Sørensen's volume, offered to Klaus Geus on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, brings together 31 contributions that, from different points of view, approach themes that have been central to the honouree's long and fruitful research. We can take as a starting point D. Salvoldi's felicitous expression ‘sea port’ (p. 451), to describe the hothouse of knowledge run by Geus in Berlin, the training ground of many young scholars. In particular, the concept of ‘common sense geography’ (CSG), which was at the basis of a research project co-directed by Geus in the Berlin TOPOI Excellence Cluster network (2007–2019; see K. Geus and M. Thiering 2012, 2014 in the bibliography), has paved the way for a type of investigation centring essentially on the historical aspects of ancient documentation relating to the perception of space and its representation.
Indeed, from the encounter of cognitive psychology and linguistics with ancient sources there emerges the possibility of understanding the constitution of mental models and cognitive maps which, although apparently not in dialogue with the products of scientific geography, seem in fact to have significantly contributed to the development of ancient geographical thought as a whole.
Several contributions fall into this line of investigation. K. Boshnakov devotes an in-depth analysis of the river system gravitating on the Danube-Ister and interprets the relevant section of the Histories of Herodotus as an excerptum – almost an ‘island map’ – not integrated with the rest of the logoi and, as such, as an example of a cognitive model based on data collected by predecessors (especially Hecataeus). O. Coloru absolves Philostratus from the criticism commonly levelled at him for inventing the events of Apollonius of Tyana. Indeed, the latter's journey to India shows elements taken from the Greek and Roman tradition and especially from the CSG. K. Guckelsberger examines the toponyms of the Tabula Peutingeriana in comparison with those of the Cosmographia Ravennatis, which are considered independent from TP, where graphical requirements prevail and justify an organisation of space in which, in my opinion, the Eratosthenic model is still far removed. I. Matijašić traces a one-dimensional perspective in a group of Hellenistic inscriptions on territorial disputes. What emerges in these texts is an odological conception of space, differing from the mathematical-scientific one that matured in the closed circles of the philosophers to whom the use of maps would be exclusively referable. C. Sánchez-Mañas re-examines the chapters of the Histories (6.136–40) devoted by Herodotus to Miltiades’ seizure of Lemnos. Contrary to critics, who today downplay this occupation on archaeological grounds and discredit the tale's historical reliability, she attributes to Miltiades the idea of a route to the island from Thracian Chersonesos instead of Athens in the perspective of a CSG that made it possible to overcome the Delphic prophecy on the impossibility of occupying the island. Sørensen examines the Book of Judith (late second/early first century bce) and the Novel of Cambyses, which was composed in a Hellenistic Jewish context and which has come down to us in a few papyrus fragments written in Coptic, based on a very similar Greek original. The campaign of a ruler – Nabuchadnezzar/Cambises – is examined with the aim of reconstructing the mental maps used in the texts and probably connected with the so-called Table of Peoples reported in Genesis 10.
Partly connected to this line of research are the studies dedicated to Strabo. P. Schneider observes how, in describing the Horn of Africa, the geographer (16.4.4–13) draws on periplographic sources, on Artemidorus and Agatarchides of Knidos, what emerges being a ‘lexical cognitive map’ or an ‘erudite lexical cognitive map’. It may be added that the role of Eratosthenes in the general setting of Strabo's description of the world, but also in the development of specific geographical areas, must have contributed significantly to a selection of data for cartographic purposes.
M. de Bakker emphasises the importance of Hellenistic geography and of dystopian/utopian elements reinterpreted in relation to the Roman imperial reality. T. Bekker-Nielsen accurately reconstructs the lines that emerge from the junction of points marking the stages of the main roads examined. G. Traina hypothesises Roman origins for Strabo's father, who was never mentioned in the geographical work. Utopia is present in the studies of Geus, and it is to this theme that K. Ruffing dedicates his study, re-evaluating the importance of the economic component to understand the genesis of a flourishing literature from the fourth century bce onwards.
Individual aspects of the geographical tradition are analysed by M. Albaladejo Vivero, who emphasises the importance of the historiography of Alexander in the works of Mela and Pliny. S. Panichi discusses the unresolved problem of the names attributed to the island Taprobane, described by Onesicritus. On the change from Palaisimoundou to Simoundou, Panichi hypothesises that Artemidorus of Ephesus mistook the initial part of Palaisimoundou for the adverb palai and indicated Simoundou as the ancient name of Taprobane. Marcian of Heraclea would then seem to have retrieved the value of the adverb of time from Artemidorus so that the island Salice was called proteron Palaisimoundou. Ptolemy's Geography, to which Geus has devoted many studies, is the subject of important research conducted by P. Arnaud, S. Colin, Q. Poterek and F. Salomon on the alignments drawn by the ancient geographer to draw the map of the seas forming the basis of Ptolemy's geographical work.
C. Hoffmann offers an interesting analysis of the practice of using colours to attribute names to seas with particular mention of the Prasodes-greenish sea, attested in Ptolemy, Marcian of Heraclea and in the Geographiae expositio compendiaria. Hoffmann hypothesises that the colour definition refers to a scheme of Chinese origin, interpreted by Greek sources in relation to the vegetation encountered in the places reached and described.
Peculiar Egyptian contexts are evoked by Salvoldi searching for the identification of the island of Meroe. S. Rudolf investigates the possible Ethiopia–India confusion within Syriac literature, which also characterises Greek literature, and hypothesises that the ambiguous designation of a South embracing the entire southern range of the inhabited world was of Mesopotamian origin. R.M. Voigt focuses on a strictly linguistic context centred on comparisons between the ancient Ethiopian and Axumite languages. Z. Wellnhofer deals with the technical problem of translation into Ethiopian of the work dealing with chronology and history by Sakir Ibn ar Rahib, a Coptic scholar who completed his writing in 1257.
Historiography and philology, which play a prominent role in Geus's studies, are areas in relation to which numerous contributions are to be found. K. Brodersen emphasises, through the analysis of Philostratus’ connection with the members of the Second Sophistic, the importance of the master–disciple relationship for the formation of any scholarly community. G.F. Chiai outlines, on the basis of the study of Symmachus’ Relationes, the role of mediator between the Roman people and the emperor, which the praefectus Urbi seems to have built and described through the representation of his own non-Christian identity. E. Baltrusch re-evaluates the importance of T. Mommsen's study of the principate in contrast to the criticism that immediately arose concerning the approach with which Roman law and the transition from republic to empire were analysed. M. Heil focuses on the historiography relating to the matricide of 59 ce and the strategy adopted by Nero to justify the death of Germanicus’ daughter Agrippina. M. Engracia Muñoz-Santos re-examines the discovery at Meroe of a head of Augustus: it is the story narrated by Strabo (17.1.54, C820) and Cassius Dio (54.5.4–6; not 59.5.6 as on p. 414 n. 6) that saw the queen Amanirenas and the prefect Petronius as protagonists, according to a reconstruction already convincingly put forward by J. Desanges in 1978 (Recherches sur l'activité des Méditerranéens aux confins de l'Afrique, pp. 308–31). W. Will examines the bias of ancient historians through the portrait of Cleon and Hyperbolus by Thucydides, Menon by Xenophon, Philip II by Theopompus. The expositive character of the contribution and a bibliography limited to Anglo-German literature prevent Will from considering important topics such as – in the case of the Menon of Xenophon – the antagonistic Xenophon–Plato relationship, which was previously examined by S. Mazzarino (Il pensiero storico classico [1966]) and also by L. Canfora (see, among others, La guerra civile ateniese [2014]). V. Gysembergh and D. Marcotte present two studies of a philological nature: the former reconstructs the activity of Maximus Planudes and his entourage, to whom Gysembergh prudently traces the translation of the Latin text De spera by John of Sacrobosco, who was active in Paris after 1221. Deliberate choices, such as the omission of authors’ names, probably linked to the evolution of the initial project, seem to support the proposed hypothesis. Marcotte examines the scarcely studied Vita Chisiana of Dionysius Periegetes, despite the renewed fortune of Dionysius’ Periegesis (see D. Lodesani, Dionisio Periegeta: Descrizione dell'Ecumene [2022]), paying particular attention to the manuscript tradition, to the content of the philosophical and cartographical commentary that follows the Vita and to the scholia. The literary and philosophical dissertation character of the work rightly directs Marcotte's attention to a fourth-sixth-century text and to Neoplatonic contexts.
A group of important contributions focuses on Arabia and its relations with the Graeco-Roman world, a subject also beloved by Geus. M. Arbach presents an unpublished inscription on the caravan trade of the kingdom of Sheba, while M. Maraqten publishes the new complete text of a Sabaean inscription (Sharafddin 31 = MB 2004 1–125) dated to between 300 and 310 ce and useful for reconstructing the Yemeni kingdom's diplomatic activity and the aspiration of the ruler Shammar Yuhar'ish to be a player in the Middle Eastern power game. Finally, the Libro Nemroth de astronomia in the manuscript tradition is the subject of a detailed examination by I. Draelants and T. Falmagne, who highlight the centrality of Verona in shifts in the manuscript tradition involving southern Italy and north-western France.
The excellent quality of the studies and the broadness of the scholarly horizon testified here make the book a precious testimony to the liveliness of a field of investigation – that of the historical geography of the ancient world – which in recent decades has been enriched, also thanks to the fundamental contribution of Geus, by new methodologies indispensable to the development of antiquarian studies.
