Dueck Daniela. Illiterate Geography in Classical Athens and Rome

Routledge, 2021. — 279 p.Illiterate Geography in Classical Athens and Rome by Daniela Dueck is devoted to the channels through which geographic knowledge circulated in classical societies outside of textual transmission. It explores understanding of geography among the non-elites, as opposed to scholarly and scientific geography solely in written form which was the province of a very small number of learned people. It deals with non-literary knowledge of geography, geography not derived from texts, as it was available to people, educated or not, who did not read geographic works. This main issue is composed of two central questions: how, if at all, was geographic data available outside of textual transmission and in contexts in which there was no need to write or read? And what could the public know of geography? In general, three groups of sources are relevant to this quest: oral communications preserved in writing; public non-textual performances; and visual artefacts and monuments. All of these are examined as potential sources for the aural and visual geographic knowledge of Greco-Roman publics. This volume will be of interest to anyone working on geography in the ancient world and to those studying non-elite culture.Geography and popular culture are the two currents in recent classical scholarship that parent this volume. Studies of Greek and Roman geography involve primarily the examination of ancient geographical reports and documentation, including the actual extent of knowledge and mental perceptions of the world, and base their conclusions mainly on textual evidence. This is rightly so; these are the main and sometimes the only sources for assessing matters of “practical” geography, such as the limits of travel and knowledge, and for evaluating the concepts and theories involved in the discovery and description of the world. Parallel to this branch of research is a growing modern interest in ancient popular culture and the life of the majority in Greco-Roman society, meaning the crowds, the masses and the uneducated.2 Within this area of interest and specifically linked to questions of textual transmission, it seems clear that in societies in which only a minority were fully literate, texts were available to a narrow sector of the population composed of the educated and literate, who throughout antiquity were usually free elite adult males. What of the rest – the majority – of the population? Building on these two branches of study – classical geography and ancient popular culture – this book asks about the extent of geographic knowledge, if any, among illiterate men, women and even children. This question offers an occasion for a wider notion of audiences for unwritten geographies: scholarly and scientific geography solely in written form was the province of a very small number of learned people even among the so-called educated elite.ContentsList of figures
List of maps
Acknowledgements
AbbreviationsEvaluating the unwritten and the unread
Speeches
Drama
Proverbs and idioms
Spectacles and public shows
Visualizing geography
The scope of an illiterate geographyAppendix A: Lists of place-names in speeches
Appendix B: Lists of place-names in dramatic plays
Appendix C: Selection of Greek geographic and ethnographic proverbs and idioms
Appendix D: Selection of Latin geographic and ethnographic proverbs and idioms
Appendix E: List of place-names in Olympic victor lists
Appendix F: List of place-names in the Fasti Triumphales 264/3–19 bceBibliography
Index