Thomas A. Schmitz: Pyrenaean Mountains and Deep-Valleyed Alps: Geography and Empire in the Garland of Philip

While classical studies generally lack the depth and width of evidence which allow the digital analysis typical of the “spatial turn” in modern historical research, representations and imaginations of space have come into focus during the last two decades. Taking their cues from the postcolonial deconstruction of the binary opposition “center/periphery,” scholars have studied the ideological configuration of space in the Roman Empire (see, e.g., K. Clarke, Between Geography and History. Hellenistic Constructions of the Roman World, OUP 1999). In my contribution, I intend to analyze the representation of (imperial) space in the epigrams of the Garland of Philip. The material is difficult to interpret as the authenticity of many epigrams, the chronology of their authors, and their geographical place are disputed, so most of my conclusions must remain tentative.

My contribution analyzes the ways in which geographical space is imagined and depicted in these poetical texts. Distant regions are no longer seen as completely unfamiliar and outlandish, but populate the imaginary map of an ever growing world. Moreover, I argue that in the first century B.C.E., Italy and in particular Rome became part of the Greek landscape; e.g., first-person statements in epigrams can call Italy the “fatherland,” thus depicting it as the emotional center of the vast world of the Roman empire. An important topic in many funerary epigrams is “death in a faraway place”; this reflects the reality of a huge empire in which mercenaries, tradesmen, ambassadors and other officials were indeed traveling to the most distant regions. My paper will examine different strategies which poetical texts employ to impose order on this vast world, such as stereotypical connections with myth or “classical” Greek history. In the process, some place names (such as Thermopylae or Salamis) are loaded with cultural significance and become Greek “lieux de mémoire” (P. Nora). My contribution will conclude by briefly comparing this Greek view of the Roman Empire with the view which we find in the Second Sophistic, when a Greek Renaissance had established an imaginary Greece as the center of the world; this will allow us to see the specificity of the geography of the Roman Empire in late Hellenistic and early imperial Greek texts.