This article takes the under-used anonymous Roman source, the Tale of the Theban Scholastikos, to argue for a distinct Late Antique phase in the history of the western Indian Ocean. This late third- or fourth-century account of a Roman’s journey to India and eventual return from captivity, has been too easily dismissed as inaccurate or mined for decontextualised details. The present study, by contrast, situates the tale within both its immediate epistolary context and seeks to offer a new interpretation of its global-scale setting. It offers a survey of the regions likely referred to in the text - the Roman Empire, the Aksumite Empire, south India and Sri Lanka -, alongside examination of related textual and archaeological data. The picture presented of these regions is, in turn, situated within the wider framework of a ‘global hierarchy of value’ proposed by Michael Herzfeld in 2004, and applied for the first time to Late Antiquity. What emerges is an initial framing of the western Indian Ocean in Late Antiquity as a space in which long-distance connections continued from earlier centuries, and in some places even thrived, but were systematically devalued, politically and ideologically, with concrete effects for those involved.

中文翻译：

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Theban Scholastikos 的故事，或在不连贯的海洋中的旅程

本文采用未被充分利用的匿名罗马来源 Theban Scholastikos 的故事来论证西印度洋历史上一个独特的晚期古董阶段。这部 3 世纪或 4 世纪晚期关于罗马人前往印度并最终从囚禁中返回的描述，很容易被认为不准确或因脱离背景而被挖掘出来。相比之下，本研究将这个故事置于其直接的书信背景中，并试图对其全球范围的环境提供新的解释。它提供了对文本中可能提到的地区的调查——罗马帝国、阿克苏姆帝国、南印度和斯里兰卡——以及相关文本和考古数据的检查。反过来，这些地区的图片是 位于 Michael Herzfeld 于 2004 年提出的“全球价值等级”的更广泛框架内，并首次应用于古代晚期。出现的是古代晚期西印度洋的初步框架，在这个空间中，长距离连接从几个世纪以来一直延续，在某些地方甚至蓬勃发展，但在政治和意识形态上被系统地贬值，对参与者产生了具体影响.