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DAVID BRANSCOME

Florida State University

A bay of the MEDITERRANEAN Sea, lying between the Greek mainland and the western Anatolian coast and bounded to the south by the ISLANDS of CRETE and RHODES (2.97.1, 113.1; 4.85.4; 7.36.2, 55.1). Owing to Greeks’ sailing the waters of the Aegean Sea and inhabiting its numerous islands, Herodotus expects a ready familiarity from his readers as to the nature and location of this SEA (Ceccarelli 2016, 73–79). Most commonly, Herodotus refers to it with the neuter substantive “the Aegean” (to Aigaion), but in one passage he uses the phrase “the Aegean sea” (ho Aigaios pontos, 2.97.1; see Ceccarelli 2012, 29–31).

He employs the Aegean Sea as a device to help readers imagine the position of BRIDGES built by the Persian kings DARIUS I and XERXES. Regarding Darius’ bridge over the Thracian BOSPORUS, Herodotus moves progressively southward in his geographical description: Pontus (EUXINE or Black Sea), Bosporus, PROPONTIS, and finally HELLESPONT, which “issues out into the open sea called the Aegean” (4.85.2). Xerxes has two parallel bridges built across the Hellespont, one nearer to the Euxine, the other nearer the Aegean (7.36.2, 55.1).

Herodotus mentions the Aegean twice during his Egyptian LOGOS. It is when the Trojan ALEXANDER (Paris) is traveling from SPARTA to TROY—HELEN in tow—and is “on the Aegean” (2.113.1) that WINDS blow him off course to EGYPT. Elsewhere Herodotus asks readers to think of the CITIES of Egypt poking up from the NILE’s flood waters as resembling “the islands in the Aegean Sea” (2.97.1). Despite the well‐known MYTH (which may be no earlier than Hellenistic in date) about THESEUS’ father Aegeus leaping to his death in and thereby giving his name to the Aegean Sea, the aig‐ root may actually derive from the name of a pre‐Greek sea god (see Fowler 1988, 99–102).

SEE ALSO: Aegeus son of Pandion; Analogy; Geography; Ships and Sailing