This study is devoted to the channels through which geographic knowledge circulated in classical societies outside of textual transmission. It explores understanding of geography among the non-elites, as opposed to scholarly and scientific geography solely in written form which was the province of a very small number of learned people.
It deals with non-literary knowledge of geography, geography not derived from texts, as it was available to people, educated or not, who did not read geographic works. This main issue is composed of two central questions: how, if at all, was geographic data available outside of textual transmission and in contexts in which there was no need to write or read? And what could the public know of geography? In general, three groups of sources are relevant to this quest: oral communications preserved in writing; public non-textual performances; and visual artefacts and monuments. All of these are examined as potential sources for the aural and visual geographic knowledge of Greco-Roman publics.
This volume will be of interest to anyone working on geography in the ancient world and to those studying non-elite culture.
Author(s): Daniela Dueck
Series: Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 278
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures
List of maps
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Chapter 1 Evaluating the unwritten and the unread
Scope of the question and goals
The sources
Methodological outline
Literacy, illiteracy and orality
The crowds and their culture
Daily and practical geography
Greek and Roman geography – realities and availability
Written geographies – not for the masses
Notes
Chapter 2 Speeches
The Attic Orators
Antiphon (480–411 bce)
Lysias (445–380 bce)
Andocides (440–390 bce)
Isocrates (436–338 bce)
Isaeus (early 4th century bce)
Lycurgus (390–324 bce)
Hyperides (390–322 bce)
Aeschines (389–314 bce)
Demosthenes (384–322 bce)
Dinarchus (361–291 bce)
Speeches in Thucydides
Geography in Attic Speeches
Roman speeches – Cicero
Comparison and conclusion
Notes
Chapter 3 Drama
Athenian tragedy
Aeschylus
Sophocles
Euripides
Geography in Athenian tragedies
The comedies of Aristophanes
Fragments of Old Comedy
Menander’s geography
Victory odes
Drama in Rome
Plautus (c. 254–184 bce)
Terence
The tragedies of Seneca
Comparison and conclusion
Notes
Chapter 4 Proverbs and idioms
Geographic layout and spatial awareness
Local environment
Local products and resources
Local myth and history
Ethnic idioms
The world within the word
Notes
Chapter 5 Spectacles and public shows
Athenian public events
Roman ceremonial triumphs
Showing Roman conquests
Circenses: beast shows, gladiators and staged battles
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 6 Visualizing geography
Roads to visual geography
Attic vase paintings and reliefs
Greek coins
Visual geography in Athens
Roman triumphal monuments
Ethnic portraits
Roman coinage
Nilotic scenes in Rome
The shape of Rome
The visual aspect of epigraphic lists
Conclusion – The visual impact
Notes
Chapter 7 The scope of an illiterate geography
Notes
Appendix A: Lists of place-names in speeches
Appendix B: Lists of place-names in dramatic plays
Appendix C: Selection of Greek geographic and ethnographic proverbs and idioms
Appendix D: Selection of Latin geographic and ethnographic proverbs and idioms
Appendix E: List of place-names in Olympic victor lists
Appendix F: List of place-names in the Fasti Triumphales 264/3–19 bce
Bibliography
Index
