Geography in Classical Antiquity (Key Themes in Ancient History) by Daniela Dueck (PDF)

Description

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.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Well presented and concise insight into the geography of antiquity. My interest was primarily in the translation of the geographic concepts into their expressions as “maps” that may have been produced.

⭐Greek and Roman geography intersects with (i) Homeric scholarship (making precise the peoples and places that occur in the Iliad and the Odyssey), (ii) ethnography (writing about the people in different locations), (iv) meteorology (the climate of different locations), (v) travel for trade and warfare, (vi) astronomy (latitude and longitude for the celestial sphere and for earth, using celestial phenomena phenomena to determine latitude and longitude on earth), (vii) hydrology and geology (the sources of rivers, whether some location had once been under a sea, whether the heights of mountains change), (viii) surveying (marking areas into rectangles whose sides are standard lengths), (ix) topography (describing the surface of the earth, like we now do with contour lines), (x) ancient technology (what measuring devices were used), (xi) cartography.It would be overwhelming to read a comprehensive history that covers all the above topics. This book does a satisfactory job introducing what is known about ancient geography, and correctly emphasizes that people in Greece and Rome thought about geographical space differently than we do now. Also, good works are cited in the text, but when I read an introduction I want a short list of suggested further reading for each topic that is covered.I would like to have learned more about how distances were measured. Dueck mentions “bematistae” (measuring by pacing), but I don’t yet understand how Eratosthenes got a number for the distance from Alexandria to Syene. What devices were used as odometers? To feel at home with the thinking of ancient geographers we need to understand how people actually did the things that are written about, otherwise we are just playing games with words. Analogously, to understand ancient warfare we need to understand logistics and public health, otherwise we are merely reading about lists of battles and generals. Neither do I understand how the data of how many days it took to sail from one place to another place were used to determine the distance between the places. (It would beg the question to say that the distance is the time multiplied by the speed.)

⭐Very readable and informative. Contrast of Greek periploi and Roman itineraries – knowledge of and concern for sailing trade and army movements was new to me in that form and provoked a number of ideas. Discussion of `mathematical geography’ also very interesting. An excellent short read.

⭐Uma pena não estar disponível em português e só ser acessível a um preço que eu achei relativamente alto, levando em conta que, por exemplo, o livro “Letramento e Oralidade na Grécia Antiga”, que no original faz parte da mesma coleção “Key Themes in Ancint History”, lançado no Brasil pela editora Odysseus, custa menos de 50 reais.Mas de qualquer forma o livro vale o preço. E pessoas com um nível de inglês intermediário acompanhadas de um bom dicionário para suprir o conhecimento de vocabulário conseguem dar conta da leitura sem grandes problemas.

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