Geography in Classical Antiquity

Abstract

What were the limits of knowledge of the physical world in Greek and Roman antiquity? How far did travellers get and what did they know about far-away regions? How did they describe foreign countries and peoples? How did they measure the earth, and distances and heights on it? Ideas about the physical and cultural world are a key aspect of ancient history, but until now there has been no up-to-date modern overview of the subject. This book explores the beginnings and development of geographical ideas in Classical antiquity and demonstrates technical methods for describing landscape, topographies and ethnographies. The survey relies on a variety of sources: philosophical and scientific texts but also poems and travelogues; papyrological remains and visual monuments.

Ancient Geography: The Discovery of the World in Classical Greece and Rome

“…It has been many years since anyone has attempted a comprehensive survey of ancient geographical thought in English: One has to go back to Thomson's (1948) History of Ancient Geography for such a text, although Dueck's (2012) Geography in Classical Antiquity covers the same ground briefly in a thematic, rather than a chronological, manner. Duane W. Roller, Professor Emeritus at The Ohio State University, has taken up the challenge.…”

Subversive Geography in Tacitus'Germania

“…The absence also of history in the Germania is explored by Rives 2002. For a recent survey on geography in the ancient world, Dueck and Brodersen 2012. On the rôle of geographical knowledge in classical texts see, for example: Thomas 1982; Romm 1992; Sundwall 1996; Evans 1999; Evans 2005; Dueck 2000; Jones 2005; Krebs 2006; Riggsby 2006: 21–46.…”

“… 88 Strabo: Dueck 2000: 40–3; Pliny, NH : Woolf 2011: 11; Apollonius: Dueck and Brodersen 2012: 26; Pausanias: Elsner 2001: 20. Woolf (2011: 11) notes that Pliny's selection of the periplus as an organizing schema should be considered a conscious one, given that not all of Pliny's sources made similar choices.…”