The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought: Geography, Exploration, and Fiction

by James S. Romm

Overview

For the Greeks and Romans the earth's farthest perimeter was a realm radically different from what they perceived as central and human. The alien qualities of these "edges of the earth" became the basis of a literary tradition that endured throughout antiquity and into the Renaissance, despite the growing challenges of emerging scientific perspectives. Here James Romm surveys this tradition, revealing that the Greeks, and to a somewhat lesser extent the Romans, saw geography not as a branch of physical science but as an important literary genre.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691037882
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	10/09/1994
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	247
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

James S. Romm is Assistant Professor of Classics at Bard College.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xi
	Works Frequently Cited	xiii
	Introduction: Geography as a Literary Tradition	3
1	The Boundaries of Earth	9
	Boundaries and the Boundless	11
	Ocean and Cosmic Disorder	20
	Roads around the World	26
	Herodotus and the Changing World Picture	32
	Aristotle and After	41
2	Ethiopian and Hyperborean	45
	The Blameless Ethiopians	49
	The Fortunate Hyperboreans	60
	Arimaspians and Scythians	67
	The Kunokephaloi	77
3	Wonders of the East	82
	Before Alexander	83
	Marvel-Collectors and Critics	94
	The Late Romance Tradition	109
4	Ultima Thule and Beyond	121
	Antipodal Ambitions	124
	The North Sea Coast	140
	The Headwaters of the Nile	149
	The Atlantic Horizon	156
5	Geography and Fiction	172
	Ocean and Poetry	176
	The Voyage of Odysseus	183
	Pytheas, Euhemerus, and Others	196
	The Fictions of Exploration	202
	Epilogue: After Columbus	215
	Index	223

What People are Saying About This

Deborah Boedeker

This work is unparalleled in its scope and perspective.
— Deborah Boedeker, College of the Holy Cross

From the Publisher

"This work is unparalleled in its scope and perspective."—Deborah Boedeker, College of the Holy Cross

Editorial Reviews

"An immensely engaging and erudite work, packed full of provocative insights.... Romm successfully sorts out for us some of the most complex traditions of ancient geographic literature; and he deserves high marks for doing it in such an intelligent, original, and attractive manner."—-T. Corey Brennan, Bryn Mawr Classical Reviews

"Romm's incisive and brilliant analysis of Greco-Roman ideas of earth's geography is grounded in a linguistic interpretation of Greek conceptions of space and boundary. . . . His work captures the imagination as few others have and will provide material for the study of the classical legacy in the shaping of the modern scientific mind for many years to come."—-Helen Liebel-Weckowicz, Classical Bulletin

From the Publisher

Romm's incisive and brilliant analysis of Greco-Roman ideas of earth's geography is grounded in a linguistic interpretation of Greek conceptions of space and boundary. . . . His work captures the imagination as few others have and will provide material for the study of the classical legacy in the shaping of the modern scientific mind for many years to come.

Classical Bulletin - Helen Liebel-Weckowicz

An immensely engaging and erudite work, packed full of provocative insights.... Romm successfully sorts out for us some of the most complex traditions of ancient geographic literature; and he deserves high marks for doing it in such an intelligent, original, and attractive manner.

Bryn Mawr Classical Reviews - T. Corey Brennan

Romm's incisive and brilliant analysis of Greco-Roman ideas of earth's geography is grounded in a linguistic interpretation of Greek conceptions of space and boundary. . . . His work captures the imagination as few others have and will provide material for the study of the classical legacy in the shaping of the modern scientific mind for many years to come.
— Helen Liebel-Weckowicz

Classical Bulletin

An immensely engaging and erudite work, packed full of provocative insights.... Romm successfully sorts out for us some of the most complex traditions of ancient geographic literature; and he deserves high marks for doing it in such an intelligent, original, and attractive manner.
— T. Corey Brennan

Bryn Mawr Classical Reviews

An immensely engaging and erudite work, packed full of provocative insights.... Romm successfully sorts out for us some of the most complex traditions of ancient geographic literature; and he deserves high marks for doing it in such an intelligent, original, and attractive manner.
— T. Corey Brennan

Bryn Mawr Classical Review

For the ancient Greeks and Romans, geography was as much a form of narrative fiction as a scientific description of terrains or peoples. In an interesting, suggestive, and thoroughly documented study, Romm (classics, Bard Coll.) traces the development of geography from early accounts in Homer and Herodotus through the various texts emerging from the conquests of Alexander the Great, such as those by Strabo and Pliny, to the Romans. He explores the symbolic landscapes, realms of wonders, and other literary conventions that formed the backdrop for these texts. He also looks at the perceptions of other ancient peoples, from the Ethiopians in the South and Hyperboreans in the North to the Indians in the East. A handy, readable, and valuable contribution. For educated readers.-- T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong State Coll., Savannah, Ga.

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