Monsters al" the Edges ofthe World:

Geography and Rhetoric under the Roman Empire.

Félix Racine

Department of History

McGill University, Montréal

October 12, 2003

A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts

© Félix Racine, 2003 Library and Bibliothèque et 1+1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de l'édition

395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada

Your file Votre référence ISBN: 0-612-98474-5 Our file Notre référence ISBN: 0-612-98474-5

NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant à la Bibliothèque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par télécommunication ou par l'Internet, prêter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des thèses partout dans loan, distribute and sell th es es le monde, à des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non­ sur support microforme, papier, électronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats.

The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriété du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protège cette thèse. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission.

ln compliance with the Canadian Conformément à la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privée, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont été enlevés de cette thèse.

While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. ••• Canada Résumé

Les Romains représentaient les limites de leur monde d'après des préoccupations sociales et identitaires qu'ils entretenaient. Les géographes vulgarisateurs du début de l'Empire (Strabon, Méla et Pline), qui vécurent dans un monde récemment unifié par

Rome, utilisèrent des descriptions de peuples fantastiques tels que les Hyperboréens utopiques, les Scythes cannibales et les Tête-de-Chiens monstrueux pour présenter à leurs lecteurs des coutumes radicalement non-romaines. Ces descriptions purement rhétoriques les aidèrent à mieux cerner une identité romaine au moyen d'exempla antithétiques. En comparaison, au cours des cinquième et sixième siècles, les auteurs de légendes rattachées à Saint Christophe étaient témoins d'une crise d'identité romaine née de l'infiltration de l'Empire par des 'barbares' et de la diffusion du christianisme (la foi

Romaine) au-delà des frontières. Leur réponse fut d'éliminer la barrière mentale séparant le monde romain et les peuples fantastiques et d'annoncer la christianisation forcée de contrées lointaines. Summary

Descriptions of the edges of the Roman world were shaped by social preoccupations and identity issues. Living in a newly unified Roman world, the popularizing geographers of the early Empire (Strabo, Mela, Pliny) used descriptions of fictional and remote people such as the utopian Hyperboreans, the cannibal Scythians and the monstrous Dog-Heads to present customs and behaviors that were utterly un­

Roman. These rhetorical descriptions helped define Roman identity through antithetical exempla. In contrast to this, the fifth and sixth centuries, the anonymous authors of legends surrounding the figure of Saint Christopher witnessed a crisis of Roman identity fostered by a new 'barbarian' presence within the Empire and by the expansion of the

Christian (i.e. Roman) faith outside of the Empire. Their response was to tear down the imaginary barrier between the Roman world and fictional, remote people and to proclaim the forceful Christianization of distant lands.

ii Table of contents

Preface IV

Abbreviations VU

Introduction 1

1: Refusing to go 7

Geographical awareness under the Roman Empire 12

At the end ofthe Roman road 25

A golden age in a thousand pieces 32

Romans and monsters 40

We cannot go there (trust us) 50

II: Getting there 55

Apostles and cannibals 59

The new men in town 68

On the home front 77

Conclusion 86

Illustrations 91

Bibliography 97

iii Preface

The real subject of fuis study is not monsters but Romans. How did they imagine the edges of their world and their exotic inhabitants? What kind of relation did they entertain with the se fictional nations? Such are the questions that drive my inquiry. 1 am less interested in the extent of geographical knowledge under the Roman Empire­ although this issue is inevitable-than in the way Romans articulated this knowledge in a meaningful way. My aim is to uncover links between descriptions of fictional people and issues of Roman identity, and to show how Romans shaped the world that surrounded them according to preoccupations at home.

Although this basic goal has stayed the same since the beginning of my research, the format has changed somewhat. What was initially a comparison between two encyc1opedists, the EIder Pliny and Isidore of Seville, quickly became a comparison between geographical descriptions of the early Empire and late antique ones. Isidore was replaced by a heterogeneous corpus oftexts (apocryphal aets and saints'lives) while

Pliny now shares the stage with Strabo and Mela. If some sense of neat symmetry has been lost along the way, 1 believe it is the small priee to pay to get a deeper analysis.

This double focus yielded two ehapters of quite different format. One reason for thîs is the sources themselves: the works of Strabo and Pliny are well-known, weIl­ preserve

iv Sorne remarks concerning vocabulary are in order. Naming countries and regions is always a problem in studies of ancient geography: is it the Euxine or the Black Sea?

In order to avoid bringing up modern images in my readers' minds, 1 have kept the ancient names as much as possible (thus Scythia and not Ukraine or Russia), except where a modern name is c1early the descendant of an ancient one (thus Britain and not

Britannia). If it adds a touch of exoticism for non-specialists reading this text, so much the better. As for the names of fictional people, 1 have chosen to translate them in order to render their alien nature (thus Dog-Heads and not Cynocephali, Silk People and not

Seres). 1 left the original name only when they did not have any etymological meaning.

Finally, contrary to standard English practice, 1 wrote 'Ocean' instead of 'the Ocean', with the hope of evoking the mighty, godIike presence that surrounded the Romans' world. AH translations from Latin and Greek are my own; as for other ancient languages, 1 indicated in the footnotes and the bibliography the translations 1 used.

McGill University regulations require me to dec1are the extent to which various people have helped me complete this thesis. No coercion is needed here for it is my great pleasure to finally have the occasion to thank those who have not oniy made this study possible but aIso worthwhile. At McGill, Elizabeth Digeser has been an indefatigable supervisor who not only provided me with invaluable support throughout this whole enterprise but aIso accomplished the feat of keeping me on track, while

Nancy Partner's advice and encouragement have been crucial to deepening my inquiry. 1 owe much to the various scholars who commented on my work during conferences and in other settings.1 Among them, Hal Drake (UCSB), Claudia Rapp (UCLA) and Richard

1 A shorter version of chapter I, deaIing exc1usively with Pliny's monsters, was presented at the Classics and Near-Eastern Studies graduate conference of the University of British Columbia in May 2002.

v Talbert (UNC - Chapel Hill) especially deserve my warmest thanks. A chance meeting with John Lewis Gaddis at Yale made me realize that 1 should be explicit about how the

Romans saw the world and learned about it. If my preliminary remarks on 'geographical awareness' can make my whole argument clearer, he is the one to thank for it. If not, my own inexperience is to blame. Among fellow students, Olivier Dufault, Éric Fournier and Ariane Magny have given me valuable advice on portions of this thesis. Alexandre-

Sébastien Cousineau scanned the illustrations and saved my computer from many viral infections. The members of my family have helped me in more ways than 1 can possibly acknowledge. My parents gave me an unwavering support and were even, from time to time, genuinely interested in my work, which made it all the more worthwhile. Iris not only helped me revise my English prose but ruso firmly believed that 1 could complete this thesis without too many bruises. 1 must concede that she was right. * * * The titles of the two chapters are from Lindsey Davis' The Iron Hand of Mars. 1 apologize to the author for looting her punchy lines.

Different versions of chapter II have peen presented at a meeting of the North American Patristics Society in Chicago in May 2002, at the Classics graduate conference at McMaster University in September 2002, at the American Society for ChurchHistory annual meeting at Chicago in January 2003 and at the Shifting Frontfers V: Violence, Victims, and Vindication in Late Antiquity conference at the University of Santa Barbara in March 2003; the fust three papers dealt with St. Christopher and the fourth with John of Ephesus.

vi Abbreviations

AlI abbreviations not listed here are in accordance with those of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (third edition).

AAB Acts ofAndrew and Bartholomew (ed. and trans. E. A. Wallis Budge, The Contendings ofthe Apostles, 2 vols. [London, 1935],2:183-214).

MMt Acts ofAndrew and Matthias (ed. and trans. D. R. MacDonald, The Acts of Andrew and the Acts of Andrew and Matthias in the City of the Cannibals [Atlanta, 1990], 70-169).

AMtA Acts ofMatthew and Andrew (ed. and trans. W. Wright, Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. Edited from Syrian Manuscripts in the British Museum and Other Libraries [1871, reprint Amsterdam, 1963],93-115).

BHG 310 Life of St. Christopher, Greek (ed. G. van Hoof, "Sancti Christophori Acta Graeca Antiqua, "Analecta Bollandiana 10 [1891], 122-48).

BHG 311 b Lift of St. Christopher, Greek (ed. and trans. F. Halkin, "Saint Christophe dans le ménologue impérial," Hagiologie byzantine: textes inédits publiés en grec et traduits en français, [Brussels, 1986]: 31-46).

BHL 1764 Lift of St. Christopher, Latin ("Passio Sancti Christophori Martyris," Analecta Bollandiana 1 [1881],394-95).

GLM Riese, A, ed. Geographi latini minores. Heilbron, 1878.

Vita Mere. Alexandrine Life of Saint Mercurius (ed. and trans. R. Basset, "Le Synaxaire arabe jacobite (rédaction copte): les mois de Hatour et de Kihak," PO 3 [1909]: 337-8).

vii Introduction: soft places

The modem habit of adoming books of Roman history with maps of the Empire

(usually at its fullest extent, in 116-117 AD) has always been something of a pis-aller, a way to present the Roman world to a non-Roman audience. Such illustrations generally take the form of Lambert Conformai Conie maps of the Mediterranean basin-up to and including the lands north and east of the Black Sea-upon whieh a cartographer has drawn the frontiers of the Empire's provinces. These representations help modem readers visualize the extent of the Roman world and the relative position of its parts by evoking an image that has been burned into their minds: a seale-map of Europe, something akin to a picture taken from a satellite. Indeed, readers sometimes instinctively identify provinces and regions of the Empire with modem eountries: Gaul is France, Lusitania is Portugal, Proconsular Afriea is Tunisia and Illyrieum is (or was)

Yugoslavia.

Scale-maps of the Roman Empire are thus good introductions to an alien and long-gone world, but aside from this, their utility is very limited. Indeed, they might even be obstacles; students and scholars must learn to look past them in order to fully grasp the world as the Romans saw it, or else risk attributing to them geographieal knowledge they never had. In all probability, the standard scale-maps of the Empire found in modem books (see fig. 1) would have made little sense to an edueated Roman.

The vast regions north of the Danube, the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea would have meant nothing to him since he was used to consider the Caspian Sea as a gulf of Ocean

1 and Germany as even smaller than Italy.2 Also~ he might not have agreed with all of these frontiers drawn on the map and the vast non-Roman territories beyond them:

Eusebius' Life of Constantine in band, he could have pointed out thm the frrst Christian emperor had conquered Scythia, and by using the Dimensuratio prouinciarum he could have shown that the province of Numidia extended all the way across Africa to the southern oceanic shore. 3

The present thesis is an attempt to look past the modem map and to study Roman geography on its own terms. The inquiry will focus on one area of Roman geographical thinking, one that does not fit on a modem scale-map: the edges of the world and their inhabitants. Following the circumnavigation of the earth and the reconnaissance of virtually every inhabited land, modern geography has done away with the whole concept of the 'edges' of the earth and the dreamlike places that came with it. In a Westemer's mind, only a handful of places on earth are still truly dreamlike and half-real, what writer Neil Gaiman called 'soft places': lia few thousand square miles of central

Australia, a couple of Pacific islands, a field in Ireland, an occasional mountain in

Arizona ..... 4 The Romans had many more of them, mostly situated at the edges of their conceptual world. Sorne said that an island off the coast of Britain was the place of exile of the god Cronos, others maintained that Mt. Atlas in Mauretania reached up to the sky and supported the stars, many believed that the primitive and virtuous Silk People lived at the easterumost tip of the world, and practically everyone agreed that India was a land

2 Caspian Sea as Caspian Gulf in Roman authors: Strabo 2.5.18, Mela 1.9,3.38,44-45, Plin. HN 6.36-39, Dionys. Pero 49, Oros. 1.48 et al. According to the map of Agrippa, Germany-including the provinces of Raetia and Noricum-was 686 miles by 248 (plin. RN 4.98), ltaly is 1020 miles by 410 (plin. HN 3.43- 44). 3 Eus. Vit. Cons. 1.7, GLM 13. The Dimensuratio even gives 480 as the total latitude of Numidia. Mauretania and Cyrenaica also extended aU the way to the southem shore of Africa, for 452 and 980 miles respectively. 4 N. Gaiman, The Sandman. 39: Soft Places (New York, July 1992), 17.

2 of marvels, the home of dragons, huge river beasts, gold-digging ants and monstrous races ofmen.5

The issue at stake here is not the amount of factual information that Romans possessed or did not possess regarding such places. T 0 rationalize that accounts of imaginary people, like the tribe of the Dog-Heads in India, were a substitute for lack of trustworthy, frrst-hand knowledge on tbis remote land would not explain much. The unknown did not create anything by itself; it was the Romans (and the Greeks before them) who invented these tales and situated them at the fringe of their world. 6 For reasons that will be detailed in chapter l, Roman geographical descriptions had a lot to do with rhetoric on account of the literary tradition within which authors worked, and descriptions of the edges of the world were mostly rhetoric-even for a well-informed geographer like Strabo who would report them although he did not believe them. 'Soft places' such as India were a malleable material for poets and geographers, contrary to the varlous regions of the Empire, which they and their audience inhabited and knew first-hand The aim of this study is to analyze how descriptions of the edges of the world were shaped by a typically Roman geograpbical discourse (the rhetorical strategies and symbolic means by which Romans shaped their world), how they were indicative of

Roman preoccupations, and how these preoccupations changed over time.

Since it is not possible here to scrutinize every account of the edges of the world under the Roman Empire and to completely map out the preoccupations underlying them, thls inquiry will focus on two separate groups of texts, each sharing common

5 Cronos' island: Plut. De E apud Delphos 420A. Mt Atlas: Mela 3.101. See chapter 1 for references to the Silk People and Indian marvels. 6 R. Lenoble, Esquisse d'une idée de nature (paris, 1969), 164, commenting on Pliny's eastem marvels: "On répète souvent que les légendes naissent de l'inconnu qui environnait un monde trop mesuré. Or l'inconnu ne crée rien. Les légendes ... naissent de thèmes inconscients."

3 issues. Chapter 1 will coyer the edges of the world according to the Geography of Strabo and the geographical books of the Elder Pliny's Natural History, (together with sorne supporting evidence from the Chorography of Pomponius Mela). These texts from the first century AD were the first Roman accounts of the whole inhabited world and were intended as lessons for the cultured eHte. Following the conque st of the Mediterranean basin and supposedly of the major part of the earth, Strabo and Pliny set themselves to the double task of narrating the whole Roman world and of giving the eHte a sense of

Roman identity. By picking up descriptions of utopian people and monstrous races of men from the Greco-Roman literary tradition, and by situating them just outside the

Roman sphere of influence, they managed both to give a sense of closure to the Roman world and to stage examples ofwhat was un-Roman behavior.

Chapter II will attest to the enduring influence ofthese geographical descriptions under the Roman Empire, but will focus on how sorne travel accounts from late antiquity worked to build a different, competing picture of the edges of the world, based on different preoccupations. The texts considered here--mainly the legends surrounding the figure of St. Christopher and John of Ephesus' Life of Simeon the Mountaineer­ responded to a crisis of Roman identity and re-shaped the edges of the world accordingly. Whether it was because of an increased 'barbarian' presence in the Empire or of the Chalcedonian-Monophysite controversy, sorne authors tore down the barrier between the Roman world and the edges of the earth and proclaimed the

Christianization of the 'soft places.'

4 * * * The present thesis owes much to the recent work of scholars on 'literary geography' in the ancient world. The movement gained momentum in the 1980s in

French and ltalian academic circles, as exemplified by the publication of François

Hartog's Le miroir d'Hérodote, Pietro Janni's La mappa e il periplo (introducing the concept of 'road-like space', a useful tool for studying Greco-Roman perceptions of the world), Christian Jacob's studies of Dionysius Periegetes' poetic geography and a series of publications on Strabo and the EIder Pliny that paid close attention to their ideas and not only the raw data their works contain.7 Anglophone scholars were to follow in the

1990s, with notably James Romm's The Edges ofthe Earth in Ancient Thought, Charles

Whittaker's Frontiers of the Roman Empire and Katherine Clarke's Between Geography and History.8 An informed reader will recognize their influence on every section of the present study. Late antique geography has not received as much attention as classical

Greek and Roman geography, and indeed a comprehensive study that recognizes its particular characteristics is stilllacking. A recent contribution by Natalia Lozovsky has made sorne headway on geographical thinking in the late Roman and post-Roman West,

7 F. Hartog, Le miroir d'Hérodote: essai sur la représentation de ['autre (Paris, 1980). P. Jauni, La mappa e il periplo, cartografica antica e spazio odologico (Rome, 1984), C. Jacob, "L'œil et la mémoire: sur la Périégèse de la Terre habitée de Denys," in Arts et légendes d'espaces, figures du voyage et rhétoriques du monde, ed. C. Jacob and F. Lestringant (Paris, 1981),21-97, "La carte écrite: sur les pouvoirs imaginaires du texte géographique en Grèce ancienne," in Espaces de la lecture, ed. A.-M. Chrlstin (Paris, 1988),230- 40. On Strabo: F. Prontera, Strabone: contributi allo studio della personalità e dell'opera, 2. vols. (perugia, 1984), P. Thollard, Barbarie et civilisation chez Strabon: étude critique des livres III et IV de la géographie (paris, 1987). On Pliny: Tecnologia, economia e società nel mondo romano (Como, 1980), PUnio il Vecchio sotto il profilo storico e letterario (Como, 1982). 8 J. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient thought: Geography, Exploration and Fiction (Princeton, 1992). C. Whittaker, Frontiers ofthe Roman Empire: a Social and Economie Study (Baltimore, 1994), K. Clarke, Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Constructions ofthe Roman World (Oxford, 1999).

5 an issue not considered here, and there are signs that scholars and students of late antiquity may become more interested in issues of geography in the near future. 9

9 N. Lozovsky, 'The Earth Is Our Book': Geographical Knowledge in the Latin West ca. 400-1000 (Ann Arbor, 2000). 1 have my hopes up for Richard Talbert's upcoming study of the Peutinger Table and John Matthews' upcoming book on travel based on the fourth-century papyrus archive of Theophanes of Hermopolis.

6 1: Refusing to go

After subduing a sizeable district of Spain in 138-137 BC, the general Decimus

Brutus set foot on the shores of Lusitania and became the frrst Roman to reach the edge of the known world. "After parading his troops along the shores of Ocean, the historian

Florus reports, he did not turn back until he beheld with a certain feeling of impiety and horror the sun sinking into the sea and its fire quenched by water.'tlO Brutus's journey was only the first in a long series of military expeditions aiming more or less at bringing

Roman arms to the edges of the world during the late republican and early imperial era.

While pursuing Mithridates east of Armenia in 66 BC, Pompey the Great reached the foot of the Caucasus range, defeated the previously unknown Iberians and Albanians, and advanced toward the Caspian sea or rather the 'Caspian gulf, understood by the

Ancients to be an inlet of Ocean itself.ll In 55 and 54 BC, Julius Caesar crossed

Encircling Ocean, set foot on the island of Britain and received the nominal submission of local chieftains.12 In 25-24 BC, Augustus dispatched his prefect of Egypt, Aelius

Gallus, on an unsuccessful military expedition to Arabia in order to conquer or at least forge an alliance with the inhabitants of Arabia Felix, at the southem extremity of the peninsula.13 While part of the Roman army was in Arabia, the Ethlopians attacked Egypt but were repelled by the governor Caïus Petronius, who in turn invaded their country,

10 FIor. 1.33.12. Il Plut. Pomp. 34-36. Upon his return to Rome, Pompey set up an inscription listing the tribes he had subdued and proclaiming that he had "taken the boundaries of the empire (,yrrsp,t)v/a) to the bounds (oeOt) of the earth" (Diod. Sic. 40.4). 12 Caes. B Gall. 4.20-38, 5.1,8-23. 13 A full account ofthis expedition has been preserved by Strabo 16.4.22-24. Plin. HN6.160-162 does not mention Gallus' ultimate failure.

7 destroyed their capital and forced them into an alliance with Augustus.5 Still under his reign-in 12-9 BC-Drusus sailed the coast of Germany for an unknown distance, an enterprise Tiberius and then Germanicus attempted again in 5 and 16 AD.6 Later, under the reign of Claudius, the govemor of Mauritania, Suetonius Paulus, became the first

Roman commander to cross the Atlas range and to explore the Atlantic shore south of it. 7 Finally, at the express orders of Nero, two centurions were sent to investigate the sources of the Nile (thought by sorne to be on another continent altogether)8 and maybe even to prepare an invasion of Ethiopia.9

A reasonable assumption would be that the se expeditions, and others like them, should have contributed dramatically to the geographical knowledge about such distant lands. Indeed, as Polybius had argued in his time, Roman military expansion was the vehic1e of progress in geographical knowledge, a comment picked up later by Strabo. lO

Increased trade and diplomatic missions would have also contributed to a better knowledge of far-away regions. Augustus boasted that under his reign ambassadors from as far away as Scythia and India came to him, this being confirmed by first-century geographers and historians. 11 The establishment of a direct trade-route between the

5 Strabo 17.1.54 and also PHn. HN 6,181 for a less complete account. According to Strabo, Petronius frrst had to teach them who and where Augustus was. 6 Drusus: Tac. Germ. 34. Tiberius: Vell. Pat. 2.l06, PHn. HN 4.27. Germanicus: Tac. Ann. 2.23-24. 7 PHn. HN5.14-15. 8 Mela, writing under the reign of Claudius, alludes to the possibility. Mela 1.54. 9 The evidence we have is too sketchy for us to discem a clear military objective to this expedition. Seneca (Q Nat. 6.8.3-4) presents it as a purely scientific endeavor but Pliny (HN 6.181) vaguely asserts that Nero was planning an attack on Ethiopia while he was waging war elsewhere ("inter alia bel/a"). In any case, the Roman expedition seems to have penetrated very far inland, down to at least 9° N where the nilotic marshes begin, according to E. H. Bunbury, A History of Ancient Geography, 2 vols. (London, 1887),2:348. 10 Polyb. 3.59, Strabo 2.5.12. 11 Res gestae 31. AIl embassies are attested by Suet. Aug. 2. FIor. 2.34 adds an improbable embassy from the Silk People. The Indian embassy is attested by Strabo 15.1.4,73 and Dio. Casso 54.9.8.

8 Empire and India should have also contributed to a better geographical knowledge of this region. 21

Nevertheless, the most complete works of geography surviving from the frrst

century AD-those of Strabo, Mela and Pliny-do not have much to report about the

edges of their world ... but reteH many oid fables instead. Although Strabo was happy to

denounce the beHef that on the Lusitanian shore one could hear a sizzling sound as the

sun sank into the sea, he felt compelled to report that on the island Erythia facing Gades,

the grass made animaIs so fat that they choked to death and that in Gades proper there

was a tree whose cut-off branches produced milk and cut-off roots produced blood.22

Writing at the time of the deflnitive conquest of Britain, Mela reported that its rivers

produced pearls and gems.23 Above aIl, the ethnography of the edges of the world

bordered on the fantastic and the incredible. Mela and Pliny peopled the islands north of

Germany with monstrous races of men like the All-Ears who used their body-length ears

as c10thing or the Horse-Feet, a self-explanatory name.24 AIl geographers were quick to

pinpoint the location of the kingdom of the Amazons: west of the Caspian gulf, barely

21 For the establishment of the trade-route between Roman and India, see A. Dihle. "Die entdeckungsgeschichtliche Voraussetzungen des Indienhandels der rômischen Kaiserzeit". in Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt Il, Principat lX (1978): 546-80. J. O. Thomson, History of Ancient Geography (New York, 1948),301 insists that geographers were slow at integrating information brought back by travelers into their works. Pliny's account of Taprobane (HN 6.81-91) is one exception. 22 Strabo 3.1.5 (the setting sun, following an account by Posidonius), 3.5.4 (Erythia), 3.5.10 (the tree of Gades). Strabo's description of Erythia is an attempt at rationalizing the myth of Geryon (Hes. Theog. 287-293, in association with Erythia). See also Mela 3.47 and Plin. HN 4.120, whose accounts show the imprecise knowledge ofthis edge of the world, despite a strong and long Roman presence: Mela's Erythia faces Lusitania while Pliny alludes to Lusitania and Gades as possible locations; both authors mention it as the place of the myth of Geryon. 23 Mela 3.51. See also Suet. Caes. 47 for pearls. Tac. Agr. 12 is far less enthusiastic regarding their quality. 24 Mela 3.56 and Plin. HN 4.95, probably following the same source or the former influencing the latter. Both aIso mention in this region the Oenae who live on a diet ofbirds' eggs and seeds.

9 missed by Pompey on his journey.25 Despite the campaigns of Caïus Petronius and of

Nero's two centurions up the Nile, some Ethiopians remained for Mela and Pliny

Herodotus' legendary Long-Lived Ethiopians who lived for 140 years.26 Finally, although he hailed the reports of merchants as a vital source of information on the East,

Strabo complained that he had nothing new to report on India since the days of

Alexander and went on to present the same monstrous races that the Greek historian

Megasthenes had introduced three centuries before: dog-headed Cyclops, men whose feet faced backwards and mouthless humans.27

80 despite increased exploration to the four corners of the known world, Roman geographers of the early Empire continued to fall back on classical and Hellenistic descriptions of the edges of the world. Modem scholars have often been annoyed by the recurrence of such legends, describing them as "the old geographical weed" or maybe sometimes more forgivingly "the usual fairy stories".28 Modem commentators are particularly harsh toward Pliny, and his collection of marvels has been seen as a sign of decline in Roman cultme-a prelude to the medieval marvel-collectors.29 Yet here is a man who declared werewolves to be pure fantasy and who doubted the existence of the phoenix.3o Strabo might seem more critical than PHny since he denied the existence of

25 Strabo 11.5.3, Mela 1.109 (the Amazonian mountains, a part of the Caucasus), 1.114 (Ixamates who live like Amazons), 1.116 (the kingdom of the Amazons), Plin. HN 6.19 (the tribe of the Sarmatian Gynaecoratumenoe, ruled by Amazons). Plut. Pomp. 38 mentions Amazonsjoining the Albanians in tbeir fight against Pompey, citing as proofthe "shields and buskins like those Amazons wear" tbat were found on the battlefield. 26 Mela 3.85-87, Plin. HN7.27 (ultimately based on Hdt. 3.17-25). 27 Strabo 2.5.12 on mercbants, 15.1.2ff. on India. Megasthenes' monstrosities are retold in 15.1.57. 28 Thomson, 252; L. Casson, Travel in the Ancient World (Toronto, 1974), 123. 29 On decline, e.g. G. Williams, Change and Decline. Roman Literature in the Early Empire (Berkeley~ 1978), 190-92. W. H. Stahl, Roman Science. Origins, Development and Influence to the Later Middle Ages (Madison, 1962), 119: "Here is the man who cast a spell over writers in the Middle Ages." Thomson, 323: "Pliny is aIready akin to the men of the Middle Ages who found his tomes such a rich pasture of confused feeding." 30 Plin. HN 8.80, 10.3

10 the long-lived Hyperboreans in northem Europe ... But he mentioned them again in

India, this time with a lot less hostility.31 Is the acceptance or rejection marvelous stories such as werewolves or Hyperboreans an indicator of the state of Roman geographical knowledge? Or can they he explained in a different way?

What this chapter proposes is a reading of the Roman world of the early imperial

geographers through their depictions of exotic, remote people. Scattered at the edges of the world, monstrous races like the Dog-Heads and the No-Mouths, freaks of cuisine

like the Seed-Eaters and the Elephant-Eaters, virtuous nations like the Hyperboreans and

the Silk People were projections of Roman imagination taken straight out of a Greek

literary tradition. To explore this issue, it is necessary to tirst look at the early imperial

geographers themselves and the way they built their Roman world. With some help from

the mysterious Dionysius Periegetes, it is possible to situate the geographies of Strabo,

Mela and Pliny within the spectrum of geographical awareness in the early Empire. This

will bring to light the kind of geographical knowledge the Roman eHte possessed or

sought out. The discussion will then proceed 10 the exotic races of men themselves. By

considering their depiction as rhetorical rather than factual, they will he studied not for

what they can tell about the state of geographical knowledge at the beginning of the

Empire, but for hints on how geographers staged the world to teach lessons to the

Roman eHte.

31 Strabo 7.3.1,15.1.27.

11 Geograpbical awareness under the early Empire

To understand how the early imperial geographers built their Roman world (and why it is possible to speak of them as 'building' it), it is necessary to look briefly at how and on what foundations they constructed it. The humanistic geographer Yi-Fu Tuan has introduced the idea of place as 'lived-in space" a space transformed in people's minds through experience.32 Follo'\\'Îng this line of thought, it is possible to step out of the

study of ancient geography as a 'scientific' endeavour to consider the early imperial geographers as giving their readers an experience of the world. A region as vast as the

Roman Empire was arguably beyond anyone's direct experience but could be made familiar-transformed into a 'place'-through education,33 and tbis is where the

geographers came in. By providing their readers with geographical descriptions of the

Roman world, they tumed this large 'space' into a familiar 'place' that could be both a

focus of attachment and a provider of identity.

Since Strabo, Mela and Pliny wrote for a certain audience, it is necessary to look

at the type of geograpbical knowledge their readers possessed. Following Tuan again,

one should situate their texts within the total spectrum of geographical awareness within their society, something the geographer David Lowenthal also suggested when stressing the existence of a shared realm of knowledge between people who have different worlds

32 Y.F. Tuan, "Space, Time, Place: A Humanistic Frame," in Making Sense ofTime, ed. T. Carlstein, D. Parkes and N. Thrift (New York, 1978),7. Regarding Greco-Roman geography proper, this idea bas been picked up by Clarke, 7 who underlines the links between geographical and historiographical inquiries in antiquity. 33 Y.-F. Tuan, "Humanistic Geography," Annals of the Association ofAmerican Geographers 66 (1976): 269.

12 of experience.34 Hence, if one is to understand the world-view of the early imperial geographers, one must situate it within the body of geographical knowledge shared by aIl their potential readers-the cultured eHte.

Where should one look for such a body of shared knowledge? Sometimes scholars rush to Claudius Ptolemy (fi. 145-70) and consider bis work the ultimate achievement of Roman geography. Undeniably, his system of geographical co-ordinates can only appeal to the modem geographer's passion for mapmaking. 35 Ptolemy however was atypical and stood at the narrow end of the whole range of Greco-Roman geographical literature.36 He was a specialized academic geographer read by few, the author of lists of place-names, unreadable tomes that were never meant to be read start- to-finish like other geographical descriptions. At the opposite end of the spectrum of geographical literature and living at roughly the same time was the elusive Dionysius

Periegetes, whose short Guide to Our World [flee/m(/) 'Ttfj) olxoup,ill'Yj)]37 allows a glimpse at what could have been the most widely shared geographical knowledge. On thls matter, one should trust the great popularity of bis work: it was twice translated in

34 Y.-F. Tuan, "Literature and Geography: Implications for Geographical Research," in Humanistic Geography: Prospects and Problems, ed. D. Ley and M. Samuels (Chicago, 1978),201; D. Lowenthal, "Geography, Experience, and Imagination: Towards a Geographical Epistemology," in Readings in Social Geography, ed. E. Jones (London, 1975), 109. 3S In the English language, the two major works of reference on ancient geography consider Ptolemy to he "the culmination point to which geographical science ever attained among the Greeks and Romans" (Bunbury, 2:645) and to he reserved for special consideration (Thomson, 329, with less enthusiasm than Bunbury). Thomson uses Ptolemaic maps to punctuate bis account ofimperial geography. 36 Romm, 4n3: "It would be a worthy task to construct a ... chart to illustrate the breadth of audience {geographical] writers were seeking to reach: Ptolemy would stand at one extreme, perhaps Dionysius Periegetes at the other. n 37 1 choose to translate oÎKoup.éll'f} by "our world" instead of the more traditional "inhabited world" to reflect the identity-building process at play in this text, as in aIl geographical texts examined here. See e.g. Strabo 2.5.13 and Plin. HN2.172 who postulate the existance of an inhabitable portion ofthe Earth south of the torrid equatorial zone, but one that is unknowable to us.

13 Latin~ twice paraphrased in Greek~ and abundantly discussed weIl into the Byzantine

Of Dionysius, we know nothing except that he probably wrote at Alexandria under the reign of Hadrian, and that he knew how to make geography look good. His

Guide is a geographical description packed with surprises for the modem reader. For one thlng, it is a poem; 1187 verses guide the reader through the three continents and maybe-ifhe is astute enough-allow him to discover the time and place of the author, hidden in two acrosticS. 39 A simple reading reveals a world out of sync with the

geographical reality of the second century AD: renowned cities like Athens, Corinth,

Naples, Pergamum, Smyma and Tarraco are not even mentioned. MarseiUes stands for the whole of Gau!. The Po and the Rhone are omitted while the Kios, a small river in the

Propontis, has its place in the poem. More alanning is that according to the geographer- poet, the Bebryces and the Chalybes, two long-gone nations of Anatolia, were still part

of 'our world'. The selection criteria at play here is a literary one: the Kios, the lands of the Bebryces and the Chalybes were places visited by Jason according to the

40 Argonautica. In fact, aimost aU of the place-names of Dionysius' Guide come frOID the

Argonautica, the Riad, the Odyssey, the myth of the Heracleides or the myth of the god

38 Dionysius' handbook has been edited in C. Müller, Geographi Graeci Minores, 2 vols. (paris, 1855), 2:103-176. We have a Latin translation by Avienus ca. 370 (Müller, 2:177-189), Priscan ca. 510 (Müller, 2.190-199), an anonymous Greek paraphrase (Müller, 2:409-425), a Greek paraphrase maybe by Nicephoros Blemmides (Müller, 2:458-488), Greek scholia (Müller, 2:427-457) and an extensive commentary by Eustathios in the 12th century (Müller, 2:201-407). See Jacob, "L'œil et la mémoire ... ", 25-26. Cassiodorus attests to the popularity of the work four hundred years after its' creation by suggesting its reading to the monks of the mount Cassian. Cassiod. lmt. 25.2. 39 The two acrostics are to be found at v.112-134 (EPE tlIONTXIOT TON ENTOX CVAP01) and v.513- 532 (8EOX EPMEX ElII AtlPlAN01). See G. Leue, "Zeit und Heimat des Periegeten Dionysios,"Philologus42 (1884),175-178. 40 C. Jacob, La description de la terre habitée de Denys d'Alexandrie ou la leçon de géographie (paris, 1990), 50. Dionys. Pero 75 (Marseille for the whole of Gaul), 767-771 (the Chalybes), 805-808 (the Bebryces and the Kios). For both people in the legend of the Argonautica, see Ap. Rhod. Argon. 1.1323; 2.2, 13,70,98-153,374-376,757, 768, 792~798, 1601-1608; 4.1474-1477.

14 Dionysius.41 Commentators agree on the scholastic nature of the poem: it was a convenient guide used to build a mental map based on the texts that the educated elite learned by heart in schoo1.42 This enterprise was in aIl Iikelihood an oid one, reaching back to the Hellenistic age, or at least the first century BC: the Byzantine Eustathios compared Dionysius to Alexander of Ephesus, who had wrltten a description of the three continents in hexameters at the time of Cicero.43

The Guide to Our World gives a valuable hint at the kind of geographical

awareness that educated Romans shared during the frrst centuries of the Empire. The

world they learned about in school was not the world of the geographers but the world

of the canonical poets. It was above an the world of Homer, the fust author thoroughly

studied in the classes of the grammatici (together with Virgil in the Latin west).44 Even

before studying the Iliad and the Odyssey, the children were rehearsing lists of names

and place~names mentioned by the poet: "Brilesos and Arakynthos are mountains of

Attica, Akamas is a promontory of Crete. ,,45 Canonical prose authors were also studied,

and among them Herodotus' four 'geographical' books would have greatly contributed to

the geographical education of the Greek~speaking elite.46 The grammarians commented

upon all these authors extensively during their classes, lecturing on details of grammar,

41 Jacob, La description ... , 45. 42 For the scholastic nature of the Guide, see e.g. Bunbury, 2:489; Thomson, 330; more recently Jacob, La description ... , 48-49; C. Schindler, "Geographische Lehrdichtung," in Geschichte der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaften in der Antike,2 vols., ed. G. Wôhrle (Stuttgart, 2000), 2:173~81. 43 GGM, 2.326. Alexander mentioned by Cicero (Att.2.22.7) as "a bad poet, yet not useless." The few surviving fragments of Alexander do not allow us to draw a stronger parallel between him and Dionysius (Schindler, 176~ 177). 44 Quint. 1.8.5. See also Hor. Epist. 2.2.41-44, Petron. Sato 5 and Plin. Ep. 2.14.2. Other references in S. F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome: From the Eider Cato to the Younger Pliny (Berkeley, 1977),213. 45 Sexto Emp. Math. 1.258, cited by Marrou, Histoire de l'éducation dans l'antiquité, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1950), 233. 46 HA. Marrou, 228 for Herodotus among the prose authors studied. Marrou's analysis focuses on the Hellenistic education but rus conclusions carry over to the imperial era.

15 mythology, history and of course geography.47 Once these works were fully assimilated, oIder students were required to build arguments on questions like what was the course of

Odysseus' journey? Was it within the Mediterranean or outside of it?48 Clearly, there was no room for a study of geography other than the geography of the poets. If there were maps available to the teacher, which is doubtful, they might not have escaped tbis poetic bent: a recently excavated mosaic from Ammaedara, in Africa, shows several islands of the Aegean sea (see fig. II) but without any sense of respective position, orientation, or even reality (three harbors of Cyprus are represented as three separate islands)-it is a map built on the place-names of a Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite.49 If any work of geography was studied in the classes of the Roman world, it would have been something like Dionysius' Guide, a geographical poem read aloud and extensively commentated, much like reading and commenting Aratos' Phaenomena enabled students to learn a bit of astronomy. 50

It is now possible to see why 50 many legends from classical Greek authors like

Homer and Herodotus found their way into the works of Strabo, Mela and Pliny. Their texts were popularized geographies, the next step up from Dionysius on the ladder of geographical awareness. Mela's three books of Chorography are still close in spirit to

47 Quint 1.8.13-21. His harshness against grammarians who spent too much time on meaningless details suggests a common practice. Marrou,377. 48 Sen. Dial. 10.13.2. Bonner, 240. 49 F. Bejaoui, "îles et villes de la Méditerranée sur une mosaYque d'Ammaedara (Haldra, Tunisie)," Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1997 (1999), 825-858, 852n45 and 48 for the Hymn. The panegyric delivered by Eummenus 298 mentions a portico in Autun where the students could see aU the world (Pan. Lat. 5.21-22.) but its real nature is still debated. If it is anything remotely resembling the Antonine ltinerary, chunks of it would be strongly intluenced by Bomeric poetry. The Antonine Itinerary offers littie coverage for the eastem regions of the Empire, denoting Westem origin and use, but bas a catalogue of eastem Medirerranean islands together with notes on their role in myths. B. Saiway, Travel, itineraria and tabellaria," in Travel and Geography in the Roman Empire, ed. C. Adams and R. Laurence (London, 2001), 43.

16 Dionysius's Guide, being both a geograpbical description and "a kind of annchair travelogue in prose," as its most recent translator has observed.51 (In the present study,

Mela will be used primarily as supporting material for the other two geographers, who

developed a more elaborate vision of the Roman world.) Pliny's four 'geographical'

books are part and parcel of bis Natural History, an accessible digest of specialized

Greco-Roman knowledge.52 Strabo's sweeping Geography in seventeen books "are for

53 the politician and the people, fi not the scientific geographer. Such accessible

geographies had to be comprehensible to their readership, or else risk becoming esoteric

like the more specialized geographical treatises and travel accounts upon which they

relied and wbich are mostly lost to us. Strabo made this clear at the onset of bis

description of Greece: "1 am comparing things as they are now with how they were told

by Homer; indeed it is necessary to make this comparison because of the reputation of

50 Jacob, "L'œil et la mémoire," 59. Marrou, 255 asserts that "si l'astronomie figure en bonne place dans les programmes des écoles secondaires, c'est à Aratos qu'elle le doit, et c'est sous la forme d'une

explication de texte, d'une explication essentiellemet littéraire, qu'elle était représentée. Il 51 F. E. Romer, Pomponius Mela's Description o/the World (Ann Arbor, 1988),22. Stanley Bonner saw Mela's Chorography as a school manual of geography (Bonner, 131) and so did, most recently, Gerhard Winkler (G. Winkler, "Geographie bei den Rômern: Mela, Seneca, Plinius," in Geschichte der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaften in der Antike, 2 vols., ed. G. Wôhrle [Stuttgart, 2000], 2:141- 161). This is a possibility but 1 would rather see it as a populariazing book for the elite on the basis of its use by Pliny in the tirst century, by Solinus in the third, by Servius in the fourth, by Martianus Capella in the fifth and by Jordanes in the sixth (On Mela's posterity, see A. Silberman's introduction to Mela, Chorographie, trans. and ed. A. Silberman [paris, 1988], Iii-liii). 52 Plin. HN praef 17: "about 2000 volumes, very few ofwhich are ever consulted by students on account of their specialised nature". His statement that bis encyclopedia "is written for the common populace, a crowd of farmers and artisans, and then idle students" (praef 6) is surely not to be taken seriously considering the dedication to Titus Caesar. In any case, given the price of papyrus, thirty-seven books of Natural History are very unlikely to turn up on humble farmers' shelves. See the sobering comments on the circulation of books and the price of papyrus made by W. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA, 1989),195. 53 Strabo 1.1.22. G. Bowersock saw the addressee as "the cultured and superior men who manage the affairs of state" (Augustus and the Greek World [Oxford, 1965], 128). For Strabo 1.1.16, "it is thus obvious that the whole of geography is oriented toward the practice of power (wsp,oxuJ,)." Germaine Aujac opposes popularizing geographers ("vulgarisateurs") such as Polybius, Geminos and Strabo to scientific geographers such as Eratosthenes, Hipparch and Poseidonios. G. Aujac, "L'ne de Thulé, mythe ou réalité," Athenaeum 66 (1988): 339.

17 the poet and our familiarity with him.,,54 He also postulated that he would not have treated his subject in a satisfactory way until it would have agreed with what Homer said.55 Mela was also an avid re-teller of legends attached to places, mostly relating to their origin, such as the founding of the temple of Ephesus by the Amazons, or the founding of Jaffa before the Flood.56 Looking back and drawing information from the

Greek literary tradition was not only a matter of getting in touch with the geographer's public; it was, as Katherine Clarke indicated, "the only framework within which to construct the present Roman world, however unsatisfactory that framework was for some areas. ,,57 For the present study of the edges of the Roman world, two major consequences stem from tbis observation. * * * The first of these consequences is that the geographies of Strabo, Mela and Pliny

(and obviously Dionysius) can be studied as literature. This is not a new argument: the point was made by Felix Jacoby that Greco-Roman geography, history and other prose genres were originally indistinguishable, stemming from the founding works of

Hecataeus and Herodotus.58 Drawing a line between geography and history, and indeed between geography and other prose genres, is thus a tricky matter and maybe not a desirable enterprise altogether.

S4 Strabo 8.3.3. A tempting translation of rrup/3r1JJ..WlI Ta TB lIÛll ••• would be "1 am jumbling together things as they are now ... Il 55 Strabo 8.3.3. In 8.3.23, he defends the necessity to retell "legends taught to us from childhood." S6 Mela 1.64,88. See P. Pédech, La géographie des grecs (Paris, 1976), 164 for other examples. 57 Clarke, 334-335. 58 Jacoby's argument was fIfst presented in his article "Über die Entwickung der griechischen

Historiographie und den Plan einer neuen Sammlung der griechischen Historikerfragmente, Il Klio 9 (1909): 801-23. Cf. the discussions by Clarke, 56-60 and O. Murray, "History," in Le savoir grec, ed. J. Brunschwig and G. Lloyd (paris, 1996), 368-379. C. W. Fornara, The Nature ofHistory in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley, 1983) retines Jacoby's model by ultimately distinguishing between seven prose genres. which accounts to for why authors would caU themselves 'historians' and 'geographers' in the fust place.

18 From fuis standpoint~ it is not surprising that the early imperial geographers happily crossed the Hne between geography and history, and even went into storytelling.

For Strabo~ describing places was to tell the stories tbat made them places. 59 Pliny punctuated bis Natural History with innumerable digressions~ such as his full-scale presentation of Roman architecture inserted into a book on mineraIs. 6O Maybe the best blend between geography and storytelling was accompHshed by Mel~ who presented his task as being that of untangling [expediam] a puzzling world [pexplexus], thus posing himself as a guide for the reader1s wandering [error].61 Clearly~ these

geographers must be studied not only by looking at the facts they chose and presented,

but also by paying attention to their narrative technique.

The point needs emphasis: the popularizing geographers did not draw maps.

Instead, they narrated the world using stock literary descriptions: the world looks like a

sling~ Spain is sbaped like a cow hide, Sardinia is a rectangle and the Peloponnesus

resembles a plane tree leaf. 62 Within these regions~ toponyms were narrated along

itineraries following rivers, roads or mountain ranges. These toponyms did not only

refer to the places themselves but to wbat made them places: the stories and legends

attached to them. More importantly, as Pascal Amaud pointed out, the se toponyms

retained their corresponding legends and stories even if dragged elsewhere on the map

by other geographers. Thus, no matter how geographers situated and oriented the

S9 Clarke, 280-1. 60 Plin. HN36.101-125. 61 For Mela as guide, see Romer, 12~3 who makes a parallel between Mela's description of the world and his description of an Egyptian maze. 62 The world: Dionys. Pero 7. Spain: Strabo 2.1.30, Dionys. Pero 287. Sardinia: Mela 2.123. Peloponese: Strabo 2.1.30, Dionys. Pero 403-408. Although Strabo 2.5.10,13-15 and Plin. HN 6.211-220 seem to give indications on how to build maps, their geographical description is clearly a narrative. Pliny's cartographie indications even come as an afterthought O. A W. Dilke, Greek and Roman Maps (Ithaca, 1985), 66 noted that Mela's Chorography was published, in all probability, without a map.

19 Caucasus, it was still the site where Prometheus was bound (and near the kingdom of the

Amazons).63 Distant people and places like the Hyperboreans or the Island of Gold could he relocated at will, sometimes on another continent altogether, sometimes in different places by the same author.64

This is looking less and less like geography as modems understand it and more as rhetoric. And it was rhetoric. But since Strabo, Mela and Pliny aiso styled their texts as geographies, their doing so hints at what constituted 'useful' geography under the early Empire. Technicalities like distances were constantly avoided, most of all by

Strabo who complained that "it is necessary to endure such dry geography in the case of famous places. ,,65 Although Dionysius' Guide was astonishingly out of sync with its own times, it was nevertheless deemed "particularly useful for kings and generals". 66 Indeed,

Dionysius knew what the Roman elite needed: "1 will now tell you the whole of our world so that, without actually seeing it, you retain a vision easily communicable: this way, you will be honorable and more worthy of respect when explaining each detail to ignorant men."67 The elite wanted not only facts about the world, they wanted the geographers to provide lessons about proper life within their Roman world. Strabo consistently showed the wretchedness of mountain-dwellers, Pliny turned the Jewish sect of the Essenes into a case-study of isolation and selfishness, Mela turned the same

Essenes into a case-study of necrophagy and Dionysius--for once making room for the geographical present!-turned the Parthians into an example of submission to the

63 Arnaud, 28. 64 See p. 29. 65 Strabo 14.1.9. Mela and Dionysius also avoid giving distances. Pliny on the other hand has distances aplenty but then again he does cramin anything remotely related to his subject, "so that nothing is omitted in this presentation of the world's arrangement" (Plin. HN 6.211). 66 Eustathios in his commentary of Dionysius, GGM,2:214. 67 Dionys. Pero 170-173.

20 emperor. 68 What Gwyn Morgan wrote regarding Tacitus' Germany would seem to apply here, but on a much greater scale: "What the Romans wanted .. , was a maxim for every occasion, a style for every theme and a drama as often as possible. ,,69 If the geographer's job was to provide people with useful facts, sorne of these facts took the form of exempla, moral lessons that shaped the reader's mind. 70 This role of nations and places as exempla will be central to the discussion of their function in the early imperial world- view, and then in the late antique world-view. * * * Grounding geography on the Greek literary tradition also meant that the edges

of the world were already known. Only a scÎentific geographer like Ptolemy could step

out of the literary tradition and put terrae incognitae at the edges of bis map (see fig.

III). Strabo, Mela and Pliny all accepted and intemalized the lliads Encircling Ocean, a

single body of water surrounding a rather small world, and were ad amant to prove that

the world had aIready been circumnavigated.71 Admittedly, they were keen to report any

advances of knowledge brought by military expeditions like the ones mentioned at the

beginning ofthis chapter, but they always had to fit them within the frame of the literary

68 Strabo 3.3.7-8 (among others), Plin. HN5.73, Mela 2.9, Dionys. Pero 1040-1052. 69 M. G. Morgan, "Tacitus on Germany: Roman History or Latin Literature?" Literature and History, ed. L. Schulze and W. Wetzels (Boston, 1983),93. 70 Strabo's introduction to his work, namely that "the business of the philosopher includes geography" (1.1.1), hints at a conction between knowing the world and knowing how to live in it. 'Spiritual exercises', a constant personal training through practical mental exercises, were a hallmark of ancient philosophical schools and were aimed at "une transformation profonde de la manière de voir et d'être de l'individu." P. Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, 3rd ed. (Paris, 1993), 13-58, citation at 17. Geographical exempta bear a striking resemblance with such exercises: their repetitive, stereotyped and often philosophical character suggest that they could have been written to shape the mind and world-view of readers. 1t is in this spirit that Strabo wrote: "We have also mentioned customs and political organizations that no longer exist; utility (WrpeÀefaç) incited us to mention them, and human actions too: the aim is to inspire emulation or provoke aversion" (2.5.17). 71 Mela 3.45,90-91, Plin. HN 2.168, Strabo 1.1.8 adroits that the far North and South had not yet been circumnavigated but defends with logic the presence of Ocean there.

21 tradition.72 Strabo notoriously rejected the scientific geographers' ambition to inquire

about what lay beyond 'our world,.73 Pliny too warned against investigating outside the

known world. 74 This refusaI to inquire further outside the known world could often take

a religious tone as it did with Tacitus for whom the gods themselves prevented

exploration of Ocean north of Germany.75

The world of the early imperial geographers was thus much smaller than

modems would tend to represent it. The Empire was not a semicircle around the

Mediterranean sea, what appears to the modem eye to be barely more than a strip of

land in northem Africa and the Near East; it was rather the larger portion of the

inhabited world. Strabo concluded his survey of 'our world' by assessing that "the

Romans hold the best and best known parts of it," and that they choose not to conquer

useless regions in Africa and Europe.76 The double qualifier for the Romans' share is

important: not only did they hold the best parts, they held the parts most loaded with

stories and legends. In a mental map not primarily made up of distances and sizes but of

toponyms, the Romans held most of the toponyms under their sway, hence most of the

world. It is telling that Strabo devoted three of bis 17 books of Geography to Asia

Minor, four to Greece and two to ltaly yet only one miserable paragraph to the entire

African interior. Pliny's concluding remarks also ascribed to the Romans the best parts

72 For a useful discussion ofthis fitting ofnew exploratory data to a previously conceived world, see J. L. Allen, "Lands of Myth, Waters of Wonder: the Place of the Imagination in the History of Geograpbical Exploration," in Geographies of the Mind Essays in Historical Geosophy in Honor of John Kirt/and Wright, ed. D. Lowenthal and M. J. Bowden, (New York, 1976),41-61. 73 Strabo 2.5.5,34. 74 Plin. HN 2.4. Mela aiso limits bis project to one of the eartb's five c1imatic zones-the oTbis nosteT ~omm,6). 5 Tac. Germ. 34. 76 Strabo 17.3.24.

22 of the world. Brushing aside the "legendary marvels of India," he deemed Spain, Gaul and Italy-especially ltaly-the most fertile regions of the world. 77

Once again, this is not a new argument. !ts political and strategie implications have been explored by Peter Brunt and Colin Wells who showed that, contrary to what is commonly held since Gibbon, Augustus' military policy aimed at nothing else than world-conquest based on faIse geographical premises. Imaginning the distance between the Rhine and the eastem end of Asia to be barely more than three times the distance between the Pyrenees and the Rhine, Roman policy-makers could have considered it a realistic possibility.78 More recently, Charles Whittaker has shown that the Romans considered their power to extend to aU parts of the orbis terrarum. Sorne of 'our world' was organized under the provincial system and the rest, the 'nations outside' [externae gentes], were subjects but not worth annexing. 79 The client kingdoms ringing the Empire were also considered to be part of it. Tellingly, Strabo concluded his review of the provincial system by stating that "kings, potentates and oligarchs [3exa(?%[at] are also a share of Caesar's [provinces]," and Suetonius wrote that kings were treated as "limbs and integral parts of the Empire. ,,80 What is more, a hostile or de facto independent power like Parthia was thought of as part the Empire, as in Strabo's boast that the

Parthians "are now ready to band over their authority to the Romans" and Dionysius'

Roman emperor taming the Parthians.81 With such an all-encompassing view of the

77 Plin. HN37.201-203. 78 P. A. Brunt, review of Die Aussen politik des Augustus und die Augusteische Dichtung, by H. D. Meyer, Journal ofRoman Studies 53 (1963): 175. C. M. Wells, The German Policy ofAugustus (Oxford, 1972), 5-13. See also R Moynihan, "Geographieal Mythology and Roman Imperial Ideology," in The Age of Augustus, ed. R Winkes, (Louvain, 1986), 151 who argues that any assessment of early imperial poliey must take into aceount the geographical premises of the Romans themselves. 79 Whittaker, 17. 80 Strabo 17.3.25, Suet. Aug. 48. 81 Strabo 6.4.2.

23 Roman Empire, it is not surprising that in the fourth century AD the historian Festus described the Punic Wars with a simple mention: "three times Africa revolted," not even acknowledging Carthage as a foreign power. 82

These conceptions of space and power are of prime importance for the present study. From the point of view of the Roman elite, the edges of the world and the edges of the Roman Empire tended to be one and the same. Yet, a few place~names remained out of this scheme-India, Scythia and the land of the Silk People among others. This brings us back to the idea of the Roman Empire as a 'place'. The geographers did their best to build it to be as large as possible. As noted earlier, Strabo extended it far beyond its actuaI administrative boundaries. Pliny praised the "unbounded Roman peace" that put ail the parts of the world together.83 Rome was the only politicaI power present in

Dionysius' Guide, submitting the Parthians but also wielding enough power to erase impious cities from the map.84 Mela did not even mention the Parthians, leaving the reader to wonder if Babylonia, Media and Persia were independent or not. In this context, it is somewhat puzzling that remote people like the AlI-Ears, the Silk People or the Scythians were kept outside of such an ecumenical 'place', sometimes with a good dose of slandering. It is to these exotic people that we must now tum to for answers.

82 Festus, Breviarum 4. 83 Plin. HN27.3. 84 Dionys. Pero 208-210 (Rome destroyed the country of the Nasamons, who didn't respect Zeus), 374 (ditto for Sybaris).

24 At the end of the Roman road

So far, the few scholars who have dealt with these largely imaginary people have focused on the VaflOUS monstrosities ascribed to India: Dog-Heads, No-Mouths,

Pygmies, etc. 85 They vanously described these strange nations as 'monstrous peoplel because of their deformity or as 'Plinian races' on account of the great catalogue of monstrosities found at the beginning of book 7 of the Natural History.86 Both expressions are not quite satisfactory for fuis study. The former would limit the inquiry to cases of deformities, an interesting theme but only part of the whole picture. The latter is a denomination introduced by medievalists for Medievalists and isolates Pliny as the single source for the medieval Western tradition of monstrous catalogues, a subject far beyond the scope of the present thesis.87

For lack of a standard denomination, 1 will cali Pygmies, Dog-Heads, Silk

People, Scythians and the like 'remote people', a term borrowed from James Romm who used it in its Greek form-ëo-xa'rof o/v~ew'l/ (literally "the furthest of men").88 This denotation will not only open the door on what Strabo and Mela have to sayon the matter besides Pliny, but will also stress the distance between the se people and the

Roman world. Since these ancient geographers are also interested in history, fuis

8S One notable exception is R. Syme, "Exotic Names, Notably in Seneca's Tragedies," Acta Classica 30 (1987): 49-64. 86 "Peuples-monstres": M. Benabou, "Monstres et hybrides chez Lucrèce et Pline l'Ancien," in Hommes et bêtes, entretiens sur le racisme, ed. L. Poliakov, 129-142. (Paris, 1975), 147. "Plinian races": J. B. Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Cambridge, MA, 1981), 15. 87 Friedman is so far the best generai study on medieval monsters. He relies heavily on R. Wittkower, "Marvels of the East. A Study in the History of Monsters," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 159-97. 88 Romm, 49. Since these words go back to Homer (Od 1.23),1 can only hope an educated Roman would have been at ease with them. 1 replace "men" by "people" because of the doubtful humanity, or indeed masculinity, ofsome ofthese KOXo,TOI.

25 distance can be either geographical or temporal: people living at the edges of the world such as the Hyperboreans can be studied together with long-gone collectivities such as the Cyclops and the vanished inhabitants of the Fortunate Islands.

What were these people remote to? The obvious answer is Rome; but since the geographers' descriptions were not only factual but rhetorical, this distance was not so much physical as psychological. Strabo used the word 'remotedness' ['sXT01Tl0'.uOç] to

qualify nations that had no communication with Romans. In one instance, he contrasted

Ethiopians who lived in 'remotedness' and Egyptians who "have since the beginning

lived like citizens and like us [7ToÀl'rIXW~ xai ~Ée(.ù;] and who inhabit known places. ,,89

Strabo's point was not that Ethiopians were barbarians-he did not speak of remotedness in connection with dispicable barbarians such as the Germans or the

Corsican mountaineers he despised so much90-but that they were outside Roman

Înterests. What drove his inquiry was how nations and cities related to Rome, which he

sawas the point where all the lines of movement for peoples, goods and ideas met.91

"The Romans, he wrote, taking under their sway many nations that were naturally

savage ... have created links that didn't exist previously between them and taught

political life to savage nations. ,,92 He saw Rome not as a physical center but as a

civilizing force that glued together scattered and miserable nations. Regions that were

still distant from Rome were thus not so much 'far away' as outside the Roman network.

Pliny was also interested in places and people for what they contributed to the capital.

His Natural History is full of notices of when this plant, this work of art or this animal

89 Strabo 17.1.3. For further considerations on ÉKTO'Trlup.o;, see E. C. L. van der Vliet, "L'ethnographie de Strabon: Idéologie ou tradition?" in Strabone, contributi allo studio della personalità e dell'opera, 2 vols., ed. F. Pontera, 29-86 (perugia. 1984), 1:44ff. 90 Strabo 5.2.7, 7.1.1-2.4

26 was introduced to Rome for the frrst time.93 Mela was not explicit on this Roman linkage of the world but he seems to have been thinking along the srune Hnes. For him., the emperor Claudius, conqueror of Britain, "is opening the long-closed island", thus allowing knowledge and goods to flow to Rome. 94

In fuis view, remote people are not situated at the edges of a map but rather at the end of roads leading from Rome. As noted above, the popularizing geographers narrated people and places along itineraries, which was after all the standard way to convey geographical infonnation in the Roman world. Despite the fun of seeing Caesar consult a Peutinger-like map in a comic book by Jacques Martin (see fig. IV), Lindsey Davis is probably closer to reality when she has a Roman schoolboy de scribe the way to

Noricum: "go up to the alps and then turn right.,,95 Following Pietro Jauni and T0nnes

Bekker-Nielsen, we should picture the Romans' world not as a map but as a network of places and roads connecting them.96 Strabo, Mela and Pliny took their readers on a world tour following coastlines, rivers and mountain ranges. Proceeding region by region, they described best-known places fust and then advanced toward lesser known locations. Thus, Strabo began his description of Gaul with well-known Narbonensis, proceeded to Aquitania, and then to Celtica from Lyons toward Ocean. Upon reaching

91 Clarke, 222. 92 Strabo 2.5.26. 93 T. Murphy, Ethnography in the Naturalis Historia of P/iny the Eider, diss. University of California at Berkeley (Berkeley, 1997),43-4. E.g. Plin. HN 8.69 (fust display of a giraffe in Rome), 9.123 (frrst pearls in Rome), 12. 20 (ebony fust introduced in Rome) 35.24 (the fust Greek painting becoming state ef0perty), 36.7 (frrst columns offoreign marble on the Palatine). Mela 3.49. 95 L. Davis, Shadows in Bronze (New York, 1990), 108. 96 Janni, esp. 60-65 regarding Roman geographical perceptions; T. Bekker-Nielsen, "Terra Incognita: the

Subjective Geography of the Roman Empire, ft in Studies in Ancient History and Numismatics Presented ta Rudi Thomson, ed. A. Damsgaard.;.Madsen, E. Christiansen and E. Hallager (Aarhus, 1988), 148-61. Despite Claude Nicolet's reservations on Janni's argument, many of the geographical texts surviving from Roman times are itinerary-like. C. Nicolet, L'inventaire du monde: Géographie et politique aux origines de l'Empire romain (paris, 1988), 252-3n45.

27 Ocean, he described first the island of Britain, then Jerne (Ireland}-the end of 'our world'-together with its cannibal tribes, and finally the mysterious Thule.97 Having completed his Gallic itinerary, he went back to the Mediterranean to start another one through the Alps. Mela and Pliny followed different itineraries for Gau1 (they broke it up between the better~known south and the Oceanic coast) but narrated the the three islands in the same order.98 A similar pattern applied to Aftica, Europe north of the

Euxine and Asia east of the Caspian Gulf. The geographer's itineraries proceeded along

Unes of civilization fanning out from the Mediterranean or from whatever coast was best known to the Romans, and usually ended with some account of remote people living at the edge of 'our world': cannibals in Ierne, Hyperboreans north of the Euxine, Scythians and Silk People in eastern Asia, monsters in Aftica and pretty much anything in India.

This practice found an echo in the second part of Tacitus' Germania, which described

German tribes nearest to the Romans first, and ended with the account of the Hellusii and the Oxiones who were reported to have human faces but animal bodies. "Since 1 cannot verify such accounts, Tacitus added, 1 leave them an open issue. n99 Although he might not have believed in them, he did not hesitate to put them at the end of his itinerary. In a similar manner, Strabo did not believe ail the Aftican fables he reported

(nI speak. of them, asking pardon for introducing wonderous stories-if it so happens that 1 am forced to digress into something like that-since I fear of passing them all in

97 Strabo 4.1.1-5.5. Patrick Thollard's study of Strabo's Ganl convineingly shows that the geographer's description begins with the most civilized areas and ends with the most barbarie. Thollard, 59-84. 98 Mela 3.49-58; Plin. HN3.31-37, 4.102~104. 99 Tac. Germ. 46.6

28 silence and of crippling my enquiry"),100 and Pliny doubted the existance of bis

Ethiopian monsters. 101

As seen earlier, the geographers could not get rid of these remote people because of the popularizing nature oftheir geography, but now it is possible to see that they also needed them convincingly to put an end to their itineraries. They could have used Ocean as an all-encompassing limit to their inquiries; but since they wrote human geographies

(they were interested in people and degrees of civilization), remote people were more appropriate. Monsters, cannibals and idealized nations not only acted as termini for their geograpbical inquiries, they were aiso the sign that a line had been crossed and that the reader had left behind the roads linking Rome to the different parts of the world. Their distance from Rome was not only meaningful, it was uncrossable. Even the author of the

Periplus ofthe Erythrean Sea, a commercial itinerary listing harbors and resources from

Egypt to India, could not avoid putting monsters just beyond his final stop. 102

Since they were more a rhetorical device than a firm geographical reality, remote people and places attached to them could be redeployed on the Roman road-map at will, as long as it was at the end of one of the geographical itineraries. The modem debate over the exact identification of Thule and its inhabitants-Iceland, Scandinavia or the

Shettlands?-is wholy irrelevant considering mat the name itself simply refers to the northern limit of the world.103 The same is true of the island of Cerne which Strabo situated west of Spain and Pliny south of the Persian Gulf. l04 The Island of Gold which

100 Strabo 17.3.3. 101 Plin. HN 6.194-195: "Reliqua deserta. Dein fabulosa." 102 Peripl. M. Ruhr. 62. The argument that tbe autbor of the Periplus stopped in India bas been originally made by C. Lassen, Indische Altertumskunde, 5 vols. (Leipzig, 1858): 3:5. L. Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei (princeton, 1989), 8 bas sorne reserves. 103 F. Corclano, La geografia degli antkhi (Rome, 1992), 107. 104 Strabo 1.3.2, Plin. HN 4.35.

29 Mela and Dionysius situated at the eastem end of the world was moved by Pliny to the mouth of the Indus (together with its sidekick, the Island of Silver).105 While Dionysius situated the Hyperboreans' home north of Europe-as the classical poets had done-and

Mela moved them to Asia, Pliny situated them in both continents.106 Fish-Eaters, who not only ate fish but also made their clothes and daily tools out of fishes, have been especially popular with the geographers, who situated them north of the Euxine, in

southem Asia and on the shores of the Red Sea. 107

This relocation and multiplication of remote people should warn against hasty

identifications with modem topography. As seen earlier, Thule was not Iceland nor

Scandinavia but the northem limit of the world. Sorne scholars have readily identified

the Silk People with the Chinese, on account of the fabric they produced and sold, but

for Mela and Pliny they simply were the nation to put at the end of their itinerary in

northem Asia. Dionysius even Hsted them as a nomadic tribe. W8 The island of

Taprobane is unanimously equated with modem Sri Lanka, which may be true, but for

the Romans it was not a medium-size island off the Indian coast, it was the

southemmost end of 'our world', a huge land-mass, almost another continent. Fitting

Roman geography to modem rnaps and knowledge is always a tricky endeavour that

reveals more about modems than about the Romans themselves. In a sense, it is doing

exactly what the early imperial geographers did: rendering the world meaningful for a

specific audience.

lOS Mela 3.70, Dionys. Pero 589, Plin. HN 6.80. Pliny locates a Golden promontory east of Asia in 6.55. 106 Dion. Pero 315 (Rhipean Mountains, implying the Hyperboreans); Mela 3.36-37, Plin. HN 5.89-91, 6.34. 107 Strabo 15.2.1-2, 16.4.13, Mela 2.97, Plin. HN 6.95,97,149-151, 176. 108 Mela 3.60, Plin. HN 6.54-55,88; Dionys. Pero 753-755.

30 This brings us back to the remote people's meaningful distance. Although the geographers placed them at the end of their itineraries to indicate the point beyond which nothing communicated with Rome, they did not lose interest in them. Far from it.

While Mela, Pliny and Dionysius had remarkably little to sayon the ethnography of

Mediterranean people, they went at great lengths to de scribe the nations of the African

interior, the Scythians, the Silk People, the lndians, the Arabs and the inhabitants of

Taprobane. 109 Strabo was somewhat less enthusiastic, yet he also presented the customs

of the Scythians, the lndians and the Ethiopians. The reason for this interest in remote

people despite their lack of connection with Rome is to be found, once again, in the~r

rhetorical and legendary nature. The uncrossaote-d.is1:an.ce between- them and Rome

suggests that remote people can be seen not only as exempta (as noted earlier) but as

antithetical exempta. Trevor Murphy has recently noted that "what Pliny understands to

be Roman we may understand from his account of what is not"no and indeed this was

true of the other early imperial geographers as weIl. In a broad move that paralleled the

ecumenism of the Roman world, they constantly avoided detailed ethnographical

descriptions of nations from which the Roman elite hailed. Rather, they feU back on the

ethnography of remote people to define what Rome was not and they provided their

reader with exotic storie~how the Pygmies-~ a continuous war with cranes or

how barbarians near the Caspian Gulf abandoned their dead in deserts to watch them

decay from afar. lll Taken separately, these stories do not offer much to analyze, but

109 P. Pédech, "Géographes grecs et géographes romains," in Colloque histoire et historiographie, ed. R. Chevallier (Paris, 1980), 30. Jacob, "L'œil et la mémoire," 52. 110 Murphy, 9 (see 59- 61 on the role of antithesis in Pliny's ethnography). Robert Lenoble, in an essay not used by Murphy, had already noted that Pliny's legends and marvels do not arise from the unknown but from the writer's innerpreoccupation (Lenoble, 164), which 1 would see as Roman identity. 111 Strabo 1.2.28, 11.11.8, Mela 3.81, Plin. HN7.26.

31 their cumulative effect and correspondances between them ~ill reveal how they were expected to be interpreted by a Roman audience.

A golden age in a thousand pieces

After guiding his reader through Europe, Africa and Asia, Pliny concluded his gazeteer with the Fortunate Islands off the coast of Mauretania. Remarkably, his description had little in common with the utopian islands of the literary tradition.112

Barely a generation before, Mela had described the Fortunate Islands in wonderous terms: fruits, cereals and vegetables grew spontaneously there and more abundantly than in heavily cultivated lands; they even possessed two springs with magical properties.l13

Pliny's Fortunate Islands were rather based on an exploration report by king Juba of

Mauretania who established that the islands were not inhabited anymore: only a temple and sorne ruins were to be found. Nature was still bountiful but it was polluted by the putrid carcasses of sea monsters constantly vomited up by Ocean. 1l4 Surprisingly, Pliny did not use Juba's report to show that the Fortunate Islands were a faIse legend. Rather, he hinted at a 10ss, a now-gone utopia. Pliny's reader, familiar with the Fortunate Islands through Homer, was brought to conclude that there used to be men living blissfully on these islands: they were remote people not isolated by geography but by the time elaped between their disappearance and the coming of Mediterranean explorers.

112 The Fortunate Islands were mentioned by Hom. ad. 4.563ff, Hes. op. 171, Pind. 01. 2.69-80, Diod. Sic. 5.19-20 and Hor. Epod. 41ff. It was later picked up by Plutarch Vit. Sert. 8, Isidore Etym. 14.6.8 and-ad absurdum-by Lucian Ver. hist. 2.5 113 Mela 3.1 02. 114 Plin. HN 6.202-205. The baneful character of Ocean in Pliny's thought bas been thoroughly discussed by M. Beagon, Roman Nature: The Thought of Pliny the EIder (Oxford, 1992). For another irruption of Ocean on a remote people's land, see the Chauci (Plin. HN 16.2) in the last section of the present chapter.

32 If this 10ss may have seemed somewhat distant for a Roman, there was another one that was far more intimate. In bis book on anthropology, Pliny noted that the height of humans had been diminishing gradually over the centuries and gave as proof the giant skeleton of Orestes dug up by the Spartans in 554 BC.l1S This beHef in the graduai degenerecense of man was widespread in the Roman world and came from the literary tradition which brought people to identify enonnous bones dug up from the earth with humans of the past. 116 A generation after Pliny, Phlegon of Tralles gave an impressive list of such finds: the monstrous remains of Idas found in Messene, huge bones turning up during earthquakes under Tiberius' reign, gigantic bones kept in the Cave of Artemis in Dalmatia, at Rhodes, at Carthage and at Nitriai in Egypt. 117 Plutarch attested that

Cimon had discovered and brought to Athens the gigantic remains of Theseus. 118 Pliny explained tbis graduaI 10ss of height by a weakening of human semen over the ages, something that recalls Lucretius' belief that Nature was wearing herself out and Virgil's prediction that one day posterity would marvel at the enonnous bones of those who feH in the Civil War, when farmers would uncover them by tilling the soil. 1l9 Loss of height and 10ss of vitality brought the Romans to picture men of the past as fundamentally different people; although they were unmistakeably humans, an uncrossable distance isolated them and made them aliens.

Gigantic bones and ruins on the Fortunate Islands were then for Pliny the unmistakeable traces left by long-gone races of men. Although they lay outside

115 Plin. HN 7.73-74. Pliny also mentions Pelops' huge shoulder blade kept at Elis (HN 28.34). 116 See W. Hansen, ed, Phlegon of Tralles' Book of Marvels (Exeter, 1996), 137-9. Aristotle, Pol.1.332b maintained that gods and heroes of the past were taller than men today. After Pliny, this idea was taken up by Dio Chrys. Or. 36.58-61 and GeU. NA 3.10. 117 Phlegon of Tralles, Mirabilia 12-19. 118 Plut. Vit. Thes. 35-36, Vit. Cim. 8.5-6. See also Diod. Sic. 4.62.4 and Paus. 1.17.6.

33 historical memory, they could nevertheless find a place on the Roman world·map, next to present-day cities and people. If it is not surprizing to see Dionysius pinpoint in

Northem Africa the exact location of Homer's Lotus·Eaters, a utopian race that allied primitivism and vegetarianism,120 it is somewhat startling to see that Strabo, Mela and 121 Pliny did the same, although they aiso made it clear that they lived in the past.

Lotus·Eaters and other utopian people such as the Phaeacians were not only

reminiscences of the Romeric poems Romans leamed in classes but echoes of the

Golden Age. 122 This mythical time was in vogue during the early Empire, or at least in

the official circles of the Augustan age, which proclaimed its return in the guise of

Augustus' Empire.123 It was picked up by Pliny in a somewhat similar fashion as he

considered that the Hnk between men and Nature had been broken at sorne point, after

men ceased to act piously toward her. 124 This break in piety was at the origin of the

present sorry state of humanity who was victim of its own luxuria, ie. the harsh way it

treated Nature. 125 Pliny's Natural History was intended as an act of piety towards

Nature, in which the author described in concrete terms the effects ofloosing touch with

119 Plin. HN 7.73, Lucr. 5.827, Verg. G. 1.497. See R. Garland, The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Greco-Roman World.lthaca, 1995), 173. 120 Dionys. Pero 206. The Lotus-Eaters come from Hom. Od 9.82-105 and were already put on the map by Hdt. 4.177. Vegetarianism was sometimes a characteristic of primitive people in ancient thinking: Hdt. 1.66 (Arcadians), Diod. Sic. 3.23-24 (vegetarianism of present-day nations), Porph. Abst. 2.20-21 (vegetarianism of primitive humanity). See J. Ferguson, Utopias ofthe Ancient World (London, 1975), 18. 121 Strabo 3.4.5, Mela 1.37; Plin. HN 5.28. 122 Phaeacians: Hom. Od. 6.1ff. Mela 2.55, Plin. HN 4.52. 123 P. Zanker, The Power ofImages in the Age ofAugustus (Ann Arbor, 1988), 167-237. 124 1 am following here the theoretical remarks of Tuan on 'geopiety' in the Roman and Chinese worlds. He daims that reciprocity is at the basis of the feeling of piety, which manifests itself through either admiration or pity. Y.-F. Tuan, "Geopiety: A Theme in Man's Attachment to Nature and Place," in Geographies of the Mind Essays in Historical Geosophy in Honor of John Kirtland Wright, ed. D. Lowenthal and M. J. Bowden (New York, 1976), 12. Pliny sometimes displays admiration, as when he presents the deHcate anatomical structure of insects (Plin. HN 11.14), but, when he relates Nature to humans, he usually gives way to pity, as when he complains about all those mineshafts dug up in Mother Earth (plin. HN33.1-2). 125 A. Wallace-Hadrill, "Pliny the EIder and Man's Unnatural History." Greece & Rome 37.1 (1990),86. Plin. HN2.145-159: Mother Barth abused by humans. 7.5: men victims oftheir own luxuria.

34 nature. 126 We shan look shortly at how Pliny presented other traces of the Golden Age in the guise of present-day remote people and at how these could serve as exempla to contrast with Roman life. But tirst, it is necessary to look at another geographer who had a different view on utopian people.

Strabo did not seem to share Pliny's opinion on the present state of humanity.

Apart from his references to the Lotus-Eaters thrown in for good Homeric measure,127 he did not dwell on utopian races and entertained a different view of the pasto The only chronological markers he constantly used were the battle of Troy and the retum of the

Heracledae on the one side and the battle of Actium on the other. 128 In accordance to the ideology of Augustus' reign, Strabo linked the fonner times with the present, which witnessed the rebirth of the Golden Age in Rome. Whereas the heroes of Troy opened up the world for the tirst time through their migrations, Augustus did it on a greater scale, introducing peace as well. 129 With such a triumphalist ideology in hand, Strabo set out to hunt down and erase utopian people scattered around the world by the litterary tradition. Looking at Strabo's and Pliny's accounts of utopian people will show how these pieces of geographical imagination could be used differently by geographers of the early Empire.

The standard utopian race in ancient literature and myth were the Hyperboreans.

Following a tradition that ran from Pindar, Hecataeus and Herodotus Pliny situated them at the northernmost tip of Europe, on the other side of the uncrossable Ripean

126 Wanace~Hadrill, 86~87. Such thinking was in the air as Seneca had built a philosophical argument against luxuria a decade before CEp. 90) and Tacitus was soon to underline the justice of ancient people (Ann. 3.26). 127 Strabo 3.4.5,17.3.17. 128 See the thorough discussion by Clarke, 255ff. 129 Clarke, 330-331.

35 Mountains. 13o Pliny's description closely follows that of Mela, who may have been his prime informant, although he situated the Hyperboreans in Asia. 131 Both wrote that tbis nation inhabited an inaccessible region that enjoyed a mild climate, lived in the woods, held banquets and lived longer and more happily than other mortals. Much like Pliny's prehistoric savages whose existence he postulated in a later book, the Hyperboreans ignored luxury and the material advantages of civilization.132 In turn, this ignorance liberated them of the burdens of civilization.133 To complete the picture, Mela and Pliny threw in a touch of Roman tbinking: suicide was for them the only way to die and it was blissful [beatissimus]. 134

If the existence of the Hyperboreans was straightforward for Mela, Pliny on the other hand began bis exposition with a prudent "if we believe it". 135 He could have described them anyway, as he did with other marvelous races of men he did not believe in, but in this particular case he was compelled to conclude that "it is not allowed to doubt tbis race" .136 If he felt bound to defend the existence of the Hyperboreans in northem Europe, it is because they threatened to slip away, to leave their place and flee to another continent or to change their name altogether. Pliny reported that sorne authors situated them in Asia, next to the Caspian Gulf. 137 Others placed them further east under the name of Arimphaei or Attacorae. 138 Refusing to choose between these contradictory legends, Pliny reported them all, thus tuming the Hyperboreans into a model utopia that

130 Plin. HN 4.89-91. Pindar, Pyth. 10.41, Hecataeus apudDiod. Sic. 2.47, Hdt. 4.32-36. 131 Mela 3.36-37. 132 Plin. RN 12.1. See Murphy, 90. 133 R Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages: a Study in Art, Sentiment and Demonology (Cambridge, MA, 1951), 103 on those characteristics among primitive savages in antiquity. 134 Plin. RN. 89. Mela 3.37 has "Id eis funus eximium est." 135 Plin. RN 4.89. 136 Plin. RN 4.91. 137 Plin. RN 6.34.

36 echoed through his Asiatic geography. At the eastem end of the continent, again following Mela or a common source, he placed the last of the se echoes, the Silk

People. 139 Part northem barbarians ("their are more than than human size, their hair is golden-red, their eyes are bIue, the sound of their voice is rough,,)140 and part utopian people (they live in isolation, they are of exceptional height, the average life-span is 140 years),t41 they personify the source of the high-prized silk. Pliny happily used them as a pretext to slander futile Roman luxury. After describing the arduous way in which silk is produced from trees, he exclamated: "So many are the operations involved and so far from 'our world' does it come in order that a Roman matron may show off a transparent

dress in public! Il 142 In an implicit criticism of trade and its perverse effects, the Silk

People exported their silk through dumb barter, establishing a barrier between them simple folk and the outside world, a bit like Pliny's Arabs exported their frankincense to the civilized world only through countless intennediaries, avoiding the pollution of the civilized world. 143

Thus in Pliny's geography-and a bit in Mela's-there is a series of concentric circles in which the exterior layer, peopled by utopian remote races, represents an ideal of life according to Nature. As one backtracks along the geographer's itineraries, he reaches the Mediterranean world where people are irremediably entangled in civilization. At the center of the scheme are the Romans who were once in contact with

138 Plin. RN 6.34-35, 55. 139 Mela 3.60, Plin. RN 6.54-55,88. 140 Plin. RN 6.88. This kind of description should induce us not to identify the Silk People with the Chinese. They were a mix of northetn, barbarian and utopian stereotypes. 141 Plin. RN 6.54,88, 7.72. 142 Plin. RN 6.54. 143 Plin. RN 12.63-65.

37 Nature ("Rome, founded by shepherds", wrote Mela)144 but who are now the victims of luxuria and unhappiness. In this view, the wonderous island of Taprobane was another critique of imperial Rome, albeit one with a double meaning. Pliny, as he said himself, was the fIfst to give a full account of the islandts inhabitants: for Strabo, the island was completely uninhabited except for elephants and while Mela judged it inhabited, he did not give any further detail. 145 Supposedly reporting information brought by the first

Taprobanese ambassy to Rome, Pliny described Taprobane as an anti-Rome: for example, buildings were not built too high, the price of corn was never inflated, the king was elected and deposed if he had children, capital punishment could only be decided by a group of thirty governors. 146 AlI the elements for a mordant critique of Rome were reunited but here Pliny surprises his reader and turns the Taprobanese into a utopia-no- more. Unlike the Hyperboreans and the Silk People, the Taprobanese took delight in gold, jewels and other luxuries, in hunts, in oriental dresses-in Itour vices".147 Once shrouded in mystery, Taprobane was aIl of a sudden too close to Rome for its own goOd. 148 For Pliny, and maybe for Mela, the Hyperboreans and their Asiatic echoes were the real present-day (or rather out-of-time) utopias.

The blissful suicide of the Hyperboreans was a typical Roman touch found in no

Greek account of the legend and it was very close to Senecats own ideas on the matter.

Seneca, who seems to have been connected to Mela by family ties, praised this kind of

144 Mela 2.60. Interestingly enough, Rome does lie midway through Mela's work. 145 PUn. HN 6.84, Strabo 15.1.14-15, Mela 3.70. However, Artemodurus, in the second century, seems to have said something of the Taprobanese since Pliny has him saying that people do not grow weak in Taprobane (HN 7.30) 146 Plin. HN 6.89-90. 147 Plin. HN 6.89. One of these vices might include tampering with the real amount of gold found in coins as their king is astonished by the consistancy of Roman coinage (HN 6.85). 148 In faet, Pliny's Taprobane is the only idealized description we have ofthis place, ifwe leave aside the account given by Solinus in the third century and copied from Pliny (Solin. 53).

38 death as the only escape from the tyranny of Fortune, an idea that Pliny brought up on a few occasions in bis Natural History.149 As Trevor Murphy concluded from this mixture of imaginary geography and early imperial Stoicism, the Hyperboreans "embody a senatorial dream of independence." 150 For Pliny, who never lacked an insult against the memory of Nero and was an upholder of conservative senatorial values,151 tbis remote race was a convenient exemplum to give to the Roman elite. Thus, despite the blatant fictional character of tbis legend (by Pliny's own theory of climates, the land of the

Hyperboreans should have been a frozen desert),152 he insisted that "it is not allowed to doubt tbis race."

Strabo would not have agreed. For bim, the Hyperboreans were pure fantasy, and

Roman explorations in northern Europe had defmitly disproved their existance. "It is through ignorance of these regions that people believed those who created legends about the Rhipean Mountains and the Hyperboreans. ,,153 In fact, the Roman army did not penetrate tbis far into northern Europe, as Strabo bimself recognized when he stated that

Augustus did not pennit bis generals to cross the Elbe, but he felt confident enough to erase the Hyperboreans from northern Europe because they would have been situated in a frozen and barren land.1S4 Clearly, Strabo had no need for the Hyperboreans, and neither did Virgil, who relegated them to a pitifullife in a frozen land. 155 Criticizing the

149 Mela and Seneca: see Silbennan, viii, although he is cautious on the matter. On the positive aspects of suicide: Sen. Ep. 70. Positive references in Plin. HN 2.27,25.24,28.9. See Murphy, 89-95 on this whole matter. 150 Murphy, 95. 151 Cf. note 195. 152 Plin. HN 2.172 on the earth's climatic zones. 153 Strabo 7.3.1. See R. Dion, Aspects politiques de la géographie antique (Paris, 1977),264-7 on the penetration of the Roman army in Gennany and the removing of the Rhipean Mountains from this region in the Augustan age. 154 Strabo 1.3.22, 7.1.4. 155 Verg. G.3.196.

39 beHef in the Hyperboreans was probably less an effect of explorations than of Augustan ideology which could not tolerate the existance of a better nation just beyond Rome's reach. Ptolemy, who was arguably working outside of this ideological framework, had no problem including the Hyperboreans in his list of place-names.156 For his part,

Strabo, who also denied the existance of the Long-Lived Ethiopians who would have lived too close to Roman Egypt,157 was able to hunt down aU those Hyperborean 'echoes' that Pliny was to pick up later. Writing about the geography of northem Asia from the

Caspian Gulfto the end of 'our world', he could confidently populate it exclusively with wretched and worthless races such as Tent-Dwellers [0")('I7V1T(Û Tlve)'] and various nomadsYS When he reached the Silk People, he ignored the legends that idealized them and presented them as a province of the Greek kingdom of Bactria. 159 Having reached

the eastem end of 1our world', Strabo's reader could realize that indeed, as the author had said, "most of the other regions [not controlled by the Romans] are peopled on1y by

Tent-Dwellers and Nomads, who are very remote people. n160

But when came India, aU HeU broke loose.

Romans and monsters

In the introductory books ofhis Geography, Strabo had severely criticized "those who write Indian stories" [Tà lv~l)(à] on the grounds that "they include fables lfoiJ.9-01] in their work, not through ignorance of how things really are, but through an intentional

156 Ptol. Georg. 5.8.7,10. 157 Strabo 17.1.54 mentions the desert in which Cambyses lost his army, an echo of Hdt. 3.25. His description of Ethiopia in 17.2.2 however Jacks all the wonderous elements ofHerodotus. 158 Strabo Il.7.1ff(nomads atthe east of the Caspian Gult), 11.10.1 (Tent-Dwellers),

40 fashioning of impossible faets for the sake of wonder [ïeeaïefa] and pleasure." 161 He had in mind authors such as Onesicritus and Megasthenes who had written in the wake of

Alexander the Great's campaign in India and who had reported the existance of monstrous races of men such as the the No-Mouths, the dog-headed One-Eyes or the nomadic Sciritae who had only holes in place of a nose. 162 As seen earlier, Strabo extended this critical stance to marvels closer to home like the Hyperboreans in northern

Europe, which he erased from his map, and maybe monstrous races of men such as AlI­

Ears and Horse-Feet situated on islands north of Germany,163 Upon reaching India however, he accomplished what may be the greatest self-contradiction ever entertained by a geographer and proceeded with his own list of Indian marvels. Relying primariIy on Megasthenes, not only did he describe monstrous races such as men who had their feet backwards and a local variant of the AlI-Ears called Enotocoetae, but he aiso dragged into his catalogue of Indian marvels utopian races such as the Silk People and those Hyperboreans whom he had erased from Europe and northern Asia. 164

Strabo's reason for aU of this marvel-collecting may seem somewhat specious:

"we must hear accounts of India with indulgence, fornot only is it the farthest away, but not many of us have seen it; and those who have seen it have only seen parts of it.,,165

Strabo further compromised the veracity of his description by acknowledging the

159 Strabo 11.11.1. 160 Strabo 6.4.2. 161 Strabo 1.2.35. 162 Strabo 15.1.57, Plin. HN7.25. 163 Monstrous races are ascribed to this region by Mela, Pliny amd Dionysius alike, and Strabo may have been referring to them when he said that the explorator Pytheas told many fables about tbis region (Mela 3.56, Plin. HN 4.95, Dionys. Pero 310, Strabo 7.3.1). 164 Strabo 15.1.37,57. 165 Strabo 15.1.2.

41 fabulous character of sorne of the information he reported. 166 Trying to ward off criticisms for retelling accounts by Onesicritus, he wrote that this author "tells sorne things that are both plausible [7l'l,s,avà] and worthy of retelling, so that even a skeptic should not leave them OUt.,,167 So here, in India, Strabo's Geography's meets Pliny's

Natural History, a work also aiming at comprehensiveness and which might hold the key to understand Strabo's journey into the monstrous and the marvellous. 168

Pliny not only produced a collection of Indian marvels at the beginning of his book on anthropology, but he included it within a greater list of collective monstrosities: cannibal Scythians, wild men, men who could scream but not talk, etc. l69 This rather vague definition of 'monstrous men' suggests that Pliny thought of normality not only in physical but in social terms. l7O His collection gives a sign that the Indian monsters should not be studied alone but in connexion to other monstrosities scattered at the edges of the earth. In Pliny's, Strabo's and Mela's world the socially monstrous

Scythians, who were sometimes not only nomads but cannibals, populated northern

Europe and Asia. l71 West of India and on the shores of the Red sea lived the Fish-Eaters,

Tortoise-Eaters, Locust-Eaters, Bitch-Milkers and other pityful tribes who were reduced to desperate means to eat and clothe themselves. l72 Pliny and Mela reported monsters such as the All-Ears, the one-eyed Arimaspeans, hairy women who conceived alone,

166 E.g. Strabo 15.1.57: "Megasthenes, going overboard into the fabulous ... " followed by a full account. 167 Strabo 15.1.28. See Romm, 100. 168 Although some of the faets Pliny presented appear to he useless, Pliny wanted to present them anyway on the grounds that their usefulness would be discovered in time. See Beagon, 38, 62. E.g. Plin. HN 25.12 on the yet unknown properties ans uses of many plants. 169 Pliny RN 7.9-32. 170 Benabou, 150: "Il semble donc que pour Pline certains traits culturels ne soient pas secondaires par rapport à la nature humaine normale, mais qu'ils soient au contraire constitutifs de cette nature. Il 17 Strabo 4.5.4, 7.3.6-9, 11.2.1, Mela 3.36,38,59, Plin. RN 4.80,6.50-53. 172 Strabo 15.2.1-2, 16.4.10,12,13,5, Mela 3.75, Plin. RN 6.95,97,109,149-151,176,195.

42 headless men and other monstrosities in northem Europe and inland Africa. 173 The list goes on indefenitely, playing on all the social and physical characteristics possible: for example, men who run faster than horses, satyrs, a nation that has a dog for a king, and women who conceive at the age of five and die at eight. 174

Thus, the overall picture that one gets from a quick comparison of the three geographers is that remote monstrous people lurked in every corner of the Roman world, in the same conceptual circle as the utopian nations, and not only in India. There is a fundamental difference in Mela's account however: he did not present an extensive collection of Indian marvels. In fact, his presentation of India is relatively short, even shorter than his account of Ethiopia.175 Did he fear unbalancing his text by overloading one end of the world with legends and marvels? It is true that a full-blown description of

India would have made it difficult to keep Rome at the middle of his narrative. 176 Yet there might be another reason: Strabo and Pliny badly needed to collect their remote people in a single place. Looking at Strabo's description of India and at Pliny's monsterous catalogue from the angle of the collection will make the issue clearer. 177

These two passages are 'collections' in the sense that some of the remote people they list are or should be scattered elsewhere on the world-map: Strabo's Hyperboreans

173 Mela 1.23,48, 2.2, 3.56,93, Plin. HN 4.88,95, 5.46, 6.200. 174 In tbis order: Strabo 15.1.57, Pliny, HN 5.45,6.192,7.30. 175 Mela 3.61-71 (India), 85-100 (Ethiopia). 176 Mela 2.60 to be precise. Adding extra elements to the Indian description would have meant, in order to keep Rome at the Middle of the text, lengthening book l, either by describing Africa or the Near East more in depth. It is possible that that would have unbalanced Mela's composition even further sjnce the frontier between Africa and Asia stands at the middle of book 1 (1.61) and India. the Middle point of Mela's voyage around the outer Ocean, stands at the middle of book III (3.61). 177 This analysis draws freely on Susan Stewart's views on the collection (On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection [Baltimore, 1984], 152-5).

43 and Silk People do not belong in a description of India;178 Pliny's monsterous collection gathers examples from aIl over the world. In both cases, monsters and matvels are jumbled together according to a single criterion: their deviance from Roman normality.

So broad a criterion enabled Strabo and Pliny to lengthen their list as much as they wanted and include practically anything. 179 Their collections, frozen in time and outside the Roman world, allowed them to vent all the marvelous stories that the literary tradïtion put at the edges of the earth and that might have interfered with the Roman

outlook they wanted to give 10 their world.

Strabo's and Pliny's geographies were imperial and imperialistic: in their view, the Empire had the virtue of pooling the world's people and resources under the

leadership of Rome. 180 For Pliny, men had to be content with Nature as contained by the

Empire, while the pax romana made technical and scientific progress possible.1 81 Since the Golden Age was irremediably over or unreacheable, as the remote utopian people

showed, then it was Rome's duty to bring men in harmony with Nature again. Strabo

might not have shared Pliny's over-archlng love for Nature but he did consider that it

was a generous Providence. 182 For both authors, the Empire had to coincide with Nature,

or at least useful Nature. In tbis view, collecting monsters-personifications of Nature

going astray-provided a multifold definition of what was not Roman. Pliny began rus

collection with cannibal races, especially those who used to live in the Mediterranean

178 Strabo 15.1.34,37,57. He followed the authors of 'T'à 'I1I~lJ(à who ascribed these people to India but he had access to scores of other sources who put Them elsewhere, where he did not want. On the sources accessible to Strabo, see Clarke, 316. 179 Thus, Pliny's catalogue puts together long-gone Cyclops (HN 7.9) with Gauls (7.9), Asians with their feet backwards (7.10), Amcan androgynes (7.15), naked Indian philosophers (7.22) and Pygmees (7.26). 180 Plin. HN 27.3. Strabo 2.5.26: ''Nations can help one another: sorne help with their weapons, others with their crops, their know-how or their moral training." 181 I. Lana, "Scienza e politica," in Technologia, economia e società nel mondo romano (Como, 1980): 21· 43.

44 world: the Homeric Cyclops and Lestrygonians. 183 These people were now extinct, as were sorne tribes with supematural powers in the Hellespont and Africa. 184 In the same spirit, Pliny noted that the Gallic practice ofhuman sacrifices was now extinct. 185 Strabo had also proclaimed the historicity of the Lestrygonians and the Cyclops, who were the lowest stage of civilization, and assessed that Romans had put an end to the monstrous practices of the Gauls like human sacrifices and embalming ennemies' heads. 186 The civilized world, i.e. the Roman world, thus seemed to have heen built by eradicating monstrosities and relegating them to the edges of the earth. 187 Pliny said it hest: "we cannot evaluate how much the world owes to the Romans for sweeping away these monstrous practices, in which to kill a man was of the highest religious duty and to eat him a salutary practice.,,188

Just as the Roman world had been progressively built by eradicating monsters, the Geography and the Natural History gradually built a Roman identity by collecting practices that were un-Roman and branding them as monstrous. Thus, Locust-Eaters and

Cave-Dwellers were for Strabo among the lowest nations on earth, forced to live with whatever a barren nature would provide them.189 Strabo's cannibals in Ierne and Pliny's man-eaters in Scythia were embodiements of an animal-like behaviour, jèritas.190

182 Strabo 17.1.36. 183 Plin. HN7.10. 184 Plin. .HN7.13-l4. 185 Plin. fIN 7.1 O. 186 Strabo 1.2.9,4.4.5, 13.1.25. Strabo's argument on civilization is based on Pato Leg. 3.680. 187 In the tirst eentury A.D., Oeean was readily identified as a haven for monsters and primitive life: Plin. HN 9.2, Sen. Q Nat. 3. 13, Sen. Suas. 1.4. At the same time, there seemed to have been a move by historians to consider them as barbarians nations of the past, like the various people of ltaly that were retrospeetively branded 'barbarians' (Livy 10.38, FIor. 1.11.7). 188 Plin. HN30.13. 189Strabo 11.5.7, 16.4.13, Vliet,40. 190 Feritas, the opposite of the equally barbarie uanitas (of which luxuria is a manifestation) was eonstantly identified as an un-Roman value, especially by Latin authors (and obviously by Strabo, e.g. 3.4.6). For a full study, see Y. A. Dauge, Le barbare. Recherches sur la conception romaine de la

45 According to Pliny, there were savage men and civilized menjust like there were savage beasts and domestics animals. 191 Monstrous people symbolized the danger of slipping into a ferai state when stepping out of the Roman way of life. The physically monstrous people that both geographers situated in lndia (next to those Pliny shuated in northern

Europe and inland Amca) showed the consequences of transgressing Roman norms.

Their defonned bodies were often grotesque: the Enotocoetae's ears were so big that they could sleep in them, the No-Mouth fed themselves on the odor of fruits but the

strong odor of an army camp could kill them, the Shadow-Foot tribe lived in an

intolerably hot region and, reclining on their backs, they used their single gigantic foot

as an umbrella. 192 These monsters reveal how much the shape and plasticity of the body

are indistinguisheable from the normative discourse within a society.193 Not only did

they aet as boundary between 'our world' and the useless world that lay outside, but they

also embodied the boundary between human behavior and inhuman behavior. In

Strabo's rhetorical geography, the inhuman practices of the remote Scythians or the

equally remote cannibals of Jerne echoed the life of nations that now lived inside the

Empire: the Lusitanians, the eelts and "other people" that Strabo refused to name. 194

The ferai monsters of India aiso found a parallel in the various tribes of the Roman

world who "live in a wretched manner ... led by necessity and animal instincts".195 In

this way, he turned remote, monsterous people into a norm by which to judge the

barbarie et de la civilisation. (Brussels, 1981), esp. 435-6 for the oppositionferitas.uanitas. Dauge lists countless examples. 191 Plin. RN 8.213 on the analogy between savage men and wild beasts, civilized man and domestic animaIs. As an example of this slipping into feritas, the rnonstrous nations of the African interior are semifori (RN 5.44). 192 Strabo 15.1.57 Plin. HN7.23,25. 193 P. Stallybrass, A. White, The Polities and Poeties ofTransgression (London, 1986),21. 194 Strabo 4.5.4. 195 Strabo, 3.4.16.

46 nations subject to Romanization. Pliny used the word 'monstrosity' [monstrum] more creatively and more vehemently: his cannibal and deformed monsters found a powerful echo in the great evil presence that lurked in almost every book of his Natural History,

Nero, "the enemy of mankind" whose love for magic and its "monstrous rites" brought doom to Rome. 196

For Pliny, to include a collection of monsters in his Natural History was a very practical thing to do. After conc1uding his gazeteer (in which he presented monsterous nations a fust time), he began his book on anthropology with his lengthy monstrous catalogue, thus showing his readership, in one intense moment, what was outside normal, Roman humanity. Then, brushing aside the monsters as "toys for Nature and marvels for us,,,197 he could confidently dedicate himself fully to his real subject-

Roman anthropology. Pliny did not proceed differently in his book on birds, presenting the fabulous phoenix frrst and then turning to "those we know,,,198 and in his book on fishes, presenting sea-monsters, Tritons and Nereids fust, and then sea-creatures "in our seas."l99 Thus, Pliny's collection ofmonsters was an useful tool that allowed him to vent all of the monstrosities brought up in his geographical inquiry, leaving them behind as he moved forward to describe Roman nature.

Likewise, for Strabo, to collect monsters and marvels in India was not 10 lapse into the naïveté ofthe writers of'Indian stories': it was the practical thing to do. As seen earlier, popularizing geographers had to address the geographical knowledge of their readership. In the Mediterranean basin, Strabo happily grounded his geography on

196 Plin. HN 7.46, 30.14-18. Nero stands at the climax of Pliny's long diatribe against the magical arts (30.1-18), expressly condemned as "monstrous rites" in 30.13. 197 Plin. HN 7.32. 198 Plin. RN 10.3-5. "Those we know" begin with the eagle at 10.6.

47 Homer, pinpointing the location of the Cyc10ps and the Lotus-Eaters, and he compared

Homer's Greece with that of his own day in excruciating detai1.200 India, however, was not the realm of Homer but that of Herodotus and the writers of 'Indian stories,.201 If

Strabo had neglected their accounts, as he complained, lndia would have remained a blank spot on ms map.202 Therefore, he had little choice but to ground his geography of

India on authors he did not trust and make it clear that he did not trust them.203 This was a shrewd move since it allowed him not only to drescribe lndia and be comprehensible to his readers, but also to cast doubt on this very knowledge. Since his account took the shapeless fonD. of a collection, he could even draw to India cumbersome utopias such as the Hyperboreans and and make them de facto fabulous. Having made it c1ear that his account was unreliable,204 he was then free to leave the monsters behind and proceed with the rest of his world-geography-the itinerary from India to Mauretania-with a renewed rigor.

But just in case his readers did believe in Indian marvels, Strabo concluded his description of India with an account by the contemporary historian Nicolaus of

Damascus, who had seen envoys of the Indian king Poros at Antioch, en route to meet

Augustus. They said that Poros, although he ruled over six hundred kings, "was anxious to he Caesar's friend ('!Tl:"i 1tOMOÜ 1tOIO;-rO C{JIÂOÇ slval Kafuafl/)" and he sent as gifts a few

199 Plin. HN9.4-11, with sea-creatures "in our seas" begining at 9.12. 200 Pédech, La géographie ... , 164. 201 Rdt. 98.106. On India as pictured tbrough the 'Indian stories', see a useful presentation by M. Mund· Dopchie, "L'Inde and l'imaginaire grec," Les Études Classiques 57 (1989): 209-26. 202 Strabo 15.1.5, discussing Tà 'I~lHà: "If one were to dismiss these accounts and look at what was recorded before Alexander's expedition, he would find things even more obscure." 203 Strabo 15.1.2: "[Alexander's compartions who recorded bis deeds and the geography of India] aH frequently contradict one another. And ifthey differ so much about what they saw, what should we think of what they simply report from hearsay?" 204 Strabo 15.1.12: "Now it suffices to say that my own statement agrees with that ofauthors who ask our pardon if they do not speak with assurence when they talk about things from India."

48 Indian staples: three oversized animaIs and a monstrous man born without arms.z°5 Thus

Strabo's remote India aiso acknowledged Augustus' power-hecoming one of Suetonius'

"limbs and integral parts of the Empiren206_by sending a sample of its monsters. This was not a far-fetched idea since emperors did possess an extensive collection ofmarvels and monsters brought from the edges of the Roman world: Pliny and Phlegon of Tralles attested to the capture of a hippocentaur by an Arabian king who sent it as a gift to

Claudius?07 In 42 AD, a phoenix was captured and sent to Rome for display, although

Pliny and Tacitus considered it a fake.208 Much later, Jerome claimed that a satyr was captured and sent to Constantine?09 These exhibits of monsters might have been used to proclaim the emperor's mastery of the world, as when Claudius staged a battle against a killer whale that had ventured into the harbor at Ostia or when Nero included a sea- monster hunt in his Great Games.210 In the same way, Strabo's Indian embassy meant that the emperor's power extended even to tbis alien and remote land and its marvels. It was up to the reader to believe or not the existence of the Indian monsters but in any case-- either by casting serious doubts on the 'Indian stories' or by proclaiming the

submission of India-Strabo managed to keep his triumphant geography on track. For him and for Pliny, collecting marvels was not only a tactic to make their narrative

enjoyable for their readership but aiso a way to push the monsters outside of the Roman world, where they could serve as exempla.

205 Strabo, 15.1.73. Strabo claims having seen the armless man. 206 Suet. Aug. 48. 207 Plin. /lN 7.35, Phlegon of Tralles Mirabilia 34-35. Phlegon alludes to "the emperor's storehouse" which could be visited. Suet. Aug. 72 also claims Augustus collected marvels and monstrosities. 208 POO. RN 10.5, Tac. Ann. 6.28. Dio Casso 58.27.1 flatly mentions the phoenix, without any judgment. 209 Jerome Vita S. Pauli Primi Eremitae 8 = PL 23: col. 24. 210 Plin. /lN 9.14-15, Suet. Ner. 12, Calpurnius Siculus Buco/ica 7.64-68. On the taming of Ocean and its monsters early imperial ideology, see A. Bajard, "Quelques aspects de l'imaginaire romain de l'océan de César aux Flaviens." Revue des Études Classiques 76 (1998): 177-91.

49 We cannot go there (trust us)

The early imperial geographers used literary descriptions of rernote people to indicate the limits of the Roman world and they loaded these imaginary nations with meaning. Whether they were utopian nations or monstrous races, they served as moralizing exempla for the Roman elite. With such a rhetorical bent to geography, it

comes at no surprise that the Romans had a distorted image of the edges of their world,

despite sorne exploration and increased trade. Looking at one region of the world were

the Romans were particularly active-northwest Europe-will show how geographers

could play with the boundaries of 'our world' and relocate them closer to Rome on

ideological grounds, discarding explorers' accounts in the process. One example from

Strabo and another from Pliny will suffice.211

If Strabo would have had to single out the worst liar in the history of geography,

he would probably have passed over the writers of 'Indian stories', who were after all of

some use to him, and picked Pytheas of Marseilles. This explorer, who had lived at the

end of the fourth century BC, was not orny the first Greek to visit, circumnavigate and

report the existence of Britain, but aIso the frrst to talk of the island of Thule, the

northemmost limit of 'our world,.212 Although scientific geographers of the Hellenistic

age like Eratosthenes, Hipparchus and Poseidonios did not hesitate to incorporate

Pytheas' Thule into their maps, using it as a convenient name to indicate the arctic circle

2ll The present analysis owes much to Dion, 270-5, and Murphy, 134-55, who were the frrst to explore these issues in Strabo and Pliny respectively. 212 Geminus, 6.9, Strabo 1.4.2, 2.5.8, Aujac, 329-343.

50 (66°N),213 Strabo discarded Pytheas' evidence and pulled back the limit of 'our world' to the island of Ierne and its cannibal inhabitants (54~.214 He did not stop there: throughout his Geography, he constantly presented Pytheas as a "master of lies" [allW l/;elJ~frrraTO;], an inventor of places and "fabrications" [~iïO"~a], the man "by whom many have been duped" and other niceties.215 This hostile attitude looks more like the frustration of a scholar towards an elusive source than a rational refutation. Yet if

Strabo's attitude is compared with that of other early imperial writers, a pattern emerges.

Despite contrary evidence from Pytheas, Diodorus Siculus said that "no external force had been able to reach [Britain]" before Caesar's expeditions.216 If one can trust

Jordanes, Livy also discarded Pytheas' account by claiming that no one hrui ever sailed

around Britain.217 Somewhat later, Tacitus wouid claim that Agricola would be the tirst to do it.218 This act of denial was not a new practice among Romans since Polybius had recorded over a century before that one Scipio (Africanus?) hrui exposed Pytheas' lies

about Britain.219

Following Roger Dion, one can see that Pytheas' fauit was to have explored

Britain and to have reached the limits of 'our world' (Thule) three hundred years before

Augustus' reign.220 What is more, the idea that a Greek explorer could have reached a

remote Thule while the Romans did not even conquer Britain or Germany was

intolerable to Strabo. Just like Augustus in his Res gestae, the geographer was at pains

213 Aujac, 339. 214 Strabo 2.5.8,43, G. Aujac, "Strabon et son temps," in Geschichte der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaften in der Antike, 2 vols., ed. W. Wôhrle (Stuttgart, 2000), 2:111. 215 Strabo 1.4.3,5,2.3.5,5.43,3.2.11,4.3,4.2.1,5.5,7.3.1. 216 Diod. Sic. 5.21. 217 Jordanes, Get. 2: "Livy says that no one ever sailed around it because of its great size." 218 Tac. Agr. 10.5. Stilliater, Appian would claim that Caesar was the tirst ta visit Britain (B Civ. 2.150) 219 Polybius apud Strabo 4.2.1. 220 Dion, 272.

51 to show that aU parts of the world had proclaimed allegiance to the emperor?21 In addition to the symbolic submission of India, Strabo mentioned Parthia, Ethiopia,

Germany and Britain as paying tribute to the emperor?22 In northwestern Europe,

Britain represented the end of Rome's reach: the Romans considered it "virtual Roman property" ,223 The end of 'our world' necessarily lay close to it, at Ierne and its monstrous man-eaters to be precise.224 Beyond it laid the vast expanses of Ocean, a cold and inhospitable place. Strabo was forced to concede that there could be inhabited islands north of Ierne, but he concluded that they must have been as savage as lerne's man­ eaters, if not worse, and thus of no interest for Romans or geographicaI enquiry.225 This rigîd and politicaIly-oriented conception of the northem edges of the Roman world brought Strabo to reject whatever Pytheas might have said regarding Thule, and to reject any explorations or discovery that might have taken place in this area.226

Since he lived after the conquest of Britain, Pliny was free to push back the limits of 'our worldl to Thule once again.227 However, he aIso did not hesitate to tamper with geography and eye-witnesses (not to mention bis own memory) for ideological reasons-tbis time in Germany. At the beginning book 16 of bis Natural History, Pliny inserted a digression on the habitat on the Chauci, whom he had seen during bis service

221 Res gestae, 30-33. 222 Strabo, 15.1.4,73 (India), 6.4.2 (parthia), 17.1.54 (Ethiopia), 7.1.3 (friendship between Marobaud and Augustus), 2.5.8, 4.5.3 (Britain paying tribute). See Dueck, 101-2. 223 Strabo 4.5.3. 224 Strabo 4.5.4. 225 Strabo 2.5.8. 226 C. Jacob, "Cartographie et rectification : essai de lecture des 'prolégomènes' de la Géographie de Strabon," in Strabone: contributi allo studio della personalità e dell/opera, 2 vols., ed. F. Prontera (perugia, 1986),2:41. 227 Plin. HN2.187, 4.104, 6.219.

52 in Germany.228 This tribe, which has been repeatedly subjugated and lost since 12 BC. had had been a constant menace to the Romans in that area ever since Corbulo's failed campaign in 47 AD.229 Yet Pliny's description seems at odds with the historical evidence: "this miserable race", far from being a menace, lived a life as pitiful as the

Fish-Eaters or the Tortoise eaters of the Persian Gulf.23o TV\TÏce a day, Ocean invaded their barren land, forcing them to build their houses on platforms, "resembling ... shipwrecked people when the tide recedes".231 Lacking wood, they even had to bum dried soil in order to cook their food and heat themselves.232 In Pliny's opinion, they were in an even worse situation than their nomadic neighbors, and could not even 233 acknowledge that they would be better off if the Romans came to help them.

Just as the Chauci rejected the imperium of Rome, Pliny relegated them outside of bis providential Nature, to a half-saUd, half-liquid country.234 They had been an historical nation for Velleius Paterculus and they would become one again with

Tacitus,235 but in the meantime Pliny threw them out of any historical reality and turned them into remote, monstrous people. They became an exemplum of what it is like to refuse romanization: left to their own devices, men slip into the barbarie and even the monstrous, more akin to the savagery of Ocean than to the kindness ofNature.236 At the same time, through their new-found state of 'remote people', Pliny's Chauci showed

228 PHn. HN 16.2: "the Greater and Lesser Chauci, whom we have seen". For details on Pliny's military service in Germany, see R. Syme, "Pliny the Procurator," in Roman Papers, 7 vols., ed. E. Badian and R. Birley(Oxford. 1979-1991),745-748. 229 Drusus: Dio. Casso 54.32, Corbulo: Tac. Ann. Il.18, Chauci supporting Civilis against the Romans in 69-70: Tac. Hist. 5.19. 230 Plin. HN6.95,97,109 (Fish-Eaters and Tortoise-Eaters), 13.139-141 (theirhabitat). 231 Plin. RN, 16.2-3. 232 Plin. RN 16.4. 233 Plin. RN 16.3-4. 234 Murphy, 142-143. 235 Vell. Pat. 2.106, Tac. Ann.1.38,60, 2.17,4.72-74,13.55, Hist. 5.19. 236 Cf. note 114.

53 Romans that they could not gain from conquering or exploring these useless lands that had nothing in common with good, Roman Nature. Much like Strabo's Thule, Pliny's

Chauci were thrown out of 'our world' and willed away.

54 II: Getting tbere

At the end of the fourth century AD, the Romans depicted the edges of their world in much the same way as the popularizing geographers had done under the early

Empire. They still peopled 'soft places' with legendary creatures and nations taken straight out of Homer, Herodotus and 'Indian stories'. A mosaic in Carthage illustrated a hunting scene deep in Africa, an inhospitable land infested with wild beasts.237 One of the hunters, having strayed too far from civilization, got chased by a griffin and took refuge in a cage.238 The mosaic did not tell the viewer what laid beyond this obstacle, but an educated Roman would have known that back in Homer's days Pygmies used to wage war with cranes there, and he could read in one of Claudian's poems that they were still at it a thousand years later.239 The monstrous races of India were aIso alive and weIl, judging from Augustine's puzzlement over how to include them in bis City of God.240

According to Ammianus Marcellinus, the one-eyed Arimaspeans and the Amazons still inhabited the regions next to the Caspian Sea while the virtuous Silk People were still selling their high-prized fabric through dumb barter.24 1 There is no denying that

Ammianus was keen to report new information on distant nations (he had much to say

237 G. Charles-Picard, La Carthage de Saint Augustin (Paris, 1965),65. 238 According to the literary tradition however, griffms were heasts of the north (e.g. Hdt. 4.13). 239 Hom. Il. 3.3-6, Claud. Carmina Minora 31.15. Pygmies were constantly present in Roman literature, cf. note 111 for references in Strabo, Mela and Pliny. For second- and third-century accounts, see Solin. 64 and Philostr. V A 3.47, 6.25. The motif of the Pygmies and the cranes was so powerful that it eventually found its way through cultural diffusion into Chinese geographical accounts: "The smalt people live to the south of Ta-Ch'in [Rome?]. Their bodies are only [four feet taU]. When they plow and sow their fields, they fear that they will he eaten by cranes, so Ta-Ch'in aids and protects them" (seventh-century T'ung Tien chronicle, translated in D. D. Leslie and K. H. J. Gardiner, The Roman Empire in Chinese Sources [Rome, 1996], 111-2). 240 August. De civ. D. 16.8. Cf. also two amusing second-century comparisons of Christians and Indian monsters by Tertullian (Ad nat. 8.1, Apol. 8.5).

55 on the Huns), but like other vvriters of the later Empire he was working with an outdated geographical frame of reference (he held them as a Scythian tribe). 242

The geographical frame of reference had stayed the same from the early to the late Empire mainly because sons of the cultured eHte were still initiated to the wider world through the teachings of grammarians and the careful study of Homer and other canonical authors. The lowest significant level of geographical awareness was the usual hodgepodge of place-names handed down through the literary tradition, and for mauy

Romans it may weIl have been the most they ever learned about the outside world. In the fifth century, Synesius of Cyrene jokingly wrote that provincial simpletons thought that the emperor was Agamemnon, and Odysseus his minister.243 He was probably

exaggerating but his Romerie references make it clear that knowledge of mythological

geopolitics was a given for everyone--or rather for everyone who mattered. Sidonius

Apollinaris, who was always eager to display his culture, did not fail to crack a joke

about Phaeton when he wrote to his friend Herenius about his own journey down the Po.

Both men knew that this river was supposed to be where the son of Helios fell from the

sky, and the future bishop of Clennont had a good time making fun of the myth he

241 Amm. Marc. 22.8.27, 23.6.13,67-68. Cf. also Pseudo-Clement's utopian account of the Silk People (Recognitions 8.48). 242 Amm. Marc. 31.2.1-11. Ammianus is in fact our earliest source on the Huns after a digression by the rhetor Eunapius ifrg. 41). References to the Huns by Dionys. Pero 730 and Ptol. Geog. 3.5.10 are far too early to be genuine; if anything, they attest to the malleable character of ancient geography, which tolerated the insertion of new data into earlier texts. Brent Shaw sees Ammianus' account of the Huns as a fiction 10 be explained not only by literary topoi but by the "larger mental structures of the ancient world." ("Eaters ofFlesh, Drinkers ofMilk: the Ancient Mediterranean Ideology of the Pastoral Nomad," Ancient Society 13~14 [1982-3]: 25). For a more sympathetic account, see J. F. Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus (London, 1989), 332-42. 243 Synesius, Ep. 148. He added, conceming Agammemnon, that "From our childhood, we have heard of this king's name and no other."

56 leamed in bis youth.244 Indeed, the rise of Christianity did not mean abandoning Homer

(or Virgil) as an educational tool, despite sorne initial grudging from rigorists like

Tertullian or Pseudo-Clement.24s In the East, fourth- and fifth-century Church fathers repeatedly quoted Homer in their sermons,246 and Christians preferred to allegorize rather than jettison him, much like the pagan philosophers had done for centuries.247

Considering the ongoing familiarity of the Romans with the Homeric world, it is not surprising to come across two Latin translations of Dionysius Periegetes' Guide in 248 late antiquity, one by Avienus around 370 and one by Priscus around 512.

Cassiodorus felt completely justified in recommending the reading of the Guide, a work totally alien both to the world of the Bible and to the reality of the late Roman world, as part of the education of the monks at Vivarium.249 Mela, Pliny and their third-century epitornizer Solinus seem to have enjoyed a certain popularity as well.2so And so the world of the popularizing geographers fuelled the geographical knowledge of fourth-, fifth-, and even sixth-century Romans, despite their blatant anachronisms. The late

Roman Cosmography of Julius Honorius is packed with classical names like the Horse-

244 Sid. Apoll. Epist. 1.5.3. See Eur. (Hipp. 736) and Ovid (Met 2.324) on Phaeton falling into the Eridanus. Herodotus (3.115) doubted the existence of this river but Greeks at least from the sixth century BC (e.g. the presocratic Pherecydes ofSyros,jr. DK 7) identified it with the Po. 245 Tert. Ad. nat. 1.10.38-40, De idolatria 10. Pseudo-Clement, Recognitiones 4.19. See Marrou, 425-31 on the acceptance of the classical school by Christians. 246 R. Browning, "The Byzantines and Homer," Homer's Ancient Readers: the Hermedeutics of Greek Egic's Earliest Exegetes, ed. R. Lamberton and J. Keaney (Princeton, 1992), 147. 27 See D. MacDonald, Christianizing Homer: The Odyssey, Plato and The Acts of Andrew (Oxford, 1994), 17-34 for attitudes to Homer in the early church and a parallel with philosophers. 248 GGM., 2:177-99. See Jacob, " L'œil et la mémoire ... ," 25, for Avienus' and Priscus' dates. 249 Cassiod. lnst. 25.2 Cassiodorus referred to Dionysius's Penacem, which bas been commonly understood as a physical map, following one meaning of tT/vas (e.g. Dilke, 155; Jacob, "L'œil et la mémoire ... ," 61; Lozovsky, 17). However, although Hdt. 5.49 and Plut. Thes 1.1 understood ."fvat as a map drawn on a surface, a Latin reader would have expected tabula (Prop. 4.3.37, Aus. (Grat. act.2.9), tabella (FIor. praef. 3), forma (plin. NH 12.19) or even chorographia (Vitr. 8.2.6). There is a strong possibility that Cassiodorus might have used Penax to refer to Dionysius' poem itself, which claimed to he teaching its reader a "vision easily communicable" (av({JQa/1Tov /mw"""v). Mela also played on the word 'map' by giving the title Chorograp'hia to bis text, which was a kind oftraveler's guide (Romer, 13).

57 Feet, the Silk People (now in a 'great city'), three rivers of Fish-Eaters and cannibal

Scythians,zSl It is difficult to find more enduring geographical and ethnographical topoi.

It is also difficult to imagine a greater contrast between these unchanging lands and the dramatic social, religious, political and military events taking place in the Mediterranean world during late antiquity.

Yet, there were signs that the edges of the world were changing, and changing quickly. Under Justinian's reign, a picture very different from the mosaic at Carthage was to be found at the St. Catherine monastery on Mt. Sinai: an icon portraying

Christopher, a dog-headed cannibal saint.2S2 The edges of the world had shifted closer to the orbit of Christianity and civilization. They had already produced their first full- fledged holy man, duly recognized by a portrait in a monastery largely funded by the imperial govemment. 253 In 1986, another image of Christopher turned up near modem- day Vinica in Macedonia: a sixth-century terra-cotta depicting St. George and a dog­ headed Christopher (see fig. V).254 Both ofthese representations had nothing to do with the Greco-Roman literary tradition and the way the popularizing geographers had pictured the edges of the earth. Instead, they were part of a new geographical discourse which emerged over the course of the fifth and sixth centuries in texts that could ignore or bypass this literary tradition: Christian apocrypha and saints' lives. While the

popularizing geographers of the early Empire had shut monstrous races of men out of

250 Strabo was not so lucky bowever. See Dueck, 152 for bis meager influence from the second to tbe sixth century. 251 GLM, 24, 26, 30-1. 252 J. Kreuser, Der christliche Kirchenbau. seine Geschichte, Symbolik, Bildnerei, 2 vols. (Regensburg, 21860), 1:210, with reference to C. L. Stieglitz, Geschichte der Baukunst (s.!., 1837),432, wbicb 1 could not access. 253 On Justinian's importance for Mt. Sinai's monastery: Procop. Aed. S.8.4ff. 254 S. Pavlovska, P. Tosev, M. Dimeski, "Origin of the Vinica lcons by Pbysico-Cbemical Analyses" (1996) . retreived 14 July 2003.

58 the Roman world~ these texts tried to establish a link between the civilized (Roman) world and the most remote people and places.

This chapter will explore two directions lU which this new geographical discourse could develop. Through the stories revolving around the figure of the dog- headed Christopher~ sorne Romans tried to resolve a crisis of identity fostered both by a new 'barbarian' presence within the Empire and the spread of Christianity outside of the

Empire. Their response would be to proclaim the Christianization of the most distant of lands. John of Ephesus' Lift of Simeon the Mountaineer shifts the attention to another

'edge' of the Roman world: the mountainous regions that traditionally escaped imperial control. John's story of Christianized animal-like mountain-dwellers was a response to another cri sis of identity: the Chalcedonian-Monophysite controversy in Roman Syria.

Apostles and cannibals

The nebulous body of Christian apocryphal literature is admittedly an unusual place to look for hints of geographical thinking. Indeed, every major study of ancient geography passes it over and concentrates on better-known and better-edited late antique texts: Ammianus Marcellinus, Martianus Capella, Jordanes and Isidore of Seville among other 'big names,.255 Yet, non-canonical Christian texts~ especially the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, are of prime importance for a study of Roman geography as rhetoric.

One reason is their high rhetorical value. Their endless speeches, unlikely conversions

2SS Bunbury, 675-702; Thomson, 351-91; Pédech, La géographie des Grecs, 190-6. H. Berger, Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Erdlcunde der Griechen, 4 vols. in l. (Leipzig, 1887-93) focuses on

59 of powerful figures, flamboyant miracles and examples of punished persecutors helped

shape Christian thought from the second century onward.256 These texts fueled the preoccupations of an increasing portion of the Roman population and they provided new terms in which to perceive and describe the world.

Another reason for the apocrypha's importance is their overwhelming popularity

during late antiquity (only among Christians to he sure, but this was an ever-expanding

readership). Church fatbers wrote about them, whether to praise or damn them, and

authors translated them from the Greek not only into Latin but aIso into Syriac (or the

other way around) and Coptic, and later Arabie, Ethiopic and others--Ieaving modem

257 scholars to untangle this web of translations and 10 detennine their obscure originS.

This popularity put the apocryphal narratives in a good position to influence the

geographical awareness of late Romans by providing them with new geographical

descriptions.2s8 Not only did the apocrypha patch the holes left by the canonical books

of the New Testament (such as Mary's youth, Christ's trip to hell and the voyages of the

cartography and bas nothing after Ptolemy. Recently, Lozovsky, 6-34 has dealt with geography in late antique ecclesiastical sources but she focuses solely on big names like Augustine and Isidore. 256 E.g. Acts of Peter 31-32: Simon Magus punished, 34: conversion of the spouse of a friend of the emperor; Acts of Paul 14.5: Nero scared by the spirit of Paul after bis martyrdom; Acts of Philip 11.7: a dragon magicaUy builds a church, 12.8: the baptism of a leopard and a kid and their metamorphosis into humans; AcIs of Thomas 12-15: conversion of the daughter of an eastem king and her husband, 24: conversion of the king of India and his brother. A. Cameron, Christianity and the Rhe/orlc ofEmpire: the Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley, 1992): 115, with emphasis on the ascetic model the ~cryphal aets gave to Christians. 7 E.g. Tert. De baptismo 17.5, a slandering attack on the roie ofwomen according to the Acts of Paul; Jer. De viris illustribus 7 on the same theme; John Chrysostom HomeUa 25 in Acta == PG 60: col. 198, a sympathetic account; Ambrose, Epistula ad Vercellensem ecclesiam 34·6 == PL 16: col. 1250,likewise. Eus. Hist eccl. 3.25 condemns the reading of the Acts of John, the Acts ofAndrew, the Acts of Paul and other apocrypha; in 5.10, he seems to echo what may be a lost apocrypba that had Bartholomew travel to India (instead of Thomas, as in the Acts of Thomas). For an example of the varions translations an apocryphal writing could go through, see A. D. Callahan, "The Aets of Mark: Tradition, Transmission, and Translation of the Arabie Version," in The Apocryphal Acts ofthe Apostles: Harvard Divinity School Studies, ed. F. Bovon, A. G. Broek and C. R. Matthews (Cambridge, MA, 1999): 63-85. 258 Averil Cameron assessed that the apocryphal narratives, "must rank bigh among the contributors to the early Christian world-view." Cameron, 90. This must be true not only of social ideals such as ascetieism

60 apostles), They also patched holes left by classical geography. A comparison between the

Acts of Thomas (written ca. 200 AD), set in India, and Pliny's description of India illustrates this. Pliny's account is convenient for picturing topography (he went into sorne detail regarding mountains and rivers), nations (he gave lists of names, the number or towns and distances between them) and resources (especially the size of the kings' armies).259 The impression it leaves is overwhelming but static. The Acts of Thomas are quite different. Although a faraway land, Thomas' India is a perfectly nonnal-Iooking country-except for the miracles introduced by the apostle. However, these acts provided something Pliny's encyclopedia could not, because of its own format: a story about reaching lndia and living there, even if Thomas' lndia was vaguely detached from reality. In the Acts of Thomas. the population of India came alive and found a voice that was not just a dry list of facts and places. More importantly, it became attached to

Mediterranean world by the apostle's predication and could be described in the most familiar ofterms. In the extreme, lndia could he reduced to a Roman-like region, like in the fourth- to sixth-century Itinerary from the Paradise of Eden to the country of the

Romans: "There are Christians and Hellenes there. ,,260

In non-Christian travel accounts, found primarily in novels, traveling outside the

Roman world usually meant visiting stock places handed down by the literary tradition.

For example, although Phîlostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana pictures the Greek miracle-worker going to the most remote parts of lndia, he does not seem to he traveling or the conversion of the powerful but also of geographical perceptions, through the names and places mentioned in these stories. 2s~Pliny NH6.56-79.

260 !r\~ " 'B~\ ~ l " - 'n 1 "B'/(1'1 X elQ'(!laIJOI• xal \ ''1:;\''~N\'YJIIS). .. voO/1Toelal a1TO oep, rOll- 1Ta(!aOSWO/J a%f!t rWIJ rwp.tJ,/wlI 30',m ExpOSltlO .. totius mundi et gentium, ed. and trans. J. Rougé (Paris, 1966), 352. The Itinerary bas not been firmly dated but it seems to depend on the same (Syrian?) source than the fourth-century Expositio (Rougé, 62)

61 in a foreign country but rather on the shelves of bis author's library.261 He is hopping from one geographical account to the other, evoking descriptions that would have been familiar to Philostratus' cultured readers. Indeed, recognizing stock literary places visited by heroes was part of the fun of reading fictional travel accounts written during the Second Sophistic. The funniest of them all is Lucian's MÜllchausen-esque True

Story, precisely "because, wrote the author, everything in this story alludes, not without parody, to this or that ancient poet, historian and philosopher.n262 The contribution of the apocryphal acts to Roman geography was to provide new descriptions not rooted in classical literature. As will be seen shortly, both apocryphal narratives and hagiographies, their literary offsprings, could introduce new 'soft places' like the city of the cannibals and shape them according to changing preoccupations.

Even if the Acts of Thomas were set in India, the eventual meeting with monstrous races of men usually depicted in this region of the world was left to another apostle, Andrew. Tales recounting such meetings are to be found first in the apocryphal

Acts ofAndrew and Matthias and the Acts ofAndrew and Bartholomew, soon followed

by their two hagiographical spin-offs, the lives of Saints Christopher and Mercurius.263

AIl were built around a single motif: the conversion of a monStrOUS tribe or at least of

one member of that tribe. The legend of Christopher can be considered to be the final

and it cannot date from much later than the sixth century since it does not mention the Arabs and Persia is some kind of anti-Rome: "Men are without laws there, they are magi and sorcerers" ('OlJrJl1roqfal 35-36). 261 F. Hartog, Mémoire d'Ulysse: récits sur lafrontière en Grèce ancienne (paris, 1996): 216. 262 Lucian Ver. hist. 1.2. 263 See the abbreviations section for the different editions used here. 1 refer to the AAMt, the BHG 310, the BHG 311 b and the BHL 1764 by paragraph numbers in the original Greek or Latin texts and to the AAB, the AMtA and the Vita Mere. by translations' page numbers.

62 stage of this motif and so, for brevity's sake, 1 will refer to these tales collectively as the

Christopher cOrpUS.264

The earliest text of the corpus is the Acts ofAndrew and Matthias, which might belong-like the Acts of Thomas-to the 'first generation' apocryphal acts, those composed in the second and third century. 265 In any case, these acts were composed during the fourth century at the latest. In tum, they were to serve as a mode} for the Acts ofAndrew and Barth%mew from which, in turn, stemmed the legend of St. Christopher

(dating from the fifth century at the latest).266 As in many other acts, the main apostle was assigned a land in which to proselytize; here the apostle is Matthias (although

Andrew cornes in later to steal the show) who was assigned by lot to go "to the land of the cannibals" who "did not eat bread nor drink water."267 Upon getting there, he was captured by the inhabitants, who planned to eat him thirty days later. Warned ofthis in a

264 AIl or parts of the Christopher corpus have been studied by P. Saintyves, Saint Christophe successeur d'Anubis, d'Hermès et d'Héraclès, Paris, 1936; Z. Ameisenowa, "Animal-Headed Gods, Evangelists, Saints and Righteous Men," in Journal ofthe Warburg and Courtauld Institutes (1949): 21-45; Friedman, 70-75; andD. White, Myths ofthe Dog-Men(Chicago, 1991). 265 The recognized 'tirst generation' Apocryphal Acts are the Acts of Thomas, the Acts ofAndrew, the Acis of Paul, the Acts of Peter and the Acts of John and the relation between these and later acts is still problematic (J.-D. Kaestli, "Les scènes d'attribution des champs de mission et de départ de l'apôtre dans les Actes apocryphes," in Les Actes apocryphes des apôtres. Christianisme et monde païen, ed. F. Bovon et al. [Geneva, 1981]: 250). Donald MacDonald has claimed !hat the AAMt were part of the tirst generation Acts of Andrew and !hat they dated no later than 200 AD. (D. R. MacDonald, The AcIs of Andrew and the ACIs of Andrew and Matthias in the City of the Cannibals [Atlanta, 1990], 6, 59), two statements challenged by Anthony Hilhorst and Pieter Lalleman who claimed that the AcIs of Andrew were written well before the AAMt, these dating from the fourth century at the earliest. (A. Hilhorst, P.J. Lalleman, "The Acts of Andrew and Matthias: Is It Part of the Original Acts of Andrew?" in The Apocryphal Acis ofAndrew, ed. J. N. Bremmer [Louvain, 2000]: 1-14). They May he right on the case against the inclusion of the AAMt into the AcIs of Andrew but a tradition handed down to Euebius by Origen, thus dating from the third century, assigns Andrew to Scythia, which is the general geographical direction of the AAMt. It is possible that the AAMt, in their present state, were not yet written by Origen's lifetime but that the legend leading to their redaction was already blossoming. See note 270 for Eusebius' reference to Andrew. 266 Kaestli drew attention to many common traits between the two acts (except the monstrosity of the converted people, interestingly enough) and concluded to an influence of AAMt on AAB (J.-D. Kaestli, 259). For the dating of the legend of Christopher, see below. 267 AAMt 1, following the Greek recensions of the acts. The Latin ones have "the city called Mermidonia", which Macdonald interpreted as the city of Achilles' Myrmidons. Cf. note 271.

63 vision, Andrew came, rescued Matthias and sent bim to a safe place.268 He then proceeded to enclose the town in a wall offire and to flood it, killing many of the locals.

Out of fear (and out of options), the remaining cannibals converted. Andrew built a church, preached to them and promised the locals to come back later to raise the dead, after going "to the city of the barbarians" to meet up with bis disciples and Matthias.269

The monstrous tribe encountered here were thus man~eaters. The Syriac version of the acts elaborated on this adding what might he a hint of a physical deformity: they were dog_like.270 Their general geograpbical location might be the area north of the

Euxine, if one can link these acts to classical depictions of cannibal Scythians and to

Eusebius who related that Andrew was assigned to Scytbia.271 However, pinpointing the exact location of land of the cannibals on a map might be as irrelevant as trying to identify Thule; more importantly. the Acts ofAndrew and Mathias shows that Andrew had Christianized a remote barbarian nation somewhere at the mnge of civilization, or rather outside ofit.272

268 To a mountain where Peter was, together with bis followers Alexander and Rufus. He stayed there long enough to make a cameo appearance in the Acts ofPeter and Andrew 1-4, when Andrew came back from the land of the cannibals. 269 AAMt 33. The story abruptly ends here in most manuscripts, except for the unpublished Parisianus gr. 1313, wbich tells of Andrew's return to the city of the cannibals (MacDonald, The Acts ofAndrew ... , 171- 2~, and the Syriac AMtA which has Andrew resuscitate the dead right away. 20 "It feU to Matthew the Apostle to go to the city ofwhich the inhabitants were cannibals." (AMtA, p. 93) "Here ends the history of Matthew and Andrew, when they converted the City of Dogs, which is 'Irkâ." (AMtA, p. 115) The term 'dog' might only be denigratory and not indicative of a physical deformity. However, the clear influence ofthis text on the story of the dog-headed man of the AAB incites me to take it as a physiological description too. 271 Eg. Hdt. 4.18 and 4.106: the Androphagi, not a Scythian tribe, live on the upper Dienpr; Mela 3.53: the Androphagi, a Scythian tribe, live east of the Caspian, on the shores of the Scythian Ocean; Plin. HN 6.53: as Mela, but with the name Anthropophagi. Eus. Hist eccl. 3.1 for Scythia as Andrew's field of mission. 272 Gregory of Tours' Life of Andrew 1.2 (ed. M. Bonnet, Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum [Hannover, 1883], 1:82146) caUs the city of the cannibals Mermidona and A. von Gutschmid ("Die Kônigsnamenin den apokryphen Apostelgeschichten," Rheinisches Museum for Philologie 19 [1864] : 390ft) argued that it refered to Myrmekion, a real town in Crimea. This should be taken cum grano salis. MacDonald found in the name evidence for reading the AcIs of Andrew and the AAMt as a Christianization of Homer: it referred to Achilles' Myrmidons (MacDonald, Christianizing Homer, 35-76). The problem is further complicated by the apocryphal Acis of Philip 3.2, which state that

64 The Acts of Andrew and Bartholomew, set in Parthia, added a new twist to this story.273 Instead of a whole city ofman-eaters, the apostles eneountered only one dog­ 274 headed inhabitant of that city who was aptly named Abominable. He had previously met an angel who tamed him by trapping him into a ring of fire and was direeted to the apostles. They baptized mm Christianus and he went on to serve as their bodyguard.

When the apostles were eaptured by townspeople who foreefully refused to convert.

Christianus reverted to his old eannibal self to proteet them. After he was set loose on the loeals, "seven hundred men and three of the nobles of the city died, and those who were left and who had saved themselves sought out a place where they eould hide.,,275

Remarkably, this time it was not the apostles who revived the deeeased but the monster

Matthew (i.e. Matthias, which Andrew rescued) went "among the cruel cave-dwellers," possibly meaning the coast ofEthiopia (e.g. Strabo 17.1.1), the Caucasus range (e.g. Strabo 11.5.7), the western shore of the Euxine (e.g. Strabo 7.5.12) or somewhere else altogether. The Acts of Philip 3.2 aIso state that Thomas went not only to India but also to the land "of the barbarian cannibals," which migbt be a reference to the AAMt with Thomas as the hero, or to another story that is now lost to us. According to Éric Junod, the tradition Eusebius followed regarding Andrew's field of mission originated from Edessa (througb Origen, quoted by Eusebius) and was of earlier date than the Acts of Thomas, also originating from Edessa, which ascribed India as Thomas' share, while for Eusebius it was Parthia. E. Junod "Origène, Eusèbe et la tradition sur la répartition des champs de mission des apôtres (Eusèbe, Histoire ecclésiastique, III, 1, 1- 3)," in Les Actes apocryphes des apôtres. Christianisme et monde pai'en, 00. F. Bovon et al. (Geneva, 1981): 245. The Acts ofPhilip 8.1 also mention Parthia as Thomas' share. From all this confusion, we can only conclude that the apostles Andrew, Matthias, Thomas and, as we shall see, Bartholomew, went very far from the Roman world, to the 'soft places'. 273 l consulted a late Ethiopian version of these acts depending directly on a (now fragmentary) Coptic Acts ofBartholomew, reconstructed by Konrad Zwierzina ("Die Legenden der Martyr von unzetstôrbaren Leben," in Innsbrücker Festgross von der philosophischen Fakultat [Innsbruck, 1909]: 130-58). François Halkin noticed two unpublished manuscripts of a fragmentary Greek original for these acts: one in Modena (Hier. Sab. 373 fol. 117-29), and one in Brescia (Brescia A III3, fol. 142-5): F. Halkin "Glanes modenaises et bresdanes d'hagiographie grecque," in Recherches et documents d'hagiographie byzantine (Brussels, 1971): 122. See also E. Luchesi, J.-M. Prieur, "Fragments coptes des Actes d'André et Matthias et d'André et Barthélémy," Analecta Bollandiana 96 (1978): 341-2. 274 "And the man with a face like unto that of a dog said unto him, 'my name is 'Hasfun,' i.e. the Abominable'." AAB, p. 208. 275 AAB, p. 210. God then surrounded the town by a ring of fire in order to prevent the inhabitants from fleeing, a further reminder of the influence of AAMt on AAB.

65 bimself, brought back to bis new passive Christian self and acting as a direct agent of

The legend of Saint Christopher, in its original Greek version, was the next development in tbis motif. As John Block Friedman pointed out, following the opinion of Zofia Ameisenowa, the connections between the Acts of Andrew and Bartholomew and the Christopher legend are too numerous to be a mere coïncidence.277 If these acts, and the Acts of Andrew and Matthias on which they depend, are correctly dated to the fifth century, then the development of the legend of St. Christopher must have been fast indeed. As mentioned above, there was already an icon of Christopher in the monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinaï by the sixth century. Earlier still, in 452, a church was dedicated to him in Bithynia and he was mentioned in a late fourth-century inscription from Cilicia. 278 These archaeological documents say nothing of the state of his legend at that time however. While the later Latin tradition depicted Christopher as a giant-still a monstrosity-the late Romans made him a dog-headed man.

For a saint, Christopher could not have had a worse background. A foreigner and dog-headed, he came from a tribe of cannibals and originally had an uninspiring name:

276 Maybe inspired by this passage, Ameisenowa attached to these Acts the term 'Gnostic' (Ameisenowa, 42), in this more recently followed by White, 33: "there is a distinct flavor of Zoroastrian (and, later, Manichean and Gnostic) dualism to the apocryphallegends of the apostles who passed tbrough Parthia." Kaestli warned against hastily equating apocrypha and gnosticism: this attitude, dating back to the works of Lipsius at the beginning of the century, is actually a repetition of the Church Fathers' own opinion on the apocrypha. (J.-D. Kaestli, "Les principales orientations de la recherche sur les Actes apocryphes des apôtres" in Les Actes apocryphes des ap6tres. Christianisme et monde païen, ed. F. Bovon et al. [Geneva, 19811: 53-56.) The issue should he studied further, without lumping different acts together in the same box. 277 Friedman, 74, following Ameisenowa, 43-44. 278 Conceming the Basilica in Bithynia, see H. Grégoire, "Inscriptions historiques byzantines," Byzantion 4 (1927), 461-465. A basilica of St. Christopher in Arcadia bas been dated to the fifth or sixth century (A. Avraméa, "La géographie du culte de saint Christophe en Grèce à l'époque méso-hyzantine et l'évêché de Lacédémone au début du Xe siècle,l' in Geographia Byzantina, ed. H. Ahrweiler [Paris, 1981],33). The inscription frOID Cilicia mentions Christopher in conjunction with SS. George and Conon and might date

66 Reprebus (Le. 'the Wicked,).279 Captured by the Romans and integrated into their army,

Reprebus leamed their tongue by the intervention of an angel-like figure and started to feel deep sympathy for the Christians who were being tortured in prisons following a persecution decree of the emperor Decius. Escaping to Syria with the soldiers sent after him by the emperor, he was baptized by the bishop of Antioch and received the name

Christopher [X(lIO'TOc,oO(tOç] (much like Abominable who was baptized Christianus),280

Decius finally captured Christopher "in the imperial city" (probably meaning Antioch and not Rome)281 and tortured him to make him renounce his faith. Yet, Christopher resisted and was unharmed by the oil-fuelled pyre he had been put upon.282 Upon seeing this, the people of the city were amazed and embraced Christianity. Reasonably furious,

Decius then decided to have the saint beheaded-with success.

A second, minor spin-off of the Acts ofAndrew and Bartholomew is the Coptic legend of Saint Mercurius and his dog-headed bodyguards.283 The figure of the soldier

Mercurius was especially popular in the Greek East and, like Christopher, he was said to

from c. 382 (S. Hill, "Matronianuis, Comes Isauriae: An Inscription from an Early Byzantine Basilica at Yanikhan, Rough Cilicia," Anatolian Studies 35 [19851,96). 279 BHG 310 1, which might be the earliest version of the legend: "'E1i Talf wp-éualf ~è ksf·o,'f -Q1i Tfç TWli ÀS'Yo/ÛliWli xowYrrWli ?VMaj3ôp,BliOÇ TOli (ho,XQ.eIOli 'Pérrqs{Joll éll 1TOÀép,qJ, xa; 'YT~Omi';fTo,ç a/rroll éll TiP (hag(haqITWli •.. éx TOÎi 'YÉlIOIiÇ 'TWli X/i'JlOxsq;MWlI ImWKSll, rYJf ~è 'TWlI ô,liIfgwrroq;alywlI, âJJ.à mOTlç ~11 TiP q;gOlliJ(haTI xai as; 'Tà Ào-y,a (heÀS'TWlI TOU eeoii. O{;X ~lIa'To ~ Tf} i}(hSTÉe'P ~laÀÉxTqJ ÀaÀs;lI." Similar story in BHL 1764. Likewise for BHG 31tb but without the mention of Reprebus' ignorance of the Roman's tongue. Interestingly, the brigade of the Mag(haQITol to which BHG 310 and BHG 311 b allude could have some historical basis: the fifth.century Notllia Dignitatum lists a cahors tertia Valeria, Marmantarum, under the command of the dux Syriae (Not. Dign. or. 33.34). This parallel was pointed out by G. van Hoof, "Sancti Christophori Acta Graeca Antiqua," Annalecta Bollandiana 10 (1891): 123nl. 280 "'Errsi ~è ~OU nifto,lITo xai 'T,]11 AmoXSI(J,lI r7}11 p,e'YM'Y/li xo,-réÀaf30ll, rr(lOUIOllTSf 'TiP émuxorrqJ-Baj3{;Àaf ~à ~11 /; )(À8111~-(3a1TTf,ollTal rrQ,lITeç /;(hoIfup,a~oll /;rr' o,VroU. Ka; XmOToq;Ogoç /; 'PÉrrgefJof OllO(haJ;eTal." BHG 31Ib 5. In an Ethiopian version of the legend, Christopher came from a family of Dog-Heads Chriatianized by the aRostle Matthew, another echo ofAAMt (AAB, p. 776-778). 2 1 BHG 311 b 5 bas Christopher getting baptized in Antioch and then, "as they were to enter the imperial city" [ligTI ~è r7}Ji {JafT/'Àsloll rroÀllI (hSMbllTWlI a/rrw}I eifTeÀIfe/lI], he asked his fellow-soldiers to tie him and to bring him in front of the emperor. There is no indication that Christopher changed location and the text may simply refer to the imperial residence in Antioch. 282 In the Ethiopian version, the oil-lit pyre is an oversized frying pan (!). 283 It survives in an Arabie translation, ed. R. Basset, PO 3 (1909): 337-338.

67 have suffered martyrdom during the reign of Decius. One of his wondrous feats was to kill the emperor Julian posthumously (!), more than a century after his own death.284 A variant of this legend from Coptic Egypt assigns him cynocephalic bodyguards. As the story goes, his father and grandfather were hunting near Rome when they came face to face with dog-headed cannibals. They killed the grandfather but an ange! interceded and protected the father by trapping the monsters in a circle of fire. They converted to

Christianity and were brought back into the city. After Mercurius' birth, they served as his bodyguards and eventually entered the army with him.28S

The new men in town

Such are, painted in broad strokes, the main lines of the Acts of Andrew and

Matthias, the Acts of Andrew and Bartholomew, the legend of St. Christopher and the

Coptic legend of St. Mercurius. Although these texts have severallayers of meaning, the

only aspect under study here is their significance regarding the shift of geographical

discourse in late antiquity. Indeed, they stand in sharp contrast to the popularizing

geographers of the early Empire who tended to push back monstrous races of men to the

edges of the world, where they were left to their pitifullives. The Christopher corpus not

only depicts monsters weIl within the Roman world, it also forcefully civilizes them.

284 For the details on the legends of Saint Mercurius, see H. Delehaye, Les légendes grecques des saints militaires (Paris, 1909): 91-101, S. Binon, Documents grecs relatifs à S. Mercure de Césarée. (Louvain, 1937), and his Essai sur le cycle de Saint Mercure, martyr de Dèce et meurtrier de l'empereur Julien (Paris, 1937). 285 It has been held that St. Mercurius was a Christianization of the Roman god Mercurius, hence Hermes, hence Anubis who was associated in Roman Egypt with Hermes. See Saintyves, 43-44, White, 38. This theory does no justice to Mercurius' name: his legend came from Syria, where he was originally known, in Syriac, as Mâr Qurios, i. e. Saint Qurius (Binon, Essai ... , 19-20).

68 This radical change of attitude hints at the emergence of new preoccupations and even suggests a crisis of Roman identity being sorted out in geographical tenns.

The Coptic legend of St. Mercurius especially bears witness to a radical fragmentation of the Roman world. The presence of dog·headed cannibals near Rome indicates that for an Egyptian wrlter and audience Italy was now a danger zone. Dog- headed men had always been the inhabitants ofborderlands (especially India and Africa) and in this text Rome itselfis relegated to the outer rim of the Eastern thought-world.286

Here and in other apocryphal stories the capital city became a fabled place where

Eastern Romans could project their fantasies. Already in the late second and tOOd centuries, the apocryphal acts of Peter and Paul climaxed with their miracles and martyrdom in Rome.287 AIl of these legends originated from the Eastern Mediterranean and, on account of the fragmented world they depict, can only serve to illustrate eastem identity issues.

More important than fragmentation however is a blurring of identities. The legend of Saint Christopher goes the furthest in mixing them: although Reprebus is both a barbarian and a monster, he is depicted as a true Roman hero who rebelled against a tyrant, the emperor Decius, whom Many late antique Christian texts characterize as the archetype of the 'un-Roman' emperor on account of the persecution of Christians under

286 Monsters as inhabitants of borderlands: J. J. Cohen, "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)," in Monster Theory, ed. J. J. Cohen (Minneapolis, 1996): 6, and see chapter 1 of the present thesis for references to Indian and African monsters. There have been other explanations for the presence of dog-headed men near Rome in this account, most notably A. Piankoffs claim that it is a Christian view on fauns or satyrs. ("Saint Mercure Abou Seifein et les cynocéphales," Bullerin de la Société d'Archéologie Copte 8 [1942]: 24.) This is rather unconvincing. 287 In Rome, Paul resurrected Patroclus, Nero's fancy-boy (Acts of Paul 14). Peter was more prolific: he made a dog reprimand Simon Magus, mended a statue of the emperor, gave speech 10 a baby, cured the blind and resurrected four men and a herring (ACIS of Peter and Simon 9-28). The Constantinopolitan legend of St. Sophia (ed. F; Halkin, Légendes grecques de 'martyres romaines' [Brussels, 1973], 179-228) was also staged in Rome in order to confer prestige and universalism to a martyr associated with the new

69 bis reign.288 Moreover, Christopher served in the Roman army, a feature shared by

Mercurius' dog-headed squad. The same could be said of Abominable, who served as bodyguard and executioner to Andrew and Bartholomew. For a Christian author of the fifth and early sixth century AD, it was not a hard task to imagine a monster serving in the Roman army or becoming a faithful Christian in a faraway land like the city of the cannibals. Continuai 'barbarian' presence in the Roman world since the fourth century blurred the distinction between who was Roman and who was not: populations and individuals were prone to switch allegiance between groups making old identities problematic.289 Whether barbarians or monsters could be seen before as 'empirical others'-negative figures against which a positive identity could be constructed-things were no longer so simple.290

The cri sis of Roman identity was also fostered by the relatively sudden expansion of the Roman thought-world outside of the Empire. The Acts ofAndrew and

Matthias and the Acts of Andrew and Bartholomew were staged outside of the

Mediterranean world, maybe in Scythia for the fonner and definitely in Parthia in the latter's case. They stand in sharp contrast with classical Roman ethnography, which

capital (M. van Esbroeck, "Le saint comme symbole," in The Byzantine Saint, ed. S. Hackel [London, 1981], 135). 288 Decius is also the antagonist in Mercurius' legend. Some accounts have Mercurius face Julian the Apostate, whom it is safe to say made a rather negative impression on Christian minds. See note 283. This is one of the many cases where, following Eusebius, imperial virtues are being redefined along Christian lines. A. Cameron, "Remaking the Past," in Late Antiquity. A Guide to the Postclassical world, ed. G. W. Bowersock et al. (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 14. We cau see the negative figure of Decius still in an undeveloped stage in Lactantius' writings (De mort. pers. 4). 289 On 'allegiance-switching', see P. Amory, Peoples and ldentity in Ostrogothic lta/y, 489~554 (Cambridge, 1997): 42. 290 'EmpiricaI other': C. H. Long, "Primitive/Civilized: The Locus of a Problem," History of Religions 20 (1980): 43"'()1, at page 45.

70 could not acknowledge contact with remote lands on account of their uselessness, 291 the

spread of Christianity outside of the Empire, in Persia, India, Ethiopia, inland Africa and

other regions292 expanded Roman horizons and fostered a need to revise this attitude. It

could not be played out in works of ethnography however, which were too conditioned by the classical tradition. Classicising authors like Procopius had notorious problems

when trying to find satisfactory terms to label Romans and non-Romans.293 Moreover,

Constantine's original design of equating the spread of the Gospel with a spread of

Rome quickly feH apart during the fourth century, disjointing Roman and Christian

identities.294 The Roman thought-world was widening at the same time as the West of

the Empire was breaking away. The solution of the Christopher corpus for solving this

identity crisis was twofold: it used the theme of obedience and coercion to distinguish

between Romans and barbarians, and it created new heroes-the apostles-whose

travels helped redefine geography.

Coercion plays an important part in the texts of the Christopher corpus. In all of

them, the monsters were converted to Christianity through force or fear (and this

conversion means that they were brought within a human order rather than an inhuman

one).295 Almost all ofthem repeat the motif of the wall offire, put in place by an apostle

291 H. Wolfram, The Roman Empire and Its Germanie People (Berkeley, 1997): 36. Wolfram is making this case about the Germans, using the contrast between Tac. Germ. 5 and Ann. 3.62. However, the same holds true for other geographical areas outside of the Empire. See chapter I. 292 G. Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth (Princeton, 1993),90-3, 101-24. 293 G. Greatrex, "Roman ldentity in the Sixth Century," in Ethnieity and Culture in Late Antiquity, ed. S. Mitchell, G. Greatrex (London, 2000), 278. 294 "Rome seems to have quite quickly lost sight of Constantine's vision of mission as part of a coherent political design. The ecclesiastical historians were aware of their interrelatedness but more within the context of the Gospel's spread than Rome's." Fowden, 125, with references to Rufinus Hist. eeel. 10.9-11, Sozom. Hist. eecl. 2.6-8 and Theodoret Hist. eccl. 1.23-24. 295 AAMt 30-32. AAB, p. 210-212. Vila Mere, p. 337. Christopher was not coerced but there is a mention of his father, probably just as ugly and dog-headed, being captured and converted by Matthew in the Ethiopian version of the legend (Budge, 777).

71 or an angel to restrain, impress and convert the monsters.296 Once Christianized, they did not gain any free will but remained firmly under the control of the saints. The best examples for this are the Acts ofAndrew and Bartholomew and the story of Mercurius, where the dog-headed cannibals were tamed and regained their former selves on command.297 Moreover, in these two cases, the new converts became agents through which to coerce others through their role ofbodyguard.298

The role of the converted monster as soldier (of Christ or of the Empire) hints to a correspondence between these purely fictional stories and the reality of the Roman anny in the fifth and especially sixth century. An additional hint is given by the legend of Saint Christopher, which assigns him to the brigade of the Marmaritoi, which might actually point to a specifie military unit posted in Syria.299 At any rate, aU the texts considered here parallel the vocabulary used to deseribe foreigners serving in the Roman anny during the sixth century, with the classic distinctions of birth ['YÉvoç] or ethnicity

[i9voç] counting for less and less.30o If there had been an anti-German attitude in fifth

2% AAMt 30; AAB, p. 250; Vita Mere p. 337. Again, 1 take the mention of Matthew in the Ethiopian recenscion of the legend of Christopher as the equivalent of coercion. 297 AAB, p. 210. Vita Mere, p. 337. The angel who converted Abominable in the ME was quite explicit regarding the status of the new convert (although he got translated in quite outdated English): "If God saveth thee from the affliction of this flfe, wilt thou follow the Apostles into everyplace whithersoever they may go, and wilt thou hearken unto everything which they shaH command thee?" (AAB, p. 205.) 298 White, 198. 299 Cf. note 278. Syrians might have been prone to see soldiers as barbarians since Syriac sources commonly use the word 'Goth' to designate a soldier or a Roman (Amory, 25, based upon a conversation with Peter Brown. This has yet to he documented but a good example would be the sixth~eentury story of Euphemia and the Goth: F. C. Burkitt, ed., Euphemia and the Goth, London, 1913). Fittingly, there is a Syriac version of the Christopher legend, preserved in the British Museum manuscript no. 12174 (fol. 306a~311b), to which 1 had no aecess: W. Wright, Catalogue ofSyriac Manuseripts in the British Museum Acquired sinee the Year 1838,3 vols. (London, 1872), 3:1132n52. It has always been assumed that the legend of Christopher was tirst written in Greek sinee it originated from the eastem Mediterranean but the hypothesis of a translation from the Syriae should he tested, especially if the name Reprebus ( ) comes from the Syriac word for "great", as Johann Gildemeister suggested (non vidi, see "Passio Saneti Chrystophori Martyris" Annaleeta Bollandiana 1 [1882], 396nl). 300 See Greatrex. 269.

72 century Eastern sources, it had vanished by the sixth century.301 The identity and denomination of specific military units or of people entered a s'tate of flux and could easily pass from the category of Roman to 'barbarian' and vice_versa.302 Loyalty 10 the emperor was the criteria by which to judge political allegiances. Roman armies fighting against the government were no longer 'rebels' but 'barbarians'. Likewise, any barbarian army passing over to the side of the government became identified as 'Roman'. 303 The

Christopher corpus follows the same pattern, replacing an obedience to the emperor by an obedience to another power-figure: the apostle. The inhabitants of the city of cannibals remain barbarians until they faH under the power of Andrew. At that time, they wish to keep him, recognizing his beneficial and civilizing influence.304

Abominable and Christopher were also barbarians until they became Christian, gaining the power of civilized speech at the same time.30S For the Romans, these two saints (or quasi-saint in the case of Abominable, who could raise the dead after all) were the best kinds of barbarians; Abominable was a faithful collaborator in conquered land while

Christopher was a Romanized soldier serving the Empire.

As with the popularizing geographers of the Principate, the repetition and the stereotyped nature of the monsters in the Christopher corpus served to provide stock examples by which to interpret reality. What was at play here was the construction of a new thought-world including the edges of the earth. In a sense, the Christopher corpus succeeded where classical Greek and Roman scholarship failed: these texts manage to

301 On the fifth century: G. Traina, "De Synésios à Priscus: aperçus sur la connaissance de la 'barbarie' hunnique (fm du IVe - milieu du Ve siècle)," in L'armée romaine et les barbares du Ille au Vlle siècle, ed. M, Lazanski and F. Vallet (Paris, 1993): 285-286; G. B. Ladner, "On Roman Attitudes towards barbarians in Late Antiquity," Viator (1976): 8, 14-22. On the sixth century: Greatrex, 276. 302 Cf. note 288. On the more passive process oflabeling, Greatrex, 267-292, especially 274 .. 303 Greatrex, 268. 304 AAMt 33, AMtA, p. 114.

73 effectively control the monsters by including them in a social order as humans, as

Christians, as bodyguards. Classical geography faHed in this respect because tbis was never its goal in the :tirst place. Monsters were to be pushed back to the edges of the world, not assimilated.

Next to redefining identity on the base of obedience, the Christopher corpus created Christian heroes-saints and apostles-whose achievements were greater than those of non-Christian ones. lndeed, there is another figure who visited the edges of the earth: Alexander the Great, as pictured in the Romances. During the course of his campaigns, Alexander too met monstrous people and beasts: horse-like creatures bigger than elephants, multicolored elephants, bicephic heasts (with the head of a lion and the head of a crocodile), giant Fish-Eaters and Dog-Headed men. 306 Although he encountered them, Alexander could not conquer them since they always fled into the wildemess, never to be seen again.307 In comparison, Andrew, Matthias and

Bartholomew succeeded without much effort where Alexander' s might proved useless.

The apostles having shown the way, late antique Romans could now contemplate the possibility of assimilating these regions to their world.

The achievements of the apostles provided Christianity with prestigious heroes who could successfully adapt previous ongoing geographical representations. Just as fifth- and sixth-century cities witnessed the emergence of a new architectural and urban discourse that competed with the one established in the time of Augustus, tbis new

305 BHG 3101, BHG 311b 1, BHL 1 andAAB, p. 205.

306 Pseudo-Alexander Epistola ad Aristotelem, 20, 29, 31-33; ed. L. L. Gunderson, Alexander's Letter to Aristotle about lndia (Meisenheim am Glan, 1980), 146, 148-9. 307 D. Williams, Deformed Discourse. The Function of the Monster in Medieval Thought and Literature (Montreal, 1996): 236. Williams' argument was based on a more spectacular medieval Armenian recension of the Alexander romance but it still applies to the second- or third- century Epistola.

74 308 geography competed with the world-view established at the heginning of the Empire.

The figure of the apostle was strong enough to reinterpret the old mental map. By having various apostles travel to remote lands, the apocryphal acts established a link between these regions and the Roman world, and they presented them as being already

Christianized. Such was the opinion of Hesychius of Salona, responding to Augustine who maintained that the Gospel would he preached to the edges of the world only when the Apocalypse would be at band: "The Lord proclaimed that only the apostles would witness his name and his resurrection in Jerusalem, Judaea, Samaria and to the edges of the earth.,,309 This late antique idea was to survive to the twelfth century, most notably in the maps accompanying illustrated manuscripts of the Commentary on the

Apocalypse of Beatus of Liebana (c. 780), which assign apostles to every parts of the world (see fig. VI).310

Just as the popularizing geographers of the early Empire had shaped their Roman world by borrowing from the Greek literary tradition, sorne late antique authors re- shaped their world by borrowing from a Christian literary tradition. Other texts than the

Christopher corpus accomplished this as weH, each according to a different crisis of identity that shook the Roman world. The next section will examine John of Ephesus'

Life ofSimeon the Mountaineer, which established a new relation with the mountainous regions of northem Syria, following the Chalcedonian-Monophysite controversy. In the wake of the Arab invasions of the seventh century, the Revelation ofPseudo-Methodius

308 On the change of physical setting of those times contrasted the change of setting in Augustan tiroes, see Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric ofEmpire, 193. 309 August. Epistula 198.6, ed Goldbacher, Corpus scriptonun ecclesiasticorum latinorum, (prague, Vienna, Leipzig, 1895),240. 310 J. Chocheyras, "Fin des terres et fin du temps d'Hésychius (V· siècle) à Béatus (VIlle sièecle)," in The Use and Abuse ofEschatology in the Middle Ages, ed. W. Verbeke, D. Verhelst and A. Welkenhuysen (Louvain, 1988), 76.

75 Christianized Alexander and portrayed his expedition to the edges of the world as preparing the world for the Apocalypse. Aecording to the anonymous author, Alexander had shut the sons of Ismael out of this world, races such as the Gog and Magog of the biblieal tradition and the Dog-Heads of the classical tradition.311 But the author also announced the return of their retum in the guise of the Arabs who would invade the

Roman Empire and be ultimately defeated by a descendent of Alexander, the last Roman emperor.312 Like the Christopher corpus and like John of Ephesus' story, the Revelation of Pseudo-Methodius proclaimed the de facto Christianization of remote people and places (in the guise of Alexander and of the exotic invaders who are nothing but agents of God) in reaction to a crisis of Roman identity. Geographica1 thinking is hard at work in this texts, and yet they have escaped the analysis of most studies of Greco-Roman geography. Scholars assuming that geographical thought is to he found in geographical treatises like those of Strabo or Ptolemy have turned late antiquity and the early middle ages into a dark age of geography. But in a Roman world where geography was partly rhetorical, apocryphal aets, saints' lives and religious manifestos were more likely to be where new geographical interests would emerge.313

311 Greek and Latin texts of the relevant passage are in A. R. Anderson, Alexander's Gate, Gog and Magog, and the Enc/osed Nations (Cambridge, MA, 1932), 46-8, with the names of the enclosed nations at48. 312 P. J. Alexander, "The Medieval Legend of the Last Roman Emperor and lts Messianic Origin," Journal ofthe Warburg and Courtau/d Institutes, 41 (1978): 2-3 for a summary of the Syriac original ofthis text, to which 1 had no access. 313 Averil Cameron has argued much the sarne thing-although not specifieally for geography-regarding sources frOID seventh-century Byzantium. Whereas modem historians usually relegate religious texts to the fringe oftheir inquiry; these texts were where seventh-century Romans put their thoughts and resolved issues. A. Cameron, "Byzantium and the Past in the Seventh Century: the search for redefmition," in The Seventh Century: Change and Continuity, ed. J. Fontaine & J. N. Hillgarth (London, 1992 ), 250-276.

76 On the home front

This new geographical discourse did not solely concem the outer limits of the

Roman world; it also fostered a new relation with its inner frontiers. There had always been populations inside the Empire which had been considered significantly alien: mountain-dwellers. The Isaurians of the western Taurus range are a prime, well­ documented example.314 Although definitely part of the Empire, the intractable Isaurian shepherds could often turn into raiders. Rome's policy toward them was mostly one of containment; the late Roman province of Isauria had its own internaI defense system to ward off the mountain folks and it was under the authority of a comes (and sometimes a dux) wielding both civilian and military authority.315 An illustration from the Notitia

Dignitatum sums up perfectly Roman perceptions of Isauria: the metropolis of Tarsus, near the coast, is isolated from a beasts-ridden chain of mountain and protected by a

series of fortifications. 316

Among the popularizing geographers of the early Empire, Strabo had been the most acerbic against mountain-dwellers, which he assimilated to the lowest form of civilization and associated with brigands.317 Towns and villages had always belonged to the same symbiotic world, even if the chasm between them was great, yet this was not

314 See a review of Roman lsauria in Matthews, 355-367. 315 Matthews, 357. A. H. M. Jones, The Lafer Roman Empire 284-602: a Social, Economie and Administrative Survey, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1964), 3:21n26 for a change from a comes to a dux and then to a comes again in fourth-century Isauria. 316 Reproduced in O. Seeck, ed., Notitia dignitatum Berlin, 1876: 61. 317 E.g. Strabo 3.3.7-8. He equated mountain-dwellers with pre-civilization in 13.1.25 (he assessed that civilization began at the hills, on the way down) and labeled lsaurians 'bandits' in 12.6.2.

77 true of mountain-dwellers.318 Like an pre-industrial civilizations, Rome never really took hold of the mountain ranges.319 The final section of this study will consider how geographical descriptions created outside the literary tradition could re-shape attitudes towards the Empire's inner frontiers.

The rhetoric of the Christopher corpus finds a parallel in the Syriac Life of

Simeon the Mountaineer, written around 560 by John of Ephesus-also known as John of Amida on account of bis hometown320-and part of bis Lives of the Eastern Saints.

John wrote bis collection of lives wbile in Constantinople, at a time when bis home region ofSyria was going through a further crisis ofidentity.321 The dispute between the partisans of Chalcedonian and Monophysite Christianity, endemic since the later half of the fifth century, had entered its most crucial stage, the persecution of the Monophysite party by the imperial, Chalcedonian govemment. 322 The Lives of the Eastern Saints tell the Monophysite side of the story through accounts of otherwise unknown rural figures.

Of those, Simeon the Mountaineer is of particular importance. Although he lived on the inner frontiers of the Roman world-the eastem Taurus range-, presumably far away

318 For the divide between town and village in the area studied in the present section, and for links between them as weIl, see P. Brown, "Town, Village and Roly Man: The Case of Syria, " in Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1982), 153-165, esp. 155-158. 319 F. Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe lI, 2nd ed., 3 vols (Paris, 1966) 1:3742. 320 Born around 507 in the village of Ingila near Amida, John was saved from death by the stylite at the age of3 or 4 years old and became bis apprentice (PO 17 [1923]: 60-64). See E. Roningmann, Évêques et évêchés monophysites d'Asie antérieure au Vi" siècle, Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium 127/sub. 2 (Louvain, 1951),207·215. 321 John went to Constantinople a frrst time in 535 (PO 17 [1923]: 211nl) and it became bis base of operation after 540, more precisely bis suburban villa at Sykae, converted into a monastery (PO 17 [1923]: 298). He wrote his Lives ofthe Eastern Saints around 566-568. See E. Stiernon "Jean d'Éphèse," in Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique : doctrine et histoire, 17 vols, ed. M. Viller et al., (Paris, 1974),8: 484-486. 322 1 am aware of the many pitfalls of the word 'Monophysites', in reality a loose mix of different groups only sharing a common opposition tQ the rulings of the council ofChalcedon (451 AD) and upholding the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria. Yet, it remains our best umbrella·term term to designate Christians that were targeted by Justinian's persecution edicts, and who were singled out from other Christian groups

78 from the theological and political disputes of the times, his missionary action illustrates a response to a crisis of Monophysite identity (a variant of Roman identity, as John's faithful allusions to the Empire suggest).323

As John's account goes,324 the ascetic Simeon used to live in isolation in the mountains of north-east Syria, between the cities of Melitene and Amida (modern-day

Malatya and Diyarbakir in Turkey). One day, he chanced upon a remote and unknown village built on rugged land, and was amazed to see people living in houses and keeping cattle in such a difficult and inhospitable terrain. He was appalled to leam that the se people, who called themselves Christians, had only heard of the Scriptures from their fathers and that they had never read them themselves. What is more, they had no idea of what a church was, although to give them credit they knew that to he called "Jews" was in insult. In effect, Simeon asked them "Tell me, my sons, are you Christians or

Jews?,,325 Rather oddly, John has the villagers say spontaneously that they "live on these mountains like animaIs. ,,326 Simeon's response was that they were worse than animaIs, for animaIs do not have the ability to become apostates. He left them, wondering how it was that men lived on mountains like wild beasts, and pondering that it might be God's will that he would be the one to bring them back on the right path.

whom the imperial govemment pursued more ruthlessly (such as the Nestorians, Eutychians, Apollinarians and others; see W. H. C. Frend, The Rise ofChristianity [London, 1984],830-831). 32 Eg. "our country, the country of the Romans." PO 17 (1923): 139. As William Frend noted, Monophysites were among the most ardent supporters of imperial unity in the sixth arld even seventh centuries, in accord with their own beliefin the unity of God. W. H. C. Fremi, "The Monophysites and the Transition Between the Ancient World and the Middle Ages," in Passaggio dei mondo antico al medio evo da Teodosio a san Gregorio Magno (Rome, 1980),350. Cf. the Monophysite Michael the Syrian, (Chronicon 8.14) who complained in the eleventh century that the emperor Marcian had undermined the unity of the Empire by dividing the Christian faith at Chalcedon. 324 PO 17 (1923): 229-247. 325 PO 17 (1923): 234. 326 PO 17 (1923): 235.

79 Of course it was; this is hagiography. Simeon found a second village up in the mountains, one with a church this time. It was a derelict, abandoned old church, but a holy place nevertheless. Since there was no priest or monk, he immediately took upon himself to till tbis role and started preaching to the villagers. "How can you be

Christians, he asked, if you do not follow the custom of Christians?,,327 liDo we, on our part, live like animals outside the orderliness of men?,,328 Clearly, exhortation didn't work and the villagers could only stare at him blankly like idiotic animaIs. Simeon then adopted a new tactic. He frightened them by evoking the utter destruction of their souls upon their deaths, and he successfully sent them to fast. He fetched aIl those who lived on nearby mountains and herded them together "like wild animals,,329. He inquired about their past behavior and anyone who had committed murder, he set apart "as pagan or

Jew,,330. Then, he gathered thirty children, locked them up, shaved their heads and consecrated them as "Sons [and Daughters] of the Covenant.,,331 He cursed the parents who opposed him, and their children were dead withln three days. Terror fell upon everyone and out of fear the villagers pledged to obey him and begged him to curse them all. For the next twenty-six years, Simeon acted as the forceful leader of the community and was obeyed by nearby mountain folks as weIl. "They trembled to commit any breach of order, John says, lest the old man ... curse them. ,,332

At tirst glance, Simeon's story seems quite distant from the whole issue of the persecution of the Monophysites. Was he a persecuted ascetic, driven off to the

327 PO 17 (1923): 237. 328 PO 17 (1923): 238. 329 PO 17 (1923): 242. 330 PO 17 (1923): 241. 331 PO 17 (1923): 244. 332 PO 17 (1923): 246.

80 mountains? Probably not. Since John met Simeon before moving from Amida to

Constantinople in 535 or maybe 540, and since Simeon had been leader of ms community for twenty-six years at the time, the story must have taken place before

515-or probably before 509, ten years before the first persecution of the Syrian monks by the imperial govemment.333 One of the villagers mentioned the ongoing raids of the

White Huns, which occurred in 515, but this is probably shaky evidence to frrmly date

Simeon's adventure.334 Suffice it to say that Jor..n never mentions the persecutions or the persecutors, as he so often does in the other stories ofhis collection.

Even if Simeon's story is not related to the persecutions however, John forced a relation by inc1uding it in his collection of saints' lives. Aimost every story from the

Lives of the Eastern Saints tells how individual ascetics reacted to the persecutions.

Sorne went to Egypt, escaping the persecution altogether.335 Sorne like John himself went to Constantinople to become lobbyists at the imperial court and build constituencies in the capital.336 Other acted as missionaries outside of the Empire, in

Armenia, Persia, Nubia and Ethiopia.337 Finally, many relocated to the mountains near

Amida to build new monasteries and setde there. By committing to writing the story of

333 PO 17 (1923): 246-247: John meeting Simeon. The persecution of the Monophysites was launched a fust time by Justin and Justinian in 519, suspended in 531 and resumed for good in 536 (see the chronology established by A. Vôôbus, "The Origin of the Monophysite Church in Syria and Mesopotamia," Church His/ory 42 [1973]: 19-23, with references). For John's move to Constantinople, see note 320. 334 PO 17 (1923): 245. Marauding Huns appear in John's Lives ojAbraham and Maro (PO 17 [1923]: 78- 82) and bis Life ofZ'ura (PO 17 [1923]: 19-20), where the saint freezes one in time. This could refer to the invasion of515 (Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a.C 515) but there were incursions since 502, which makes any firm datation problematic (procop. Bell.1.7.8, who asserted that it was a certain Jacob who froze a Hun in time). 335 S. A. Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and the Lives of the Eastern Saints (Berkeley, 1990),76-80. 336 Harvey, 83. For example, John told the story of the Amidan monk Z'ura who went settled in Constantinople, contended with Justinian's theologians, brought down sickness upon the emperor and gathered many clients. PO 17 (1923): 21-35.

81 Simeon's life, John was encouraging his fellow cornrades to do likewise: he shifted the attention of t.~e Monophysites towards their own backyard and towards the establishment of new congregations there.

One of the most striking aspects of the story is its geographical setting. Simeon was rightfully amazed to see people living perched on mountains but archaeological fmds indicate that this is not so extraordinary. The survey of the northem Syrian countryside by Georges Tchalenko in the 1950s, revised by Georges Tate in the 1980s, shows that sorne rural areas witnessed a steady growth of settlement during the fifth century, followed by outright overpopulation.338 This might account for other settlements on unlikely lands, such as the ones Simeon encountered. Both the derelict church he found there and the fact that the villagers told him they had heard of the

Scriptures from their fathers point to an older settlement, not a sixth-century one.

Clearly, the villagers had 10st touch with the Christian center from which their settlement had come. Simeon's forceful intervention not only reestablished a link with what we may cali a 'Christian civilization,' it also enabled John to break down the mental barrier between town and mountain. He accomplished this in other stories as well, such as that of the holy Sergius who was driven out of Amida by the persecutors and went on to build a vast monastery on a mountain.339 Another congregation retreated to a different mountain and literally colonized it by planting vines and running a rather successful wine business.340 AlI ofthese stories, and many more-including Simeon's-

337 W. H. C. Frend, Rise ofthe Monophysite Movement: Chapters in the History ofthe Church in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries (Cambridge, 1972),276. 338 G. Tchalenko, Villages antiques de la Syrie du Nord, 3. vols (paris, 1953), 1:181-182,376. G. Tate, "La Syrie à l'époque byzantine: essai de synthèse," in Archéologie et histoire de la Syrie, ed. J. M. Dentzer, W. Orthman, 2. vols (SaarbTÜck, 1989),2:107. 339 PO 17 (1923): 105-108. 340 PO 17 (1923): 129-130. According to John, they even attracted merchants :from Cappadocia.

82 indicate a geographical scramble for position by the Monophysite ascetics driven out of

Amida, and John's exhortation to do likewise. Relocating to Egypt or lobbying in

Constantinople was fine, but not as effective as colonizing the mountains and establishing Monophysite congregations there.341

Going to the mountains and finding an isolated village was the easy part.

Submitting the villagers to Simeon's will was far more problematic. John concluded his account with an afterthought: "we used to leam from him, he wrote, about the uncivilized character of that people and about their subjugation and about ail the torments that they had inflicted upon him, when he was now old and decrepit. ,,342 So somehow, Simeon's ministry was not as easy as John would have us believe. How did the villagers resist this stranger who tried to make perfect Christians out of them? We may never know, but the result is clearly visible in John's prose: he characterized them as wild beasts, elements to be controlled. He rambled on about how they were like

"irrational animals," "outside the orderliness of men," and other niceties.343 He even tipped his hat to pagans by saying that these villagers were worse than pagans, who at least believed in something.344

John adopted such a harsh language toward half-Christianized mountaineers in reaction to the shaky situation of his own persecuted community in Amida. Gaining new members was not easy, as John's little afterthought indîcates, and the community was losing members fast. In Amida, the chief persecutor Abraham remained in place for

341 Cf. P. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000,2nd. ed., (Oxford,2003),186. 342 PO 17 (1923): 246-247 (myemphasis). 343 PO 17 (1923): 238. Also "wild animaIs" (pO 17 [1923]: 242) and "animaIs are much betterthan you" (pO 17 [1923]: 235). 344 PO 17 (1923): 236.

83 thirty years.345 If he managed to stay this long, in a so-called Monophysite stronghold, there must have been a substantial Chalcedonian party in place, probably winning converts as the decades passed. In such a context, it is not surprising that John's description of the unfaithful was quite harsh.346 In his account, the mountain folk even described themselves in denigratory tenns. Much like Abominable in the Acts ofAndrew and Bartholomew who proclaimed his own monstrosity before the angel,347 the villagers declared to Simeon: "we live on these mountains like animals. ,,348 Their animal status derived from losing contact with the Christian faith, or rather Christian customs, much like Roman military units at that time were laheled 'barbarian' when they rebelled against the emperor.349 For John, it was rather appropriate to label these lapsed

Christians as wild animals-i.e. elements to he tamed-since it matched his views on what it meant to be a Christian. lndeed, elsewhere in the Lives of the Eastern Saints, he exposed the opinion that submission was the prime Christian virtue.350 Compared to the thoroughly fictional Christopher corpus, the Life of Simeon the Mountaineer represents the other end of the hagiographical spectrum: while the apostles who traveled to the edges of the world accomplished spectacular and flamboyant miracles, Simeon's only

345 Harvey, 1990 346 Simeon's first reaction was to hold the villagers as Jews and he later excluded from his community those who had committed a crime, branding them pagan or Jews (PO 17 [1923]: 234). 'Jew' was a common Monophysite insult toward the Chalcedionian party: Paul, the Chalcedonian patriarch of Antioch was nicknamed 'the Jew'. J. Lebon. Le Monophysisme sévérien: étude historique, littéraire et théologique sur la résistance monophysite au concile de Chalcédoine jusqu'à la constitution de l'Église jacobite (Louvain, 1909),67. 347 AAB, p. 205: "And the man with a face like unto that of a dog answered and said unto the angel, '0 my Lord, 1 am not like other men, for my face is not like that of a man'." 348 PO 17 (1923): 235. 349 See p. 79 above for Simeon using Christian custom to judge the villagers, and pp. 71-2 for the label 'barbarian' in the sixth-century Roman army. John, who used his own standards of loyalty, fittingly called 'barbarian troops' the imperial forces sent to Amida to persecute the Monophysites (pO 17 [1923]: 96). 350 PO 17 (1923): 44ff. John retells the opinions of the ascetic John the Nazirite, who he deeply admired. This lengthy encomium of submission comes quite early in the Lives of the Eastern Saints and has a programmatic outlook.

84 supematural feat was a successful curse of sickness against two villagers, something that looks more like a stroke ofluck than anything else.351 Yet, both the legends surrounding

St. Christopher and Simeon played out the same geograpbical discourse, each in their own term. In response to a crisis of identity, these texts sbifted the attention of their readers to lands that had previously fallen outside the preoccupations of Romans, and they presented submission and coercion of wild elements as the solution to the crisis at hand.

John brought to notice the mountainous regions that had been previously deemed unworthy of attention (except to protect towns and rural areas from marauding bandits) and posed them as a vital part of the Roman world. At the end of bis account of

Simeon's life, he noted with satisfaction that by the time he sat down to write it, the children whom Simeon had trained in as ascetics had grown up (and grown oid probably) and that they were teaching others as well.352 Coercion and purification had paid off, it seems. Writing in Constantinople to his persecuted comrades from Amida,

John was delivering them both a good round of cheerleading and a political message.

There was hope for them and it was to be found outside the cities-in the countryside

and even in the mountains, were c1assical-minded Romans had not looked before. He

wrote at a time when lobbying in the capital for the end of the persecutions seemed to

lead nowhere. For him, the children-monks of Simeon were the future.

351 This less flamboyant style, found tbroughout the Lives of the Eastern Saints, has been seen by Susan Ashbrook Harvey as indicative of the down~to-earth attitude of the Syrian ascetics under the persecution (Harvey, 56). 352 PO 17 (1923): 247.

85 Conclusion

ln 59 BC, Cicero was advised by bis friend Atticus to try bis hand at a treatise on geography, a task he reluctantly accepted.353 Nothing survives ofthis work and Cicero probably abandoned it after complaining to Atticus that it was a monotonous subject which did not lend itself to literary embellishments.354 This will come as no surprise since bis model was Eratosthenes, a scientific author who grounded geography on mathematics and had much ill to say about the marvel-ridden geography of poets. chiefly Homer. 355 If Cicero was planning to write a treatise that could be read by the cultured elite and not just specialists of geography, he had started on the wrong foot indeed. He even got confused by Eratosthenes' critic, Hipparchus; a scientific geographer and astronomer.356

A few generations later, Strabo, Mela and Pliny were to prove Cicero wrong by showing that accessible, not-so-monotonous geographies could he written. They succeeded mainly because they did not ground their geograpbies on distances, latitudes and longitudes but rather on the geographical knowledge every cultured Roman leamed from bis youth: place-names found in Greco-Roman literature, especially in Homer. The result was a literary geography instead of a scientific one, but it was what the elite wanted and needed. Romans did not only wish to learn facts about the world, they

353 Cie. Ait. 2.4.3 354 Cie. Ait. 2.6.1. Atticus seemingly pressured him further (Att. 2.7.1), but Cieero's remarkable lack of enthusiasm and admitted laziness probably killed the projeet. 355 Cie. Ait. 2.6.1 for Eratosthenes as Cieero's model. K. Geus, "Eratosthenes," Geschichte der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaftem in der Antike. 2. Geographie undverwandte Wissenschaften, ed. W. Hübner (Stuttgart, 2000), 84-91 for Eratosthenes' scientifie map-building and esp. 84 for bis polemie against Homeric geography. 356 Cie. Ait. 2.6.1. W. Hübner, "Hipparch," Geschichte der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaftem in der Antike. 2. Geographie undverwandte Wissenschaften, ed. W. Hübner (Stuttgart, 2000), 93-101.

86 wanted to read lessons about life in it, anecdotes to remember and retell. It was fine to know that the island of Taprobane was 70,000 stadia in length and 50,000 stadia in breadth, but it was better to know that kingship was elective there (and that this was a good thing).357 This brings attention to what Romans considered 'useful geography'.

Much scholarly effort has been put into proving the existence of Roman scale-maps, similar to those familiar to modem readers. How could the fabled 'practical Romans' do without them? the argument seems to run. 358 But faithful descriptions of the physical world were maybe less useful to Romans than a geographicallore !hat both built on their literary knowledge and helped them deal with social issues. As Dionysius Periegetes said ofhis own Guide to Our World, geographical knowledge enabled cultured Romans to he "honorable and more worthy of respect". 359 Geography provided material for thought, eloquence and persuasion; it was in tum moulded by rhetoric.

The main goal of this thesis has been to show that descriptions of the edges of the

Roman world could be shaped by social preoccupations and be driven by rhetoric.

Strabo, Mela and Pliny wrote after the Roman conquest of the Mediterranean basin (and

seemingly of the whole world) and were faced with the problem of assessing what was properly Roman in this expanded and unified world. While they avoided the

ethnography of regions from where members of the Roman eHte hailed, they used descriptions of remote people living at the edges of the world as antithetical exempla

357 Eratosthenes gave the measure of Taprobane (apudPlin. HN 6.81). Taprobanese ldngs: Plin. HN 6.89. 358 The widespread use of maps by Roman has been notably put forward in influential articles by R. K. Sherk, "Roman geographical exploration and military maps," in Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Weil II, Principat l (Berlin, 1974), 534-62; O. A. W. Dilke, "Itineraries and Geographical Maps in the Early and Late Roman Empires," in The History of Cartography 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, Medieval and the Medite"anean, ed. J. B. Harley and D. Woodward (Chicago, London, 1987),234-57; P. D. A Harvey, "Local and Regional Cartography in Medieval Europe," in the same volume, 464-501. For a ~ood counter~view, see Brodersen, 9-12. 59 Dionys. Pero 170-173.

87 illustrating un-Roman manners and customs. Mela and Pliny described utopian nations like the Hyperboreans and the Silk People to outline virtues the Roman eHte sometimes forgot: the Hyperboreans died free and happy by committing suicide and the Silk People refused to be contaminated by trade. Socially and physically monstrous races like cannibal Scytbians, Dog-Heads or One-Eyes were for aIl three authors the embodiment of extreme behaviors such as animalism, exhibitionism and cannibalism.

The texts revolving around the late antique legend of St. Christopher-the

Christopher corpus-present a different picture of the edges of the world. While Strabo,

Mela and Pliny had lived in an expanded Roman world following the conquest of the

Mediterranean basin, the anonymous authors of these texts lived at a time when

Christianity (the Roman faith) was expanding outside of the Christian Roman Empire.

Parallel to this expansion, a new and continuous 'barbarian' presence was being felt within the Empire, and the c1assical distinction between 'Romans' and 'barbarians' was

increasingly difficult to maintain. Both phenomena combined to create a crisis of Roman

identity. The Christopher corpus presented a solution to these preoccupations by

proc1aiming the Christianisation of remote lands and nations. Either by staging the

forceful conversion of monstrous barbarians by the apostles, or by creating a monstrous

hero who accepted Romano-Christian values, the authors of these texts showed a

newfound interest in remote lands and tore down the barrier between them and the

Roman world.

The edges of the Roman world had changed between the time of Strabo and the

time of the first church dedicated to St. Christopher because Roman preoccupations had

evolved. They were aiso different because Strabo grounded his geography on the Greek

88 literary tradition while the authors of the Christopher corpus were heirs of a Biblical tradition. Yet, whether Romans leamed about their world through the poetry of Homer or the travels of the apostles, geography was still a form of literature rather than a sCÎentific endeavor, and it could be used rhetorically. Io be sure, 'soft places' and their inhabitants could be used in many other ways than those studied here, be it by orators, historians, poets, geographers or schoolmasters. For example, the third century (?)

Pseudo-Menander Rhetor invited orators to honor the coming journey of a friend or a dignitary with a speech in which they would recite and describe the lands he would pass through and, if was a trip by sea, to invoke the sea monsters fleeing before the voyager's might.360 A few generations later and in much the same spirit, Eusebius of Caesarea proclaimed the fictional submission of distant people, Indians and Scythians, to illustrate

Constantine's might-and maybe bring him on a par with Augustus who had also claimed the submission of these lands.361 To stress the barbarian nature of Gildo, the

Moorish military commander of Africa who had rebelled in 397-8, Claudian did not hesitate to include Nubians from as far as Meroe in his anny, who wore skins of unknown wild beasts.362 Both the Cosmography of Julius Honorius and the

Cosmography of Pseudo-Aethicus listed regions that were never part of the Roman administration, such as India, as provinces.363 An early medieval schoolbook would even

360 L. Spengel, Metores Graeci (Leipzig, 1856), 3.398.22~399.9. L. Pemot, "Topique et topographie: l'espace dans la rhétorique grecque à l'époque impériale," in Arts et légendes d'espaces, figures du voyage et rhétoriques du monde, ed. C. Jacob and F. Lestringant (Paris, 1981),106. 361 Euseb. Vit. Cons. 1.7,3.7,4.7,50. Augustus, Res Gestae, 31. In fact, Constantine's might might be even greater since he not only received an embassy trom the Scythians as Augustus did, but conquered Scythia (1.7) and spread Christianity there (3.7: a Scythian bishop at Nicea). 362 Claud. Cons. Sti!. 1.254,260-261. The fact that Meroe had been destroyed at this time makes such a Nubian battalion in Gildo's army was aIl the more improbable. J. Desanges, Catalogue des tribus qfricaines de l'Antiquité classique à l'ouest du Nil (Dakar, 1962), 195. 363 Whittaker, 14-15. GLM, 25, 73. Julius Honorius even has a double entry for an Ethiopian provinces: Aethiopia provincia and Aethiopes provincia (GLM, 47).

89 list Paradise as a province.364 AlI of these geographical descriptions would fit awkwardly ~ or not at aIl, on scale-maps of the Roman Empire found in modem textbooks. And for good reason: while scale-maps are good for building faithful descriptions of the physical Roman world, they are of more limited use when it comes to illustrating the rhetorical geography through which the Romans saw and shaped their world.

364 Paris, BN lat. 4892 fol. 245r (non vidl): "Cuius hec (=Asiae] sunt principales prouinciae? Habet Paradisum, lndiam, Aracusiam... " Ref. in Lozovsky, 55n80. Admittedly, Paradise is here a province of 'Asia' and not of the Empire, which was a distant reality in the West by now. Still, the word prouincia has strong connotations ofpower.

90 Illustrations

Fig. 1: Modem scale~map of the Roman Empire.

Source: E. H. A. Bunbury, History ofAncient Geography among the Greeks and the Romans From the Earliest Ages Till the FaU ofthe Roman Empire, vol. 2. (London, 1887),2: map 5.

91 Fig. II: Geographical mosaic from Ammaedara (Roman province of Africa).

Source: F. Bejaoui, "Îles et villes de la Méditerranée sur une mosaïque d'Ammaedara (HaYdra, Tunisie)," Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1997 (1999): 831.

92 Fig. III-a: The world according to Ptolemy (modern interpretation).

Fig. III·b: A more widespread view of the world in Roman times: the world according to Dionysius Periegetes (modern interpretation).

" /,

Jf ... '", (" ~ '/" UU,\" ,. 1,," ,

1" .1, ,

\"", '"

, l" !' ' \) ,J' "" \ } 1", " ,,'

Source: E. H. A. Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography among the Greeks and the Romans From the Earliest Ages Till the Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 2. (London, 1887),2: maps 7 and 8.

93 Fig. IV: An artist's view of Roman maps.

de/Nltl Id C,;J,.Ù,. u l,;Ji! tXflu,wtl' IN Fa/I~J' cl !'

Source: J. Martin, Les légions perdues (Brussels, 1%5).

94 Fig. V: Terracotta from Vinica (modern-day Macedonia) portraying Saints George and Christopher.

Source: S. Pavlovska, P. Tosev and M. Dimeski, "Origin of the Viniea Jeons by Physico­ Chemical Analyses" (1996) . Retreived 14 July 2003.

95 Fig. VI: Map from a manuscript of Beatus of Liebana's Commentaries on the Apocalypse.

Source: J. Chocheyras, "Fin des terres et fin du temps d'Hésychius (Ve siècle) à Béatus (VIlle sièecle)," in The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages, ed. W. Verbeke, D. Verhelst and A. Welkenhuysen (Louvain, 1988),80-81.

96 Bibliography

A. Ancient texts: editions used

Ammianus Marcellinus. Rerum gestarum libri. Edited by W. Seyfarth. Leipzig, 1978.

Apollonius Rhodius. Argonautica. Edited by H. Frânkel. Oxford, 1961.

Aristotle. Politica. Edited by R. D. Ross. Oxford, 1957.

Augustine. De civitate Dei. Edited by B. Dombart and A Kalb, 4th ed.(1878-9). Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 47-8. Turnhout, 1955.

-----. Epistulae. Edited by A. Goldbacher. Corpus scriptorum ecc1esiasticorum Latinorom 34, 44,54,57,58. Prague, Vienna and Leipzig, 1895.

Augustus. Res gestae divi Augusti. Edited and translated by P. A. Brunt and J. M. Moore. London, 1967.

Aulus Gellius. Noctes Atticae. Edited by K. Hosius. Leipzig, 1903.

Ausonius. The Works ofAusonius. Edited by R. P. H. Green. Oxford, 1991.

Basset, R., ed. "Le Synaxaire arabe jacobite (rédaction copte): les mois de Hatour et de Kihak." PO 3 (1909): 243-545.

Blockley, R. C. The Fragmentary Classicising Historians ofthe Later Roman Empire: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus and Malchus. 2 vols. Liverpool, 1981-3.

Caesar. C. Iuli Caesaris Commentarii rerum in Gallia gestarum VI/, A. Hirti Commentarius VIII Edited by T. Rice Hohnes. Oxford, 1914.

Calpurnius Siculus. Calpurnii et Nemesiani bucolica. Anonymous editor. Leipzig, 1885.

Cassiodorus. Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones. Ed. R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford, 1937.

Casson, L., ed and trans. The Periplus Maris Erythraei: text with introduction, translation, and commentary. Princeton, 1989.

Cicero. Ad Atticum. 2 vols. Edited by D. R. Shackleton Bailey. Stuttgart, 1987.

Calpurnius Siculus. Calpurnii et Nemesiani bucolica. Leipzig, 1885.

Claudiano Carmina. Edited by J. Barrie Hall. Leipzig, 1985.

97 Dio Cassius. Dio's Roman history. Edited and translated by Eamest Cary. London, 1914-1927.

Dio Chrysostom. Dio Chrysostom. 5 vols. Edited and translated by J. W. Cohoon and H. L. Crosby. London, 1932-1951.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodori bibliotheea historiea. 6 vols. Edited by F. Vogel and C. T. Fischer. Leipzig, 1988-1919.

Elliot, J. K., ed. The Apoeryphal New Testament. Oxford, 1993.

Eusebius. The ecclesiastical history. Edited and translated by K. Lake. London, 1957-9.

-----. Über das Leben des Kaisers Konstantin. Edited by F. Winkelmann, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1991).

Festus [Sextus Rufus]. The Breviarium ofFestus: A Critical Edition With Historical Commentary. Edited by J. W. Eadie. London, 1967.

Florus. Œuvres. Edited and translated by P. Jal. Paris, 1967.

Galletier, E., ed. and trans. Panégyriques latins. 3 vols. Paris, 1949-1955.

Geminus. Gemini Elementa astronomiae. Edited and translated by C. Manitius. (1898). Stuttgart, 1974.

Gregory of Tours. "Georgii Florentii Gregorii episcopi Turonensis liber de miraculis beati Andreae apostoli." Edited by M. Bonnet. Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, 1:821-46. Hannover, 1883.

Gunderson, L. L., ed. Alexander's Letter to Aristot/e about India. Meisenheim am Glan, 1980.

Halltin, F., ed. and trans. Hagiologie byzantine: textes inédits publiés en grec et traduits en français. Brussels, 1986.

Herodotus. Herodoti Historiae. 2 vols. Edited by C. Hude, 3rd ed. Oxford, 1926-7.

Hesiod. Hesiodi Theogonia, Opera et dies, Scutum. Edited by F. Solmsen, R. Merkelbach and M. L. West, 3rd ed. Oxford, 1990.

Homer. Rias. 3 vols. Edited by T. W. Allen. Oxford, 1931.

-----. Odyssea. Edited by P. von der Mühll. Base~ 1946.

98 Hoof, G. van, ed. "Sancti Christophori Acta Graeca Antiqua, "Analecta Bollandiana 10 (1891): 122-48.

Horace. Q. Horati Flacci Opera. Edited by D. R. Schackleton Bailey. Stuttgart, 1985.

Isidore of Seville. Isidori Hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum sÈve Originum libri xx: Edited by W. M. Lindsay. 2 vols. Oxford, 1911.

Jerome. Gli uomini illustri. Edited by A. Ceresa-Gastaldo. Florence, 1988.

-----. Vita S. Pauli Prim; Eremitae 8. Edited by J. P. Migne. Patrologia Latina 23 (1845): cols. 17 -28.

John of Ephesus. Lives ofthe Eastern Saints. Edited and translated by E. W. Brooks. PatroZogia OrientaUs 17 (1923):1-307, 18 (1924): 511-698, 19 (1925): 151-284 ..

Jordanes. Iordanis Romana et Getiea. Edited by T. Mommsen. Monumenta Germaniae historiea. A uctores Antiquissimi 5.1 Berlin, 1882.

Lactantius. De mortibus persecutorum. Edited by J. L. Creed. Oxford, 1984.

Leslie D. D. and K. H. J. Gardiner, ed. and trans. The Roman Empire in Chinese Sources. Rome, 1996.

Livy. Titi Livi Ab urbe condita. Edited by M. Ogilvie. Oxford, 1974.

Lucian. Opera. 4 vols. Edited by M. D. Macleod. Oxford, 1972-87.

MacDonald, D. R, ed and trans. The Aets ofAndrew and the Acts ofAndrew and Matthias in the City oft1re Cannibals. Atlanta, 1990.

Mommsen, T., ed. "Marcellinus Cornes." In Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Auctores Antiquissimi lI, 37-108. Berlin, 1984.

Mela, Pomponius. Chorographie. Edited ans translated by A. Silberman. Paris, 1988.

Michael the Syrian. Chronique de Michelle Syrien. 3 vols. Edited and translated by J.­ B. Chahot. Paris, 1899-1905.

Müller, C, ed. Geographi Graeci Minores. 2 vols. Paris, 1856.

Orosius. Historiarum adversum paganos libr; VIL Edited by K Zangmeister. Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 5. (1882). Hildesheim, 1967.

Ovid. P. Ovidii Nasonis metamorphoses. Edited by W. S. Anderson. Leipzig, 1977.

99 "Passio Sancti Christophori Martyris." Analecta Bollandiana 1 (1881): 394-5.

Pausanias. Pausaniae Graeciae descriptio. Edited by M. Rocha-Pereira. Leipzig, 1973.

Phlegon of Tralles. Phlegon of Tralles' Book ofMarvels. Edited and translated by W. Hansen. Exeter, 1996.

Petronius. Satyricon. Edited by K. Müller. Munich, 1961.

Philostratus. Flavii Phi/ostrati Opera auctiora. 2 vols. Edited by C. L. Kayser. Leipzig, 1870~1.

Plato. The Laws ofPlato. 2 vols. Edited by E. B. England. Manchester, 1921.

Pliny the EIder. NaturaZis historiae libri XXXVII 6 vols. Edited by C. Mayhoff. (1875). Stuttgart, 1967.

Pliny the Younger. Epistvlarvm libri decem. Edited by R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford, 1963.

Plutarch. Plutarchi MoraZia. Edited by W. R. Paton and J. \Vegehaupt, 2nd ed. Leipzig, 1971.

_____ . Vitae parallelae. 5 vols. Leipzig, 1899-1902.

Pindar. Carmina cumfragmentis. Edited by B. Snell. Leipzig, 1934.

Polybius. Historiae. 2 vols. Edited by T. Büttner-Wobst (1889-1904, 1905). Stuttgart, 1962-7.

Porphyry. De l'abstinence. Edited and translated by J. Bouffartigue and J. Patillon. Paris, 1977-9.

Pratten, B. P., M. Dods, T. Smith, eds. and trans. The writings ofTatian and Theophilus: and the Clementine Recognitions. Edimburg, 1867.

Procopius. Procopii Caesariensis opera omnia. Edited by J. Haury. (1914-40). Leipzig, 1963-4).

Ptolemy. Geographia. Edited by C. Nobbe. (1843-5). Hildesheim, 1966.

Quintillian. Institutionis oratoriae Ziber XII. 2 vols. Edited by L. Radermacher. (1907). Leipzig, 1959.

Riese, A, ed. Geographi latini minores. Heilbron, 1878.

Rougé, J., ed. Expositio totius mundi et gentium. Paris, 1966.

100 Seeck, O. ed. Notitia dignitatum; accedunt Notifia Urbis Constantinopolitanae et latercula provindarum. (1876). Frankfurt am Main, 1962.

Seneca. Dialogorum libros XII Edited by E. Hermes. Leipzig, 1905.

-----. L. Annaei Senecae ad Lucilium epistulae morales. 2 vols. Edited by L. D. Reynolds. Oxford, 1965.

-----. Naturalium quaestionum libros VIII Edited by A. Gercke. Leipzig, 1907.

Seneca the EIder. Oratorum et rhetorum sententiae, Divisiones, colores. Edited by L. Hâkanson. Leipzig, 1989.

Sextus Empiricus. Sextus Empiricus. Edited and translated by R. G. Bury. 4 vols. Cambridge, MA, 1933-49).

Solinus. Collectanea rerum memorabilium. Edited by T. Mommsen. Berlin, 1895.

Spengel, L, ed. Rhetores Graeci. Leipzig. 3 vols. 1856.

Strabo. The Geography ofStrabo. 8 vols. Edited and translated by H. L. Jones. London, 1931.

Suetonius. Opera. Edited by M. Dun. Leipzig, 1923.

Synesius of Cyrene. The Letters ofSynesius ofCyrene. Edited and translated by A. Fitzgerald. London, 1926.

Tacitus. Annalium ab excessu div; augusti /ibri. Edited by C. D. Fisher. Oxford, 1906.

-----. Cornelii Tadti opera minora. Edited by R. M. Ogilvie and M. Winterbottom. Oxford,1975.

-----. Historiarum libri. Edited by C. D. Fisher. Oxford, 1910.

Tertullian. Ad nationes. Edited by J. P. Migne. Patrologia Latina 1 (1844): cols. 559- 608.

-----. Apologétique. Edited and translated by J.-P. Waltzing. Paris, 1923.

-----. Q. Septimi Florentis Tertulliani de baptismo liber. Tertullian's Homily on Baptism. The Text Edited with an Introduction, Translation and Commentary. Edited and translated by E. Evans. London, 1964.

101 -----. De idolatria. Edited and translated by J.H. Waszink and J.C.M. van Winden. Leiden, 1987.

Velleius Paterculus. Ad Vinicum consulem libri duo. Edited by M. Elefante. Hildesheim, 1997

Virgil. Georgics. Edited by R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford, 1990.

Vitruvius. De architectura libri decem. Edited by F. Krohn. Leipzig, 1912.

Wallis Budge, E. A. ed. and trans. The Book ofthe Saints ofthe Ethiopian Church. 3 vols. Cambridge, 1928.

Wallis Budge, E. A, ed. and trans. The Contendings ofthe Apostles. 2 vols. London, 1935.

Wright, W, ed. and trans. Apocryphal Acts ofthe Apostles. Editedfrom Syrian Manuscripts in the British Museum and Other Libraries. (1871). Amsterdam, 1963.

B. Modern works

PUnio il Vecchio sotto il profilo storico e letterario: atti deI convegno di Como 5/6/7 ottobre 1979. Como, 1982.

Tecnologia, economia e società nel mondo romano: atti dei convegno di Como, 27/28/29 settembre 1979. Como, 1980.

Alexander, P. 1. "The Medieval Legend of the Last Roman Emperor and Its Messianic Origin." Journal ofthe Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 41 (1978): 1-15.

Allen, J. L. "Lands of Myth, Waters of Wonder: the Place of the Imagination in the History of Geographical Exploration." In Geographies ofthe Mind: Essays in Historical Geosophy in Honor ofJohn Kirtland Wright, ed. D. Lowenthal and M. J. Bowden, 41-61. New York, 1976.

Ameisenowa, Z. "Animal-Headed Gods, Evangelists, Saints and Righteous Men." Journal ofthe Warburg and Courtauld Institutes (1949): 21-45

Amory, P. Peoples and Identity in Ostrogothic !taly, 489-554. Cambridge, 1997.

Anderson, A. R. Alexander's Gate, Gog and Magog, and the Enclosed Nations. Cambridge, MA, 1932.

102 A vraméa, A. "La géographie du culte de saint Christophe en Grèce à l'époque méso­ byzantine et révêché de Lacédémone au début du Xe siècle." In Geographia Byzantina, ed. H. Ahrweiler, 31-6. Paris, 1981.

Arnaud, P. "Pouvoir des mots et limites de la cartographie dans la géographie grecque et romaine." In Espace, paysages, histoire, antiquité, 9-29. Dialogues d'histoire ancienne 87.1. Paris, 1989.

Aujac, G. "L'île de Thulé, mythe ou réalité." Athenaeum 66 (1988): 329-43.

-----. "Strabon et son temps." In Geschichte der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaften in der Antike. 2. Geographie und verwandte Wissenschaften, ed. W. Hübner, 103-39. Stuttgart, 2000.

Bajard, A. "Quelques aspects de rimaginaire romain de rocéan de César aux Flaviens." Revue des Études Classiques 76 (1998): 177-91.

Beagon, M. Roman Nature: The Thought ofPliny the Eider. Oxford, 1992.

Bejaoui, F. "Îles et villes de la Méditerranée sur une mosaïque d'Ammaedara (Haïdra, Tunisie)." Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1997 (1999): 825-58.

Bekker-Nielsen, T. "Terra Incognita: the Subjective Geography of the Roman Empire. Il In Studies in Ancient History and Numismatics Presented to Rudi Thomson, ed. A. Damsgaard-Madsen, E. Christiansen and E. Hallager, 148-61. Aarhus, 1988.

Benabou, M. "Monstres et hybrides chez Lucrèce et Pline l'Ancien" In Hommes et bêtes, entretiens sur le racisme, ed. 1. Poliakov, 129-42. Paris, 1975.

Berger, H. Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der Griechen. 4 vols. in 1. Leipzig, 1887-93.

Bernheimer, R. WUd Men in the Middle Ages: A Study in Art, Sentiment and Demonology. Cambridge, MA, 1951.

Binon, S. Documents grecs relatifs à S. Mercure de Césarée. Louvain, 1937.

-----. Essai sur le cycle de Saint Mercure, martyr de Dèce et meurtrier de l'empereur Julien. Louvain, 1937.

Bonner, S. F. Education in Ancient Rome: From the EIder Cato to the Younger Pliny. Berkeley, 1977.

Bowersock, G. Augustus and the Greek World. Oxford, 1965.

103 Braudel, F. La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe Il, 2nd ed. 3 vols. Paris, 1966.

Brodersen, K. "The Presentation of Geographical Knowledge for Travel and Transport in the Roman world: itineraria non tantum adnotata sed etiam picta." In Travel and Geography in the Roman Empire, ed. C. Adams and R. Laurence, 7-21. London, New York, 2001.

Brown, P. "Town, Village and Holy Man: The Case of Syria. " In Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity, 153-65. Berkeley, 1982.

-----. The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1oo0,2nd edition. Oxford, 2003.

Browning, R. "The Byzantines and Homer." In Homer's Ancient Readers: the Hermedeutics ofGreek Epic's Earliest Exegetes, ed. R. Lamberton and J. Keaney, 134-148. Princeton, 1992.

Brunt, P. A. Review of Die Aussen poUtik des Augustus und die Augusteische Dichtung, by H. D. Meyer. Journal ofRoman Studies 53 (1963): 170-6.

Bunbury, E. H. A History ofAncient Geography among the Greeks and the Romans From the Earliest Ages Till the FaU ofthe Roman Empire, vol. 2. (1883). Reprinted, New York, 1959.

Burkitt, F. C., ed., Euphemia and the Gotk London, 1913.

Callahan, A. D. "The Acts of Mark: Tradition, Transmission, and Translation of the Arabic Version." In The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles: Harvard Divinity School Studies, ed. F. Bovon, A. G. Brock and C. R. Matthews, 63-85. Cambridge, MA, 1999.

Cameron, A. "Byzantium and the Past in the Seventh Century: the search for redefinition." In The Seventh Century: Change and Continuity, ed. J. Fontaine & J. N. Hillgarth, 250·76. London, 1992.

Cameron, A. Christianity and the Rhetoric ofEmpire: the Development of Christian Discourse. Berkeley, 1992.

-----. "Remaking the Past." In Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical world, ed. G. W. Bowersock et al., 1-20. Cambridge, MA, 1999.

Casson, L. TraveZ in the Ancient World. Toronto, 1974.

Charles-Picard, G. La Carthage de Saint Augustin. Paris, 1965.

104 e Chocheyras, J. "Fin des terres et fin du temps d'Hésycmus (Ye siècle) à Béatus (YIIl sièecle )." The Use and Abuse ofEschatology in the Middle Ages, ed. W. Verbeke, D. Verhelst and A. Welkenhuysen, 72-81. Louvain, 1988.

Clarke, K. Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Constructions ofthe Roman World. Oxford, 1999.

Cohen, J. J. "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)." In Monster Theory, ed. J. J. Cohen, 3- 25. Minneapolis, 1996.

Cordano, F. La geografia degli antichi. Rome, 1992.

Dauge, Y. A. Le barbare. Recherches sur la conception romaine de la barbarie et de la civilisation. Latomus no. 176. Brussels, 1981.

Delehaye, H. Les légendes grecques des saints militaires. Paris, 1909.

Desanges, J. Catalogue des tribus africaines de l'Antiquité classique à l'ouest du Nil, Dakar, 1962.

Diels, H. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. 3 vols. Edited by W, Kranz, 6th ed. Zurich, 1951-2.

Dihle, A. "Die entdeckungsgeschichtliche Voraussetzungen des Indienhandels der rômischen Kaiserzeit." Aufttieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt Il, Principat IX (Berlin, 1978): 546-80.

Dilke, O. A. W. Greek and Roman Maps. Ithaca, 1985.

-----. "Itineraries and Geographical Maps in the Early and Late Roman Empires." In The History ofCartography 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, Medieval and the Mediterranean, ed. J. B. Harley and D. Woodward, 234-57, Chicago, London, 1987.

Dion, R. Aspects politiques de la géographie antique. Paris, 1977.

Dueck, D. Strabo ofAmasia. A Greek Man ofLetters in Augustan Rome. Londres, New York,2000.

Esbroeck, M. van. "Le saint comme symbole. n ln The Byzantine Saint, ed. S. Hackel, 128-40. London, 1981.

Ferguson, J. Utopias ofthe Ancient World. London, 1975.

Fornara, . C. W. The Nature ofHistory in Ancient Greece and Rome. Berkeley, 1983.

105 Fowden, G. Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences ofMonotheism in Late Antiquity. Princeton, 1993.

Frend, W. H. C. Rise ofthe Monophysite Movement: Chapters in the History ofthe Church in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries. Cambridge, 1972

-----. "The Monophysites and the Transition Between the Ancient World and the Middle Ages. " In Passaggio deI mondo antico al medio evo da Teodosio a san Gregorio Magna, 2-24. Rome, 1980.

-----. The Rise ofChristianity. London, 1984.

Friedman, J. B. The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Cambridge, MA, London, 1981.

Garland, R. The Eye ofthe Beholder: De/ormit)' and Disability in the Greco-Roman World.lthaca, 1995.

Geus, K. "Eratosthenes." Geschichte der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaftem in der Antike. 2. Geographie undverwandte Wissenschaften, ed. W. Hübner, 75-92. Stuttgart, 2000.

Greatrex, G. "Roman Identity in the Sixth Century." In Ethnicity and Culture in Late Antiquity, ed. S. Mitchell, G. Greatrex, 267-92. London, 2000.

Grégoire, H. I1Inscriptions historiques byzantines." Byzantion 4 (1927): 437-68.

Gutschmid, A. "Die Kônigsnamenin den apokryphen Apostelgeschichten: ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis des geschichtlichen Romans." Rheinisches Museum for Philologie 19 (1864) : 161-83,380-401.

Hadot, P. Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, 3rd ed. Paris, 1993.

Halkin, F. Recherches et documents d'hagiographie byzantine. Brussels, 1971.

-----. Légendes grecques de 'martyres romaines'. Brussels, 1973.

Harris, W. V. Ancient Literacy. Cambridge, MA, London, 1989.

Hartog, F. Mémoire d'Ulysse: récits sur la frontière en Grèce ancienne. Paris, 1996.

-----. Le mirroir d'Hérodote: essai sur la représentation de l'autre. Paris, 1980.

Harvey, P. D. A. "Local and Regional Cartography in Medieval Europe." In The History ofCartography 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, Medieval and the

106 Mediterranean, ed. J. B. Harley and D. Woodward, 464-501. Chicago, London, 1987.

Harvey, S. A. Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John ofEphesus and the Lives ofthe Eastern Saints. Berkeley, 1990.

Hilhorst, A. and P.J. Lalleman. "The Acts of Andrew and Matthias: Is It Part of the Original Acts ofAndrew?" In The Apocryphal Acts ofAndrew, ed. J. N. Bremmer, 1-14. Louvain, 2000. 1-14)

Hill, S. "Matronianuis, Cornes Isauriae: An Inscription from an Barly Byzantine Basilica at Yanikhan, Rough Cilicia," Anatolian Studies 35 (1985), 93-7.

Honingmann, E. Évêques et évêchés monophysites d'Asie antérieure au VI siècle. Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium 127/sub. 2. Louvain, 1951.

Hübner, W. "Hipparch." Geschichte der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaftem in der Antike. 2. Geographie und verwandte Wissenschaften, ed. W. Hübner, 93- 101. Stuttgart, 2000.

Jacob, C. "L'œil et la mémoire: sur la Périégèse de la Terre habitée de Denys." In Arts et légendes d'espaces, figures du voyage et rhétoriques du monde, ed. C. Jacob and F. Lestringant, 21-97. Paris, 1981.

-----. "Cartographie et rectification: essai de lecture des 'prolégomènes' de la Géographie de Strabon. Il In Strabone: contributi allo studio della personalità e dell'opera, vol. 2, ed. F. Prontera, 29-64. Perugia, 1986.

-----. "La carte écrite: sur les pouvoirs imaginaires du texte géographique en Grèce ancienne." In Espaces de la lecture, ed. A.-M. Christin, 230-40. Paris, 1988.

-----. La Description de la terre habitée de Denys d'Alexandrie ou la leçon de géographie. Paris, 1990.

Jacoby, F. "Über die Entwickung der griechischen Historiographie und den Plan einer neuen Sammlung der griechischen Historikerfragmente." Klio 9 (1909): 801-23.

Janni, P. La mappa e il periplo, cartografica antica e spazio odologico. Rome, 1984.

Jones, A. H. M. The Later Roman Empire 284-602: a Social, Economic and Administrative Survey. 3 vols. Oxford, 1964.

Junod, E. "Origène, Eusèbe et la tradition sur la répartition des champs de mission des apôtres (Eusèbe, Histoire ecclésiastique, III, 1, 1-3)." In Les Actes apocryphes des ap6tres. Christianisme et monde païen, ed. F. Bovon et al., 233-48. Geneva, 1981.

107 Kaestli, J.-D. "Les principales orientations de la recherche sur les Actes apocryphes des apôtres." In Les Actes apocryphes des apôtres. Christianisme et monde pai'en, ed. F. Bovon et al. 49-67. Geneva~ 1981.

-----. "Les scènes d'attribution des champs de mission et de départ de l'apôtre dans les Actes apocryphes." In Les Actes apocryphes des apôtres. Christianisme et monde pai'en, ed. F. Bovon et al., 249-64. Geneva, 1981.

Kreuser, J. Der christliche Kirchenbau, seine Geschichte, Symbolik, Bildnerei, 2nd edition. 2 vols. Regensburg, 1860.

Ladner, G. B. "On Roman Attitudes towards barbarians in Late Antiquity." Viator (1976): 1-26.

Lana, I. "Scienza e politica." Tecnologia, economia e società nel mondo romano: atti dei convegno di Como, 27/28/29 settembre 1979,21-43. Como, 1980.

Lassen. C. 1ndische Altertumskunde. 5 vols. Leipzig, 1858.

Lebon, J. Le Monophysisme sévérien: étude historique, littéraire et théologique sur la résistance monophysite au concile de Chalcédoine jusqu'à la constitution de l'Église jacobite. Louvain, 1909.

Lenoble, R. Esquisse d'une histoire de l'idée de nature. Paris, 1969.

Leue, G. "Zeit und Heimat des Periegeten Dionysios. "Philologus 42 (1884): 175-78.

Long, C. H. "Primitive/Civilised: The Locus of a Problem." History ofReligions 20 (1980): 43-61.

Lowenthal, D. "Geography, Experience, and Imagination: Towards a Geographical Epistemology." In Readings in Social Geography, ed. E. Jones, 104-27. London, 1975.

Lozovsky, N. 'The Earth ls Our Book': Geographical Knowledge in the Latin West ca. 400-1000. Ann Arbor, 2000

Luchesi, E. and l-M. Prieur. "Fragments coptes des Actes d'André et Matthias et d'André et Barthélémy." Analecta Bollandiana 96 (1978): 341-2.

MacDonald, D. R. Christianizing Homer: The Odyssey, Plato and The Acts of Andrew. Oxford,1994.

Matthews, J. F. The Roman Empire ofAmmianus. London, 1989.

108 Marrou, HA. Histoire de l'éducation dans l'antiquité, 2nd ed. Paris, 1950.

Morgan, M. G. "Tacitus on Germany: Roman History or Latin Literature?" In Literature and History, ed. L. Schulze and W. Wetzels, 87-118. Boston, 1983.

Moynihan, R. "Geographical Mythology and Roman Imperial Ideology. " In The Age of Augustus, ed. R. Winkes, 149-61. Louvain, 1986.

Mund-Dopchie, M. "L'Inde and l'imaginaire grec." Les Études Classiques 57 (1989): 209-26.

Murphy, T. Ethnography in the Naturalis Historia ofPliny the EIder. Ph.D. diss., University ofCalifornia at Berkeley, 1997.

Murray, O. "History." In Le savoir grec, ed. J. Brunschwig and G. Lloyd, 368-79. Paris, 1996.

Nicolet, C. L'inventaire du monde: géographie et politique aux origines de l'Empire romain. Paris, 1988.

Pédech, P. La géographie des Grecs. Paris, 1976.

-----. "Géographes grecs et géographes romains. "In Colloque histoire et historiographie, ed. R. Chevallier, 23-35. Caesarodunum 15bis. Paris, 1980.

Pernot~ L. "Topique et topographie: l'espace dans la rhétorique grecque à l'époque impériale." In Arts et légendes d'espaces, figures du voyage et rhétoriques du monde, ed. C. Jacob and F. Lestringant, 99-109. Paris, 1981.

Piankoff, A. "Saint Mercure Abou Seifein et les cynocéphales." Bullerin de la Société d'Archéologie Copte 8 (1942): 17-24.

Porter, P. W and F. E. Lukerman. "The Geography ofUtopia." In Geographies ofthe Mind Essays in Historical Geosophy in Honor ofJohn Kirtland Wright, ed. D. Lowenthal and M. J. Bowden, 197-223. New York, 1976.

Romer, F. E. Pomponius Mela's Description ofthe World. Ann Arbor, 1988.

Rom.m, J. The Edges ofthe World in Ancient Thought: Geography, Exploration and Fiction. Princeton, 1992.

Saintyves, P. Saint Christophe successeur d'Anubis, d'Hermès et d'Héraclès. Paris, 1936.

Salway, B. "Travel, itineraria and tabellaria." Travel and Geography in the Roman Empire, ed. C. Adams and R. Laurence, 22-66. London, 2001.

109 Schindler, C. "Geographische Lehrdichtung," In Geschichte der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaften in der Antike,2 vols., ed. G. Wohrle, 2:163-83. Stuttgart, 2000.

Shaw, B. D. "Eaters of Flesh, Drinkers of Milk: the Ancient Mediterranean Ideology of the Pastoral Nomad." Ancient Society 13-14 (1982-3): 5-31.

Sherk, R. K. "Roman Geographical Exploration and Military Maps. Il Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt II, Principat l (Berlin, 1974),534-62.

Stahl, W. H Roman Science: Origins, Development and Influence to the Later Middle Ages. Madison, 1962.

Stallybrass, P. and A. White. The PoUtics and Poe tics of Transgression. London, 1986.

Stewart, S. On Longing: Narratives ofthe Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Baltimore, 1984.

Stiemon E. "Jean d'Éphèse." In Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique: doctrine et histoire, 17 vols, ed. M. Viller et al., 8:cols. 484-6. Paris, 1974.

Syme, R. "Exotic Names, Notably in Seneca's Tragedies." Acta Classica 30 (1987): 49- 64.

Syme, R. "Pliny the Procurator." In Roman Papers, 7 vols, ed. E. Badian and A. Bidey, 2:742-73. Oxford, 1979-1991.

Tate, G. "La Syrie à l'époque byzantine: essai de synthèse." Archéologie et histoire de la Syrie, ed. J. M. Dentzer, W. Orthman, 2. vols, 2:97-116. Saarbrück, 1989.

Tchalenko, G. Villages antiques de la Syrie du Nord. 3. vols. Paris, 1953.

Thonard, P. Barbarie et civilisation chez Strabon: étude critique des livres III et IV de la Géographie. Paris, 1987.

Thomso~ J. O. History ofAncient Geography. New York, 1948.

Traina, G. "De Synésios à Priscus: aperçus sur la connaissance de la 'barbarie' hunnique (fin du IVe - milieu du Ve siècle)." In L'armée romaine et les barbares du llIe au VIle siècle, ed. M, Lazanski and F. Vallet, 285-90. Paris, 1993.

Tuan, Y.-F. "Geopiety: A Theme in Man's Attachment to Nature and Place." In Geographies ofthe Mind: Essays in Historical Geosophy in Honor ofJohn Kirtland Wright, ed. D. Lowenthal and M. J. Bowden, 11-39. New York, 1976.

110 -----. "Humanistic Geography." Annals ofthe Association ofAmerican Geographers 66 (1976): 266-76.

-----. Literature and Geography: Implications for Geographical Research." In Humanistic Geography: Prospects and Problems, ed. D. Ley and M. Samuels, 194-206. Chicago, 1978.

-----. "Space, Time, Place: A Humanistic Frame." In Making Sense ofTime, ed. T. Carlstein, D. Parkes and N. Thrift, 7-16. New York, 1978.

Vliet, E. C. L. van der. "L'ethnographie de Strabon: Idéologie ou tradition?" In Strabone, contributi allo studio della personalità e dell/opera, vol. 1, ed. F. Prontera, 29-86. Perugia, 1984.

V oôbus, A. "The Origin of the Monophysite Church in Syria and Mesopotamia." Church History 42 (1973): 17-26.

Wallace-Hadrill, A. "Pliny the EIder and Man's Unnatural History." Greece & Rome 37.1 (1990) 80-96.

Wells, C. M. The German Policy ofAugustus: an Examination ofthe Arehaeological Evidence. Oxford, 1972.

White, D. Myths ofthe Dog-Men. Chicago, 1991.

Whlttaker, C. R. Frontiers ofthe Roman Empire: a Social and Economie Study. Baltimore, 1994.

Williams, D. Deformed Discourse: the Function ofthe Monster in Medieval Thought and Literature. Montreal, 1996.

Williams, G. Change and Decline: Roman Literature in the Early Empire. Berkeley, 1978.

Winkler, G. "Geographie bei den Rômem: Mela, Seneca, Plinius." In Geschichte der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaften in der Antike, 2 vols., ed. G. Wohrle, 2:141-61. Stuttgart, 2000.

Wolfram, H. The Roman Empire and Its Germanic People. Berkeley, 1997, Germ. orig. 1990.

Witlkower, R. "Marvels of the East. A Study in the History of Monsters." Journal ofthe Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 159-97.

Wright, W. Catalogue ofSyriac Manuscripts in the British Museum Acquired since the Year 1838. 3 vols. London, 1872.

111 Zanker, P. The Power ofImages in the Age ofAugustus. Ann Arbor, 1988, Germ. orig. 1983.

Zwierzina, K. nOie Legenden der Martyr von unzetstorbaren Leben./I Innsbrücker Festgross von der philosophischen Faku/tat (Innsbruck, 1909), 130-58.

C. Sideshow

Davis, L. Shadows in Bronze. New York, 1990.

-----. The Iron Band ofMars. New York, 1994.

Gaiman, N. The Sandman. 39: Soft Places. New York, July 1992.

Martin, J. Les légions perdues. Brussels, 1965.

Pavlovska, S., P. Tosev and M. Dimeski. "Origin of the Vinica Icons by Physico­ Chemical Analyses" (1996) . Retreived 14 July 2003.

112