The Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax is an ancient Greek periplus (περίπλους períplous, 'circumnavigation') describing the sea route around the Mediterranean and Black Sea. It probably dates from the mid-4th century BC, specifically the 330s, and was probably written at or near Athens. Its author is often included among the ranks of 'minor' Greek geographers. There is only one manuscript available, which postdates the original work by over 1500 years. The author's name is written Pseudo-Scylax or Pseudo-Skylax, often abbreviated as Ps.-Scylax or Ps.-Skylax. Author The only extant, medieval manuscript names the author as "Scylax"' (or "Skylax"), but scholars have proven that this attribution is to be treated as a so-called "pseudepigraphical appeal to authority": Herodotus mentions a Scylax of Caryanda, a Greek navigator who in the late sixth century BC explored the coast of the Indian Ocean on behalf of the Persians. Many details in the work, however, reflect fourth-century BC knowledge of the world; since, therefore, it cannot be by the sixth-century Scylax, its author is habitually referred to as Pseudo-Scylax. Text Manuscript There remains one primary manuscript, Parisinus suppl. gr. (Supplément grec) 443 (also known as the Pithou MS after its 16th-century owner, Pierre Pithou); it dates to the thirteenth century AD and is the original of those upon which the first printed edition of 1600 was based. Two later copies of this manuscript, which is notoriously corrupt, add nothing of substance. The principal manuscript was inaccessible to scholars for over two centuries until the 1830s, when it was bought by the Bibliothèque Nationale of France. Content The narrative attributed to this "Pseudo-Scylax" simulates a clockwise circumnavigation of the Mediterranean and Black Sea, starting in Iberia and ending in West Africa, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, that mark the Straits of Gibraltar. The NW African section is sometimes claimed to have been derived from the earlier Periplus of Hanno the Navigator, but a close comparison makes the differences between the two texts apparent. Rather than the record of a voyage like Hanno's, or a compilation of eye-witness accounts of voyages, the Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax is probably an attempt at a quasi-scientific geographical account of the parts of the world accessible to Greeks in the 4th century BC. It can plausibly be associated with philosophical and scientific activities at Athens under Plato's successors in the Academy; the author was perhaps directly in contact with Plato's successors and with Aristotle and