The ancient authors are usually historians, philosophers or poets, but for this work the geographers retained most of our attention: Agatharchides, Strabo, Pausanias, Pliny the Elder, Ptolemy, Avienus, Mela, and anonymous authors of a Periplus who were, or tell about, sailors such as Odysseus, Hanno, ‘Scylax’, Pytheas, Jason, ‘Stadiasmus’, ‘Scymnos’, ‘Erythrean Sea’, Arrian and ‘Antonine’. Some historians also mention many ports: Thucydide, Titus Livius, Plutarch.
In addition to ports mentioned by ancient authors, some ports have been included as mentioned by modern authors: Karl Lehmann-Hartleben (1923), Honor Frost (1963), David Blackman (1982 & 2013), Talbert’s Barrington Atlas (2000), Nic Flemming (1986), Getzel Cohen (1995 & 2006), Mogens Hansen & Thomas Nielsen (2004), Tiverios (2008), Nicolas Carayon (2008), Helen Dawson (2013), Anton Gordieiev (2015) and Alkiviadis Ginalis et al (2019), Chiara Mauro (2019) and some up to date web sites (http://pleiades.stoa.org/ and http://imperium.ahlfeldt.se/ and https://www.trismegistos.org and https://topostext.org/).
The references are listed as ancient authors and as modern authors.
The largest ancient contributors to this catalogue are Ps Scylax and the Stadiasmus with over 600 and 400 ports mentioned explicitly:
- Scylax: 629
- Stadiasmus: 407
- Strabo: 370
- Antonine: 248
- Arrian: 209
- Thucydide: 189
- Scymnos: 186
- Pliny the Elder: 158
- Ptolemy: 156
- Marcian: 128
- Titus Livius: 117
- Plutarch: 64
- Pausanias: 49
and for modern authors:
- Barrington (2000) / PLEIADES (2021): around 3400 coastal sites
- Ahlfeldt / DARE (2019): around 3200 coastal sites
- Kiesling / ToposText (2017): around 1400 coastal sites
- Flemming (2002): 806
- Hansen & Nielsen (2004): 529 coastal poleis
- WIKIPEDIA (2021): around 450
- Verreth / TRISMEGISTOS (2021): 422
- Ginalis et al. (2019): 418
- Lehmann-Hartleben (1923): 342
- Carayon (2008): 247 Phoenician ports
- Mauro (2019): 204 Greek harbours
- Gordieiev (2015): 206 ports in the Black Sea
- Dawson (2014): 188 prehistoric landing places
- Lafon (2001): 121 villae maritimae
- Trakadas (2005 & 2015): 113
- Cohen (1995 & 2006): 108
- Tiverios (2008): 78
- Paulys Realencyclopädie (1893-1980): 73
- Hazlitt’s Classical Gazetteer (1851): 67