We are super excited for this conversation. Owen Rees is the founder of the website badancient.com and we’ve been lucky enough to write a couple of articles over there on some misconceptions about the ancient Romans. So when we heard that Owen had a book coming out, we absolutely wanted to have a chat.

Special Episode – The Far Edges of the Known World with Owen Rees

The Far Edges of the Known World is coming out through Bloomsbury Press February 2025 and is all about what’s happening beyond the traditional centres of power that are the focus of historians such as Greece and Rome. What becomes clear in this conversation is that the written sources produce a focus on the centres of power for historians and that the archaeological record is critical to appreciating what’s happening in areas that weren’t the centre.

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We start with a little bit on Ovid’s poor attitude to being in Tomis on the Black Sea and what that reveals about Rome BUT also reveals inadvertently about that society. There are generalisations about what place is where to navigate – where was Libya or India really? There's also plenty of scope to dip into the particulars of the archaeological record. To get a sense of the breadth and depth of Rees’ work we have a chat about:

• Ancient Sudan and what is happening through the cataracts along the Nile beyond the sway of Egypt. This includes thinking about the Kushites as well as the nomadic peoples of the region
• The limits of the ancient language and then our contemporary loaded terms ‘civilisation’ and ‘barbarian’
• The fascinating city of Olbia, which seems to have been a meeting point between the Greeks and the Scythians resulting in a unique cultural nexus that feels effects of changing geopolitics when it comes to the Macedonians, the Persians, and the Romans

Things to listen out for

• Women? In military forts? Shocking stuff!
• Vindolanda and it’s amazing cache of letters of everyday life
• The nomadic Medjay being paid to police other nomadic groups
• The way that conquest can produce redefinition of self – case in point Rome and Briton
• The challenges of the British accent when it comes to Ancient Rome on screen
• A penchant for trousers
• The development of coinage in Olbia
• The challenges of writing a book about the edges of the world

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Author of The Far Edges of the Known World: A New History of the Ancient Past, Owen Rees

Music Credits

Our music is composed by the amazing Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Lightly edited for the Latin and our wonderful Australian accents!

Dr Rad 0:15
Welcome to the Partial Historians.

Dr G 0:19
We explore all the details of ancient Rome

Dr Rad 0:23
Everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battled wage and when citizens turn against each other. I'm Dr Rad

Dr G 0:33
and I'm Dr G, we consider Rome as the Romans saw it, by reading different authors from the ancient past and comparing their stories.

Dr Rad 0:44
Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city.

Dr G 0:50
Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the Partial Historians. I am one of your hosts, Dr G

Dr Rad 0:58
And I am Dr Rad

Dr G 1:00
And we are very excited to sit down today with Owen Rees to talk about his new book ‘The Far Edges of the Known World'. Even the title sounds very impressive. I'm like OoOoo. Owen Rees is an ancient historian. He held a Leverhulme early career fellowship at the University of Nottingham, and is a lecturer in applied humanities for Birmingham Newman University. He is the founder and lead editor of the website badancient.com which brings together specialists to fact check common claims. I'll say that again, which brings together specialists to fact check common claims made about the ancient world. We are absolutely thrilled to talk with Owen about his new book, ‘The Far Edges of the Known World, which is published by Bloomsbury Press. Welcome Owen.

Owen Rees 1:57
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Dr G 1:59
An absolute pleasure. So to get us softly into this topic, because I feel like this topic is actually huge, I'm wondering what sparked your fascination for this idea of borders and edges when it comes to the ancient world.

Owen Rees 2:16
Yeah, it's a valid question, because it's not really talked about a lot, or when it is talked about, it's often in terms of conflict. So especially in the Roman Empire, we think hard borders, conflict and wars generally. So I mean, put it simply, it bugs me that the ancient world is always done from cultural centers. So every time we talk about ancient history, we talk about Athens, we talk about Rome, Alexandria, places like this. And that's all fascinating and interesting stuff, but I'm always struck with the kind of question in my head of, well, what about everyone else? What's everyone else up to? And how do these highfalutin ideas that people are coming up with like Plato and the like. How does that play out for, shall we say, normal people around the world? So first of all, it was to kind of get away from the obvious stories and the obvious narratives of the ancient world, ones that you know, we've all read, listened to and watched and kind of grew up with. I suppose another aspect was I was I was really interested in the idea of the ancient world being the whole world. You know, we often talk about, we study the ancient world, we love the ancient world, but all we really talk about is the Mediterranean, or the Mediterranean basin, really. So, you know, Egypt, Italy, Greece, maybe a bit of Turkey

Dr G 3:39
Guilty as charged.

Owen Rees 3:41
Yeah, we all do it. We all do it. And I just, I wanted to move away from that. And I mean, ultimately, I think it also played into an obsession of mine, which is, I love underdogs. I've always loved underdog stories from, you know, sort of watching films growing up in England, you know, watching films like Zulu, and I find the Zulus much more interesting than than the British forces, you know, sort of watching westerns. And it was never the cowboys I was that interested in. My siblings used to always take the mick that I always supported the losing side, but I always just found their stories more interesting, and I found their cultures more interesting. So that's kind of like underpinning, shall we say, of what interested me in this. But otherwise it's from a historical point of view. I hate inconsistencies. And what you often find when you read about Roman culture, Roman law, Greek culture and Greek laws, is they stop applying the further away you get from Greece, from Rome. I mean, a classic example from the Roman period is the idea of the imperial army, in particular, soldiers. It's illegal for soldiers to marry, not allowed to marry, and this has influenced the way archeologists have studied numerous. Forts and numerous sites over the years. And if anyone had ever thought early on to look at places like Egypt, for instance, we have loads of evidence in the Greek language that Roman soldiers are married, and then it turns out they're just not married in the Latin language. So you get this lovely interplay of an accepted rule breaking and almost like, Okay, well, we can't officially say it, but of course you are. And as a result, like studies of Roman thoughts over the past 20 years have started realizing that perhaps you know, evidence of women or children in forts doesn't need to be explained with strange excuses. And actually, maybe they were supposed to be there.

Dr G 5:46
What. What are the women doing there?

Owen Rees 5:50
I know, what is this chaos?

Dr Rad 5:53
There's a keep out sign, very clearly on the door.

Owen Rees 5:59
So it was, yeah, it was just, I think looking at the board has just challenged a lot of what I grew up thinking I knew about the ancient world, what other people taught me about the ancient world. And I just found that really interesting. The way I often sell it to other people is from a more general point of view. If you look at the ancient world and only look at the center, you are basically committing the cardinal sin of a trave