Focusing on the Greek world during the high Roman Empire between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE, this edited volume examines the representation of space in literary, rhetorical, and mythographic texts of the period. Authors under discussion include major figures such as Dio of Prusa, Aelius Aristides, Arrian, Lucian, and Philostratus. Texts by Apollodorus, Alciphron, Aelian, Artemidorus, and Pausanias also receive attention, along with the Alexander Romance and Egyptian apocalyptic narratives. Attending to the relationship between mobility and cultural rootedness, each chapter examines how Greek writers of the imperial era constructed and represented the multi-temporal landscapes of their contemporary world.
This edited volume contributes to a growing interest in the topographical imagination of the ancient Mediterranean. The Roman Empire was a world of vast trade networks, cosmopolitan culture, and high elite mobility, making geography an essential component of the language of power and culture. Volume contributors present a composite picture of how imperial-era Greek writers constructed and curated topographies of the Greek world – urban, rural, cultic, and monumental – to tell new stories about Hellenic space and its place within the broader empire.
List of Figures List of Maps List of Contributors Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Spatial Perspectives from the Greek East, Janet Downie (University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, USA) and Anna Peterson (Penn State University, USA) Part One: Travelers in Literary Space 1. Dio’s Moral Geography, William Hutton (College of William & Mary, USA) 2. Cities in Situ: Landscape in the Urban Orations, N. Bryant Kirkland (University of California - Los Angeles, USA) 3. Spatial Mnemonics in Dionysius and Pausanias, Janet Downie (University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, USA) Part Two: Multitemporal Landscapes 4. Theseus’ Imperial Topographies, R. Scott Smith (University of New Hampshire, USA), Greta Hawes (Australian National University, Australia), and Aristogenia Toumpas (Ohio State University, USA) 5. Monuments, Memory, and Space in Imperial Greek Narratives of Alexander, Estelle Strazdins (Australian National University, Australia) 6. Time, Space, and the Apocalypse: Greek and Egyptian Narratives of Alexandria, Robert Cioffi (Bard College, USA) Part Three: Human and Divine Topographies 7. Empire, Absence, and Disbelief in Lucian’s Toxaris, Inger N. I. Kuin (University of Virginia, USA) 8. Placial Knowledge: The Sacred Well at Pergamum and its Users, Artemis Brod (Independent Scholar, USA) 9. Body and Time in the Dreamscapes of Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica, Kate Gilhuly (Wellesley College, USA) 10. Writing Bodies in Space: the Attic Countryside in the Epistolary Fiction of Alciphron and Aelian, Anna Peterson (Penn State University, USA) Envoi: Human and Environment in Imperial Greek literature, Jason König (University of St. Andrews, UK) Bibliography
Janet Downie is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. Anna Peterson is Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Penn State University, USA.
Reviews for Greek Literary Topographies in the Roman Imperial World
"""This book grabs hold of the 'spatial turn' in classics and makes its mark via the fascinating thematic lens of topographia."" --Emma Greensmith, Associate Professor of Classics, University of Oxford, UK"
