Greek Literary Topographies in the Roman Imperial World

Focusing on the Greek world during the high Roman Empire between the first and third centuries CE, this edited volume examines the representation of space in literary evidence. During this period of vast trade networks, imperial expansion, cosmopolitan culture and high elite mobility, geography was part of the language of power. The topographies of the Greek world – urban, rural, cultic and monumental – were reshaped and curated by writers to tell new stories about Hellenic space. The contributors explore the topographical imagination in classical texts as diverse as novels, declamations, handbooks of dream interpretation, history writing and fictional dialogues. Paying particular attention to a persistent tension between mobility and cultural rootedness and connection, each chapter examines how Greek writers of the imperial era represented and manipulated the multi-temporal landscapes of the contemporary world. Authors under discussion include Dio of Prusa, Aelius Aristides, Artemidorus, Herodes Atticus, Lucian, Pausanias and Dionysius the Periegete. Greek Literary Topographies in the Roman Imperial World presents a composite picture of how imperial-era Greek writers understood the imperative of topographical engagement and the possibilities of topographical imagination for constructing landscapes of cultural encounter and reflection.