Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Perfect Surveyor
- 1 The Eusynoptic Iliad: Visualizing Space and Movement in the Poem
- 2 Paths and Measures: Epic Space and the Odyssey
- 3 The World in the Hand: Anaximander, Pherecydes, and the Invention of Cartography
- 4 Map and Narrative: Herodotus's Histories
- 5 Losing the Way Home: Xenophon's Anabasis
- 6 Finding (Things at) Home: Xenophon's Oeconomicus
- Bibliography
- General Index
- Index Locorum
3 - The World in the Hand: Anaximander, Pherecydes, and the Invention of Cartography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Perfect Surveyor
- 1 The Eusynoptic Iliad: Visualizing Space and Movement in the Poem
- 2 Paths and Measures: Epic Space and the Odyssey
- 3 The World in the Hand: Anaximander, Pherecydes, and the Invention of Cartography
- 4 Map and Narrative: Herodotus's Histories
- 5 Losing the Way Home: Xenophon's Anabasis
- 6 Finding (Things at) Home: Xenophon's Oeconomicus
- Bibliography
- General Index
- Index Locorum
Summary
In the first two chapters, we considered two contrasting conceptions of the world in Homer, both of which anticipate conceptions of space that are related to the presentations found in cartography. In the Iliad, it was the cartographic fiction of an ideal space that can be taken in with one glance or even held in one hand. In the Odyssey, it was the possibility of a world that always extended beyond our cognitive horizons, and that could never be fully known or mapped. With this chapter, we move from poetry to prose in order to uncover the spatial and visual dimensions at play in those narratives that no longer took the Muse as their point of inspiration or focus. The story of the emergence of prose is intriguing, because its origins in the early sixth century are concurrent with the development of the first Greek map. In the history of Greek literature and space, therefore, prose and cartography are related; they are born in the same place to the same author, and – as some would have it – even at the same time. Although there are a number of good reasons to be skeptical of prose and cartography's perfectly synchronized births, this chapter argues that it is not entirely coincidental that cartography makes its appearance at a time when narrative is starting to articulate a voice, and a vantage point, that is no longer dependent on the Muse.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative , pp. 97 - 117Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010