Making Mesopotamia: Geography and Empire in a Romano-Iranian Borderland

Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-90-04-38862-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 32, 376 Seiten, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 635 g

Reihe: Impact of Empire

In Making Mesopotamia: Geography and Empire in a Romano-Iranian Borderland, Hamish Cameron examines the representation of the Mesopotamian Borderland in the geographical writing of Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Claudius Ptolemy, the anonymous Expositio Totius Mundi, and Ammianus Marcellinus. This inter-imperial borderland between the Roman Empire and the Arsacid and Sasanid Empires provided fertile ground for Roman geographical writers to articulate their ideas about space, boundaries, and imperial power. By examining these geographical descriptions, Hamish Cameron shows how each author constructed an image of Mesopotamia in keeping with the goals and context of their own work, while collectively creating a vision of Mesopotamia as a borderland space of movement, inter-imperial tension, and global engagement.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cameron, Hamish

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Klassische Literaturwissenschaft Klassische Lateinische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Geschichte der klassischen Antike

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

List of Maps

A Note on the MapsI

1 Introducing the Borderland

1 What is a Borderland?

2 Where is the Mesopotamian Borderland?

3 A Borderland Emerges

4 Who “Made” Mesopotamia?

5 Outlining the Narrative

Part 1: Tradition and Narrative

2 Knowing

1 Strabo’s Sources

2 Pliny’s Sources

3 Ptolemy’s Sources

4 Spatial Measurement

5 Hellenistic Knowledge

3 Naming

1 Strabo’s Assyria

2 Pliny

3 Claudius Ptolemy

4 The Expositio Totius Mundi et Gentium

5 Ammianus Marcellinus

6 Labels and Limits

4 Narrating

1 Strabo

2 Pliny the Elder

3 Ptolemy

4 Expositio Totius Mundi et Gentium

5 Ammianus

6 Narrating Topologically

7 Narrating Imperially

5 Moving

1 Skenitai

2 Gordyaians

3 Arranging People

4 Hellenistic Migration

5 Viewing Space

6 Individual Mobility

Part 2: Movement and Power

6 Carrying

1 Long-distance Trade

2 Strabo and the Euphrates Route

3 Northern Routes

4 Expositio Totius Mundi et Gentium

5 Desert Routes

6 North-South Routes

7 Local Routes

8 Representing Mesopotamian Trade

7 Ruling

1 Roman Power in the Borderland

2 Representing Power

3 Imperial Space

4 Mesopotamia as a Frontier

8 Epilogue: Connecting

1 Globalisation and Networks in the Mesopotamian Borderland

2 The Conceptualisation of the Mesopotamian Borderland

Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Hamish Cameron, Ph.D. (2014), University of Southern California, is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Classical and Medieval Studies at Bates College in Maine. His work focuses on mobility, geography, cyberpunk, classical reception in games, and the Roman Near East.