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In this volume, Lightfoot offers a detailed study of an ancient Greek geographical poem by Dionysius, a scholar-poet who flourished in Alexandria during the reign of Hadrian, which describes the world as it was then known. In antiquity, it was widely read and extremely influential, both in the schoolroom and among later poets. Translated into Latin, the subject of commentaries, and popular in Byzantium, it offers insights into multiple traditions of ancient geography, both literary and more scientific, and displays interesting affiliations to the earlier school of Alexandrian poets.
The introductory essays discuss the poem's place in the literary context of ancient geography, focusing on its language, style, and metre, whereby Dionysius shows himself a particularly painstaking heir of the Hellenistic poets, and illustrates how intricately he interlaces sources and models to produce a mosaic of geographical learning. Particular emphasis is given to Dionysius' place in the ancient tradition of didactic poetry, and to his artful manipulations of ancient ethnographical convention to produce a vision of a bounteous, ordered, and harmonious world in the high days of the Roman Empire.
The commentary, supported by a fresh edition and English translation, discusses Dionysius as a geographer but, above all, as a literary artist. This volume contributes to the revival of interest in, and appreciation of, imperial hexameter poetry, and brings to the fore a poem that deserves to be every bit as well-known as its Hellenistic counterpart, the Phaenomena of Aratus.
List of contents
- Preface
- List of Maps
- Note to Reader
- Abbreviations
- Part One: Introduction
- 1: Preliminaries
- 2: Sources
- 3: Language
- 4: Didactic
- 5: Geopoetics
- 6: The End of the Journey
- Part Two: Text and Commentary
- Edition
- Commentary
- Appendix 1
- Register of echoes and allusions
- Appendix 2
- The structure of the Periegesis
- Bibliography
About the author
J. L. Lightfoot has been Fellow and Tutor in Classics at New College, Oxford, since 2003, where she teaches and lectures on all areas of Greek literature. This is her fourth major publication with Oxford University Press.
Summary
In this volume, Lightfoot offers a detailed study of an ancient Greek geographical poem by Dionysius, a scholar-poet who flourished in Alexandria during the reign of Hadrian, which describes the world as it was then known. In antiquity, it was widely read and extremely influential, both in the schoolroom and among later poets. Translated into Latin, the subject of commentaries, and popular in Byzantium, it offers insights into multiple traditions of ancient geography, both literary and more scientific, and displays interesting affiliations to the earlier school of Alexandrian poets.
The introductory essays discuss the poem's place in the literary context of ancient geography, focusing on its language, style, and metre, whereby Dionysius shows himself a particularly painstaking heir of the Hellenistic poets, and illustrates how intricately he interlaces sources and models to produce a mosaic of geographical learning. Particular emphasis is given to Dionysius' place in the ancient tradition of didactic poetry, and to his artful manipulations of ancient ethnographical convention to produce a vision of a bounteous, ordered, and harmonious world in the high days of the Roman Empire.
The commentary, supported by a fresh edition and English translation, discusses Dionysius as a geographer but, above all, as a literary artist. This volume contributes to the revival of interest in, and appreciation of, imperial hexameter poetry, and brings to the fore a poem that deserves to be every bit as well-known as its Hellenistic counterpart, the Phaenomena of Aratus.
Additional text
for those interested in the traditions of ancient geography, this is an invaluable volume
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Lightfoot has given us a new edition aimed at those "others", that is, at readers and scholars of poetry ... with an extensive introduction and commentary , making it clear throughout that she take the Periegesis seriously as a work of literature, not merely an artfact of geographic history. James Romm, The Times Literary Supplement
