Description
Book Synopsis‘Where am I?’. Our physical orientation in place is one of the defining characteristics of our embodied existence. However, while there is no human life, culture, or action without a specific location functioning as its setting, people go much further than this bare fact in attributing meaning and value to their physical environment. 'Landscape’ denotes this symbolic conception and use of terrain. It is a creation of human culture. In Valuing Landscape we explore different ways in which physical environments impacted on the cultural imagination of Greco-Roman Antiquity. In seventeen chapters with different disciplinary perspectives, we demonstrate the values attached to mountains, the underworld, sacred landscapes, and battlefields, and the evaluations of locale connected with migration, exile, and travel.
Trade Review"Because it collects a variety of focused studies, McInerney’s and Sluiter’s volume is able to incorporate the diversity of both landscape studies and the Classical world itself. (...) The volume includes numerous maps, photographs, and even visualizations of numerical data, all enormously helpful in supporting the arguments of the authors who employ them. Bibliographical information appends each individual contribution. An excellent editorial contribution is the variety of indices: an index of Greek terms, of Latin terms, a general index, and an index locorum. While some contributions to this volume shine more brightly than others, each essay is informative to its own topic and representative of the relevant scholarship. The volume itself is a worthy addition to the growing body of literature dedicated to landscape studies and environmental humanities within Classics." Laura Zientek, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2017.08.30.
Table of ContentsContents List of Illustrations List of Contributors 1 General Introduction Jeremy McInerney and Ineke Sluiter Part 1 - Mountains 2 Mount Etna in the Greco-Roman imaginaire: Culture and Liquid Fire Richard Buxton 3 Strabo’s Mountains Jason König 4 Mountain, Myth, and Territory: Teuthrania as Focal Point in the Landscape of Pergamon Christina G. Williamson Part 2 - Underground and Underworld 5 Diving Underground: Giving Meaning to Subterranean Rivers Julie Baleriaux 6 Experience and Stimmung: Landscapes of the Underworld in Seneca’s Plays Kathrin Winter Part 3 - The Sacred 7 Birds around the Temple: Constructing a Sacred Environment Margaret M. Miles 8 Juno Sospita and the draco: Myth, Image, and Ritual in the Landscape of the Alban Hills Rianne Hermans 9 Charismatic Landscapes? Scenes from Central Greece under Roman Rule Betsey A. Robinson Part 4 - Battlefields and Memory of War 10 Heritage in the Landscape: The ‘Heroic Tumuli’ in the Troad Region Elizabeth Minchin 11 Land at Peace and Sea at War: Landscape and the Memory of Actium in Greek Epigrams and Propertius’Elegies Bettina Reitz-Joosse 12 Thessaly as an Intertextual Landscape of Civil War in Latin Poetry Annemarie Ambühl Part 5 - Moving Around 13 Migration and Landscapes of Value in Attica Danielle L. Kellogg 14 Songs of Homecoming: Sites of Victories and Celebrations in Pindar’s Victory Odes Maša Ćulumović 15 The Mythical Landscapers of Augustan Rome Lissa Crofton-Sleigh 16 Polyvalent Tomi: Ovid’s Landscape of Relegation and the Romanization of the Black Sea Region Christoph Pieper 17 Stones, Names, Stories, and Bodies: Pausanias before the Walls of Seven-Gated Thebes Greta Hawes Index of Greek Terms Index of Latin Terms Index Locorum General Index
