A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. Группа авторов
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Therefore ethnography was also part of mapping the oikoumenē, defined as much by the borders of civilization with other peoples as by the physical landscape (Murphy 2004: 78–79; Dueck 2010: 243–245).
Concluding Remarks
Geographical sources for the Near East represent centuries’ worth of exploration, philosophical development, and geopolitical change. Many geographers were preoccupied with mapping the whole world or tracing its edges, and the Near East itself, being the oldest portion of the oikoumenē known to the Greeks, is often less of the focus, except when specific expeditions were sent through it. The interest in Near Eastern empires – Persian, Hellenistic, and Parthian – however, gives the geographical sources a strong geopolitical element, both as evidence for local situations at given periods (depending on the source material used by each author) and in terms of the broader philosophical trends for explaining and operating under dominant states. The sources’ descriptions run the gamut from topography to ethnography, providing travelogues, myths, natural histories, and political narratives for cities and regions in the Near East. They show how the Near East fitted into the evolution of geography as a discipline and influenced Greco-Roman conceptions of the inhabited world and human history.
FURTHER READING
A few practical geographies are accessible in translation and with commentaries, including Agatharchides (Burstein 1989), Pseudo-Scylax (Shipley 2011), and the Periplus Maris Erythraei (Casson 1989). Talbert’s examination of the Peutinger Table (2010) is quite illuminating. Isidorus of Charax’s work is the subject of some recent studies which argue how we should see him as a truly Hellenistic geographer and explorer and more than just a surveyor for Roman invasion: Schuol, Hartmann, Hauser, and Schmitt (all 2017). Considerable scholarship focuses on the philosophical geographies, and their cultural and historical contexts. For example, Clarke 1999 and Nicolet 1991 are both essential reading on the junction of Hellenistic and imperial Roman geographies, and Cameron 2019 examines the Roman encounter with Parthian geography. There are several important studies of Strabo’s aims and methods, including Dueck 2010 and Roseman 2005. Roller’s work on Eratosthenes (2010) is a useful reconstruction of his vast geographical project. Stevens 2016 offers an intriguing analysis of Theophrastus’s plant-based geography of the Near East.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks are owed to Graham Shipley for his helpful comments, bibliographical suggestions, and provision of publications. Any errors are the author’s own.
NOTES
1 1 Agathemerus §1 says that Anaximander “first attempted to draw the world on a table” (πρῶτος ἀπετόλμησε τὴν οἰκουμένην ἐν πίνακι γράψαι).
2 2 See Xenophon’s Anabasis and Ctesias, FGrH 688 T1–2. Ctesias gives an account of the battle of Cunaxa in which his patron defeated Cyrus’s army, FGrH 688 F16 §§64–65.
3 3 FGrH 1; Strabo 1.1.11; Agathemerus §1: Hecataeus was “widely travelled” (πολυπλανής); Dilke 1985: 56.
4 4 Hdt. 4.44; Aristotle Pol. 1332b; FGrH 709. See Panchenko 2003: 274ff for Scylax’s later reception and 289ff for the argument that Scylax explored the Ganges. See Tuplin 1991: 242 and 271 for possible quotations of Scylax by Herodotus, Hecataeus, Ephorus, and others.
5 5 Periplus Maris Erythraei 19: 6.28–29 (on Malichus II), 57: 19.2–5 (on Hippalos); see Casson 1989: 6–8; Parker 2001: 61. Arrian, Anab. 6.21.1–3, describes how Nearchus’s voyage was delayed by the monsoons, though they did not know the nature of the phenomenon.
6 6 Periplus Maris Erythraei 20: 7.14–15 (he himself sailed), 29:9.27 (mentions “the trees we have in Egypt”); Casson 1989: 6–8. Potts 1990: 316 notes that the author was not so familiar with the Arabian Gulf and the Characene coast. See also Parker 2001.
7 7 Pliny HN 6.138–139: originally a foundation of Alexander, the city was refounded by a Seleucid king Antiochos, and renamed Antiocheia, and then taken over by Spaosines, founder of the Characene kingdom (later known as Mesene) in the late second century BCE, hence the city’s later name: Charax Spasinou, “Charax of Spasinos.” See also Potts 1990: 145–146; Fraser 1996: 168–169.
8 8 Pliny names “Dionysius of Charax,” but based on Isidorus’s text, it is probable that they are the same man.
9 9 For the title Stations: FGrH 781 F2 §19; for Guidebook: Athen. 3.46 = FGrH 781 F1.
10 10 The stemma for the MSS tradition shows the two Parisian codices were copied from an unknown earlier volume compiled by Marcianus of Heraclea.
11 11 The map is available to view in full colour and with optional overlays at the Cambridge University Press website: http://www.cambridge.org/us/talbert/index.html.
12 12 Kubitschek RE X (1919) s.v. “Karten,” col. 2015–16, reconstructs the 24 regions in a table: region 17, Syria; 18, Asia citerior; 19, Asia superior; 20, Caspian and Armenia; 21, India; 22, Media, Parthia, Persia; 23, Mesopotamia; 24, Ethiopia and Arabia.
13 13 Nicolet 1991: 30–33; Velleius Paterculus 1.6.6: a later interpolation, quote of Aemilius Sura’s de annis populi Romani on Rome as fifth world power after 146 BCE. Strabo refers to Parthia as submissive to Roman power, 6.4.2, Parthia as rival to Rome based on its size and numerous subjects, 11.9.2, and Rome as having surpassed all previous rulers of the oikoumenē, 17.3.24.
14 14 Strabo 2.5.6 and 10; Dilke 1985: 36–37; Nicolet 1991: 35; Romm 1992: 131, 180; Clarke 1999: 212. Crates sojourned at Rome in the 150s BCE, teaching and writing, and Cicero used his ideas of the globe for his Dream of Scipio, de Rep. 6.19–20.
15 15 Hdt. 5.49: an early example: Aristagoras’s world map, probably based on Anaximander’s but presenting a succession of Asian peoples (Ionians, Lydians, Phrygians, and so forth) with their most valuable resources and tribute paid to the Persian king; see also Harrison 2007: 44–45, 53.
16 16 In the twelfth century, Eustathius’s commentary on Dionysius’s Periegetae orbis descriptionem (written during the reign of Hadrian) reports that the handing over occurred only after the women had borne two or three children for their first husband, see Müller, GGM II, 346, §730.
CHAPTER 4 Berossos between Greek and Babylonian Culture
Johannes H. Haubold
Berossos of Babylon has long been a familiar figure to students of the Hellenistic Near East. In antiquity, he was invoked to defend Jewish and Christian traditions of historiography against the pagan Greek mainstream. The Renaissance saw his work