovid was exiled from Rome to a border town on the Black Sea, he despaired at his bleak and barbarous new surroundings. Like many Greeks and Romans, Ovid thought the outer reaches of his world was where civilization ceased to exist. Our own fascination with the Greek and Roman world has for centuries followed this perspective, shrouding cultures at the far reaches of their influence in myth. But what was it like to live on the edges of these empires, on the boundaries of the known world? In The Far Edges of the Known World (W.W. Norton & Co...