Pseudo-Skylax’s Periplous is the only work of classical antiquity that describes the whole coast of the Mediterranean. Composed in the 4th century BC by an unknown author of Athenian origin, it is more than a spiritless report of cities and peoples. When analysed jointly on philological, historical and historiographical ground, it also reveals further levels of reading. Thus we discover a text that is a mirror of the historical and cultural tensions that agitate the Athenian society of the time: the unceasing struggle for an empire, the new relations with Philip II’s Macedonia and the other actors of Greek history, the growing development of geographical science and written culture, a biased perception of foreign peoples or remote and almost fabulous places.