- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226300719
- eISBN:
- 9780226300726
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226300726.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, World Early Modern History
The exploration and recovery of Anglo-Saxon England were salient achievements of English scholarship in the sixteenth century. The map of the Heptarchy gave unanticipated currency to obsolete ...
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The exploration and recovery of Anglo-Saxon England were salient achievements of English scholarship in the sixteenth century. The map of the Heptarchy gave unanticipated currency to obsolete kingdoms. The closest France comes in the seventeenth century to equaling Speed's synoptic battles map is a grandly expansive survey, “Europe francoise,” on a single sheet, of the lands governed at least once in their past by a member of the “royal and very illustrious family of France.” An eighteenth-century commentator pointed out that medieval history was more directly relevant to the current condition of Europe than was ancient. Speed's “Invasions of England and Ireland” and Boisseau's “Europe francoise,” both free of any explicit reference to the Middle Ages, bore out in their maps the moral that had yet to be drawn. Ancient geography could dispense with chronology.Less
The exploration and recovery of Anglo-Saxon England were salient achievements of English scholarship in the sixteenth century. The map of the Heptarchy gave unanticipated currency to obsolete kingdoms. The closest France comes in the seventeenth century to equaling Speed's synoptic battles map is a grandly expansive survey, “Europe francoise,” on a single sheet, of the lands governed at least once in their past by a member of the “royal and very illustrious family of France.” An eighteenth-century commentator pointed out that medieval history was more directly relevant to the current condition of Europe than was ancient. Speed's “Invasions of England and Ireland” and Boisseau's “Europe francoise,” both free of any explicit reference to the Middle Ages, bore out in their maps the moral that had yet to be drawn. Ancient geography could dispense with chronology.
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226300719
- eISBN:
- 9780226300726
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226300726.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, World Early Modern History
Nineteenth-century maps for medieval history added nothing new to the ways in which the past is portrayed. Examples of these methods, or types, can be detected in the earliest period and continue to ...
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Nineteenth-century maps for medieval history added nothing new to the ways in which the past is portrayed. Examples of these methods, or types, can be detected in the earliest period and continue to appear in the historical atlases of today. Ptolemy's provincial maps of “ancient geography” may serve as examples, with the difference that no date was affixed to them; rather, they were only implicitly qualified as “ancient.” A major improvement came when someone took a portrayal of the ancient eastern Mediterranean, fastened a suitable inscription to it, and, by this device, turned geography into a historical guide to the journeys of Saint Paul. Pictures are expected to pack more meaning into their lines, shapes, and colors than cumbersome words manage to express. The surprising thing is how rarely nonverbal eloquence has been attempted, let alone achieved.Less
Nineteenth-century maps for medieval history added nothing new to the ways in which the past is portrayed. Examples of these methods, or types, can be detected in the earliest period and continue to appear in the historical atlases of today. Ptolemy's provincial maps of “ancient geography” may serve as examples, with the difference that no date was affixed to them; rather, they were only implicitly qualified as “ancient.” A major improvement came when someone took a portrayal of the ancient eastern Mediterranean, fastened a suitable inscription to it, and, by this device, turned geography into a historical guide to the journeys of Saint Paul. Pictures are expected to pack more meaning into their lines, shapes, and colors than cumbersome words manage to express. The surprising thing is how rarely nonverbal eloquence has been attempted, let alone achieved.
Graham Shipley (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620917
- eISBN:
- 9781789623680
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620917.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The text of the Periplous or ‘circumnavigation’ that survives under the name of Skylax of Karyanda is in fact by an unknown author of the 4th century BC. It describes the coasts of the Mediterranean ...
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The text of the Periplous or ‘circumnavigation’ that survives under the name of Skylax of Karyanda is in fact by an unknown author of the 4th century BC. It describes the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Sea, naming hundreds of towns with geographical features such as rivers, harbours and mountains. But, argues Graham Shipley, it is not the record of a voyage or a navigational handbook for sailors. It is, rather, the first work of Greek theoretical geography, written in Athens at a time of intellectual ferment and intense speculation about the nature and dimensions of the inhabited world. While other scientists were gathering data about natural science and political systems or making rapid advances in philosophy, rhetorical theory, and cosmology, the unknown author collected data about the structure of the lands bordering the seas known to the Greeks, and compiled sailing distances and times along well-frequented routes. His aim was probably nothing less ambitious than to demonstrate the size of the inhabited world of the Greeks. This is the first full edition of the Periplous for over 150 years, and includes a newly revised Greek text and specially produced maps along with the first complete English translation. In this fully reset second edition, the introduction is expanded to include a section on the late-antique geographer Markianos, and updates incorporated into both the Introduction and Commentary.Less
The text of the Periplous or ‘circumnavigation’ that survives under the name of Skylax of Karyanda is in fact by an unknown author of the 4th century BC. It describes the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Sea, naming hundreds of towns with geographical features such as rivers, harbours and mountains. But, argues Graham Shipley, it is not the record of a voyage or a navigational handbook for sailors. It is, rather, the first work of Greek theoretical geography, written in Athens at a time of intellectual ferment and intense speculation about the nature and dimensions of the inhabited world. While other scientists were gathering data about natural science and political systems or making rapid advances in philosophy, rhetorical theory, and cosmology, the unknown author collected data about the structure of the lands bordering the seas known to the Greeks, and compiled sailing distances and times along well-frequented routes. His aim was probably nothing less ambitious than to demonstrate the size of the inhabited world of the Greeks. This is the first full edition of the Periplous for over 150 years, and includes a newly revised Greek text and specially produced maps along with the first complete English translation. In this fully reset second edition, the introduction is expanded to include a section on the late-antique geographer Markianos, and updates incorporated into both the Introduction and Commentary.
Emma Gee
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- March 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198777250
- eISBN:
- 9780191823015
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198777250.003.0013
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Philosophy
‘The Self and the Underworld’ explores the journey of the soul in the afterlife in terms of the eschatological chronotope, the own special imaginary time–space zone of the ‘other world’. Texts from ...
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‘The Self and the Underworld’ explores the journey of the soul in the afterlife in terms of the eschatological chronotope, the own special imaginary time–space zone of the ‘other world’. Texts from Freud and from Virgil Aeneid 6 receive particular attention. It is argued that, because the afterlife represents psychological rather than physical space, its map, while it may appear to be based on ‘real’ geographic models, does not need to follow rules of space and logic. Rather, models of psychic space offered by Freud and Lacan, as well as radical new models in geography, present a better paradigm for understanding afterlife space.Less
‘The Self and the Underworld’ explores the journey of the soul in the afterlife in terms of the eschatological chronotope, the own special imaginary time–space zone of the ‘other world’. Texts from Freud and from Virgil Aeneid 6 receive particular attention. It is argued that, because the afterlife represents psychological rather than physical space, its map, while it may appear to be based on ‘real’ geographic models, does not need to follow rules of space and logic. Rather, models of psychic space offered by Freud and Lacan, as well as radical new models in geography, present a better paradigm for understanding afterlife space.
Emma Gee
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190670481
- eISBN:
- 9780190670511
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190670481.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Religions
This chapter studies the underworld journey of Virgil, Aeneid 6. It examines a series of possible models for afterlife space in Aen. 6. In particular it looks at the underworld journey of Aen. 6 in ...
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This chapter studies the underworld journey of Virgil, Aeneid 6. It examines a series of possible models for afterlife space in Aen. 6. In particular it looks at the underworld journey of Aen. 6 in the light of ancient geographical traditions. We learn that a point-by-point idiom of representing space was much more widespread than you might imagine in antiquity. It’s found across many different genres, involving real and imagined space: geography, poetry, and art. The author argues that idioms of spatial expression are constant across representations of imagined and real space and across image and text. It is possible for Virgil to use the components of a “real” geography to construct his imaginary world. The afterlife is modeled on our concept of the “real” world, but in turn the “reality” we model it on is in large part a construct of the human artistic imagination, of our propenstiy for simplification and schematization. Like a map, the afterlife landscape allows us to simplify and schematize our environment, because it imposes no limits: it is imaginary. The afterlife landscape, in Virgil and elsewhere, acts as a fulcrum between real and imaginary space. There is no strict dichotomy between real and imagined space; instead there is a continuity between the “imagined” space of Virgil’s underworld, and the space of geographical accounts; between the world of the soul and the “real” world.Less
This chapter studies the underworld journey of Virgil, Aeneid 6. It examines a series of possible models for afterlife space in Aen. 6. In particular it looks at the underworld journey of Aen. 6 in the light of ancient geographical traditions. We learn that a point-by-point idiom of representing space was much more widespread than you might imagine in antiquity. It’s found across many different genres, involving real and imagined space: geography, poetry, and art. The author argues that idioms of spatial expression are constant across representations of imagined and real space and across image and text. It is possible for Virgil to use the components of a “real” geography to construct his imaginary world. The afterlife is modeled on our concept of the “real” world, but in turn the “reality” we model it on is in large part a construct of the human artistic imagination, of our propenstiy for simplification and schematization. Like a map, the afterlife landscape allows us to simplify and schematize our environment, because it imposes no limits: it is imaginary. The afterlife landscape, in Virgil and elsewhere, acts as a fulcrum between real and imaginary space. There is no strict dichotomy between real and imagined space; instead there is a continuity between the “imagined” space of Virgil’s underworld, and the space of geographical accounts; between the world of the soul and the “real” world.
Emma Gee
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190670481
- eISBN:
- 9780190670511
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190670481.003.0004
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Religions
This chapter studies the De raptu Proserpinae (Rape of Persephone) by the fourth-century CE poet Claudian, in particular its image of world order, the Tapestry of Proserpina at DRP 1.246–72. The ...
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This chapter studies the De raptu Proserpinae (Rape of Persephone) by the fourth-century CE poet Claudian, in particular its image of world order, the Tapestry of Proserpina at DRP 1.246–72. The tapestry is an ekphrasis (description of a work of art) set within a narrative that recalls Aeneas’ katabasis or descent to the underworld in Virgil, Aeneid 6. Within this context, Claudian’s world icon embeds two different spatial problems. These are (1) a lack of clarity as to whether what we are seeing is the oikoumene (the inhabited world, a flat geometric shape inscribed on the earth’s sphere) or the globe-as-a-whole, and (2) the coexistence of two apparently different ways of seeing the world-as-a-whole: as a sphere or as a stack of strata with the underworld at the bottom. Claudian allows these various representations to coexist in Properpina’s tapestry.Less
This chapter studies the De raptu Proserpinae (Rape of Persephone) by the fourth-century CE poet Claudian, in particular its image of world order, the Tapestry of Proserpina at DRP 1.246–72. The tapestry is an ekphrasis (description of a work of art) set within a narrative that recalls Aeneas’ katabasis or descent to the underworld in Virgil, Aeneid 6. Within this context, Claudian’s world icon embeds two different spatial problems. These are (1) a lack of clarity as to whether what we are seeing is the oikoumene (the inhabited world, a flat geometric shape inscribed on the earth’s sphere) or the globe-as-a-whole, and (2) the coexistence of two apparently different ways of seeing the world-as-a-whole: as a sphere or as a stack of strata with the underworld at the bottom. Claudian allows these various representations to coexist in Properpina’s tapestry.
