And yet, it was so perilous that it took Odysseus ten years to get home. I am not too sure it was that much calmer than open ocean. The perils were getting dashed on the rocks while listening entranced to sirens, getting eaten by a cyclops, getting drowned by scilla and charibdis, which were depicted as monsters, but probably was just a violent tidal action, and finally all were lost at sea in a storm after being driven to eat the Sun’s cows while marooned on the Sun’s island, except for Odysseus, who refrained from eating cows for fear of global warming, I suppose. Then there was the witch who turned everyone into pigs, the trip to the spirit world, and the fat chick who didn’t want to let Odysseus leave, so he managed to escape to the Phaeacians, who gave him a lift to Ithaca. All perils of going to sea and sticking around the coast.
On the other hand, there was no discernible reason to brave the open ocean, other than the Indian Ocean to get to India and the China Sea to get to China, which the author of this video said was something that the Romans were after for the silk trade. When an emissary managed to steal some silk worm eggs, and a pandemic destroyed both empires for a while, that all became moot.
Good point - but his adventures were not just sea bound. We must also remember that they didn’t have the technology in sails etc.
During Cato’s time, he said “an olive was in Carthage just three days ago” which was at the highest speed. And that was in 200 BC. Odysseus is from nearly 1000 years earlier.
Well, the Roman empire was from at least 300 BC to 1453 AD - so nearly 2000 years. The Romans got their silk via overland routes
Silk worms I believe came across in the Eastern Roman (post 476 AD) period