DIONYSIUS PERIEGETES

Description of the Known World

An Introduction
by

J. L. LIGHTFOOT

(C) J. L. Lightfoot 2013

ii

Its the world, said Dean. My God! he cried, slapping the wheel. Its the world! .... Think
of it! Son-of-a-bitch! Gawd-damn!
(Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part Four, ch. 5).

iii

PREFACE
The Periegesis of the Known World by Dionysius of Alexandria is a geographical poem, now
known to be of Hadrianic date, which does what it promises, offering a description of the
known world in just under 1200 elegant hexameters. It was enormously popular until the
early modern period and then sank into obscurity. Isabella Tsavaris edition (Ioannina, 1990)
both marked an epoch and helped to effect a small renaissance in Dionysian studies over the
last few decades, which has seen, among other things, a series of still-unpublished theses
(Patrick Counillon, Grenoble 1983; Denise Greaves, Stanford 1994; Yumna Khan, London
2002; Ekaterina Ilyushechkina, Groningen 2010), further editions (Brodersen 1994a,
Raschieri 2004, Amato 2005), and six valuable essays presented at a colloquium in Bordeaux
(REA 2004). Specialist attention has been paid to particular sections of the poem (to Italy, by
Raschieri and Amato; to the Black Sea region, by Ilyushechkina). This is an advance online
publication in monograph form of material that will form the introduction to the first fulllength English commentary on the entire Periegesis (to be published by Oxford University
Press, 2014).
J. L. L.

iv

CONTENTS

I. Preliminaries

1. Poetry and Prose

2. Hypotyposis Geographias: The Overview of the Known World
3. Conceptions of Space
II. Sources

27

III. Language

46

1. Lexicon
Additional note on the -ij terminations of nouns and adjectives
2. Word-Formation
3. Formulae and Pseudo-Formulae
Additional note on naming-formulae
4. Metre
Prosody
Outer metric
Inner metric
Other
Summary
5. A Language for Geography?
IV. Dionysius and Didactic Poetry

85

1. Of Catalogues and Lists

2. Didactic
The Narrator
Addressees and Spectators
v

Authors and Narrators

3. Birds-Eye Vision
Landscape in Motion
V. Geopoetics

133

1. Epithets
2. Chorography and Ethnography
The landscape
Natural resources
Peoples and their environment
The divine
Mythology
History and time
VI. The End of the Journey

183

Bibliography

194

vi

References in the form See 178 n. or See ad loc. are a cue to the reader to the more
detailed discussion that will be found in my forthcoming commentary.
I have used broadly the same bibliographical system as for my commentaries on Lucian and
the Sibylline Oracles. Other than works cited by abbreviated title (listed below), I refer to
frequently cited works by authors name alone. These are listed in the final bibliography. The
namedate system is used to distinguish works by authors cited twice or more. The details of
works cited only once are given in the passage in question. If a work is cited only in a few,
localised references, on second and any subsequent occasions the reader is directed back to
the first citation with op. cit., art. cit., or footnote number. Citations of RE are usually by
lemma alone, unless the entry is out of its normal sequence (for example, is in a Supplement
volume, or among Nachtrge at the end of a volume). Editions and commentaries on classical
texts are not usually given separate listing in any bibliography (e.g. West on Hes. Op. 247),
but it is as well to make clear here that I have used the following editions of certain
geographical texts:

for Agatharchides, De Mari Erythraeo: GGM i. 11195;

for Agathemerus, Geographiae Hypotyposis: GGM ii. 47187;
for Arrians Periplus Ponti Euxini: A. G. Roos (Munich, 2002), ii. 10328;
for Avienius Descriptio Orbis Terrae: P. Van de Woestijne, La Descriptio Orbis Terrae
dAvienus (Bruges, 1961);
for Hannonis Periplus: GGM i. 114;
for Marcianus of Heraclea, Periplus Maris Exteri (cited as Peripl.):GGM i. 51562; Epitome
Peripli Maris Interni (cited as Epit.): GGM i. 56373;
for Nicephorus Blemmydes Gewgrafi/a Sunoptikh/ (based on a paraphrase of the
Periegesis): GGM ii. 45868;

vii

for Ptolemys Geography: books 15, K. E. Mller (Paris, 18831901); books 68, C. F. A.
Nobbe (repr. Hildesheim, 1966);
for ps.-Scylax: G. Shipley, Pseudo-Skylaxs Periplous: The Circumnavigation of the
Inhabited World: Text, Translation and Commentary (Exeter, 2011); the numeration
is based on Mllers, but with added subsections;
for Stephanus of Byzantium: M. Billerbeck (Berlin, 2006) for ai, thereafter A. Meineke
(Berlin, 1849);
for Strabo: S. L. Radt, Strabons Geographika: mit bersetzung und Kommentar, 10 vols.
(Gttingen, 200211);
for the anonymous Hypotyposis Geographias:GGM ii. 494509;
for the Paraphrasis of Dionysius poem: where there is no further indication I have used the
edition that Mller substantially reproduced from Bernhardy in GGM (ii. 40925, cf.
pp. xxxi f.), but on 1170 Ludwichs edition, based on his own collation of fresh
manuscripts and leaning heavily on T (Parisin. gr. 2723) (cf. Ludwich, 5535);
for the anonymous Periplus Maris Erythraei: L. Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei:
Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Princeton, 1989) (cf. GGM i.
257365);
for the anonymous Periplus Ponti Euxini: A. Diller, The Tradition of the Minor Greek
Geographers (Lancaster, Pa., 1952), 10246;
for the anonymous Stadiasmus Maris Magni, GGM i. 427514.

viii

WORKS CITED IN ABBREVIATED FORM

ACO

Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum, iussu Societatis scientiarum

Argentoratensis, ed. E. Schwartz (Berlin, 1914 ).

ANET

Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament3, ed. J.

B. Pritchard (Princeton, 1969).

ANRW

Aufstieg und Niedergang der rmischen Welt: Geschichte und

Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung, ed. H. Temporini,
W. Haase, et al. (Berlin, 1972 ).

BNP

Brills New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, 15 vols.,

ed. H. Cancik and H. Schneider (Leiden and Boston, 200210).

BuckPetersen

C. D. Buck and W. Petersen, A Reverse Index of Greek Nouns and

Adjectives (Hildesheim, 1945).

CA

Collectanea Alexandrina, ed. J. U. Powell (Oxford, 1925).

CAG

Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca

CCAG

Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum, edd. varr., 12 vols.

(Brussels, 18981953).

CEG

Carmina Epigraphica Graeca, ed. P. A. Hansen, 2 vols. (Berlin,

19839).

CGF

Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kaibel (Berlin, 1899).

Chandler

H. W. Chandler, A Practical Introduction to Greek Accentuation

(Oxford, 21881).

CLE

Anthologia Latina: Pars Posterior. Carmina Latina Epigraphica,

ed. F. Buecheler, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 18957).

CMG

Corpus Medicorum Graecorum (Leipzig, 1908), edd. varr.

ix

Diodore

Diodore de Sicile, Bibliothque Historique, edd. varr. (Paris,

1972 ); individual volumes are cited as P. Bertrac, Diodore, i.
(Livre I) etc.

D.S.

C. Daremberg and E. Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquits grecques

et romains : d'aprs les textes et les monuments, 5 vols. in 10
(Paris, 18771919).

EtGen

Etymologicum Genuinum. ab ed. F. Lasserre and N. Livadaras,

Etymologicum magnum genuinum: Symeonis etymologicum una
cum Magna grammatica; Etymologicum magnum auctum (Rome,
1976 ).

EtMag

Etymologicum Magnum, seu verius Lexicon , ed. T. Gaisford

(Oxford, 1848).

FGE

D. L. Page, Further Greek Epigrams (Cambridge, 1981).

FGrH

Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, ed. F. Jacoby (Leiden,

192358).

FHG

Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, ed. K. Mller (Paris, 1841

51).

Garland

The Garland of Philip, ed. A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page

(Cambridge, 1968).

GCS

Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei

Jahrhunderte

GG

Grammatici Graeci, edd. varr.

GGM

Geographi Graeci Minores, iii, ed. C. Mller (Paris, 185561).

GL

Grammatici Latini, 8 vols., ed. H. Keil (Leipzig, 185780).

GLM

Geographi Latini Minores, ed. A. Riese (Heilbronn, 1878).

x

HE

Hellenistic Epigrams, ed. A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page

(Cambridge, 1965).

Jacques ii

J.-M. Jacques (ed.), Nicandre: uvres. Tome II: Les Thriaques

(Paris, 2007).

Jacques iii

J.-M. Jacques (ed.), Nicandre: uvres. Tome III: Les

Alexipharmaques (Paris, 2007).

K.B.

R. Khner, rev. F. Blass, Ausfhrliche Grammatik der

griechischen Sprache, Erster Teil: Elementar- und Formenlehre3,
2 vols. (Hanover, 18902).

K.G.

R. Khner, rev. B. Gerth, Ausfhrliche Grammatik der

griechischen Sprache, Zweiter Teil: Satzlehre3, 2 vols. (Hanover,
18981904).

Lasserre, Eudoxos

F. Lasserre (ed.), Die Fragmente des Eudoxos von Knidos:

herausgegeben, bersetzt und kommentiert (Berlin, 1966).

Lasserre, Strabon

F. Lasserre (ed. and transl.), Strabon: Gographie, vols. i.

(introduction, avec G. Aujac), iiiix (Paris, 196981).

Lausberg

H. Lausberg, trans. M. T. Bliss, A. Jansen, and D. E. Orton,

Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study
(Leiden, 1998).

LfrgrE

Lexikon des frhgriechischen Epos, ed. B. Snell, H. J. Mette, et al.

(Gttingen, 19552010).

LP

Select Papyri, iii: Literary Papyri, Poetry, ed. D. L. Page

(Cambridge, MA, 1941).

MerkelbachStauber

R. Merkelbach and J. Stauber, Steinepigramme aus dem

griechischen Osten, 5 vols. (Stuttgart, 19982004).
xi

Nonnos

Nonnos de Panopolis: Les Dionysiaques, edd. var., 19 vols. (Paris,

19762006); individual volumes are cited as F. Vian, Nonnos, i:
Chants III etc.

PG

Patrologia Graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne

PGM

Papyri graecae magicae: Die griechischen Zauberpapyri, ed. K.

Preisendanz, 2nd edn., rev. A. Henrichs, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 1973
4).

PL

Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne

PMG

Poetae Melici Graeci, ed. D. L. Page (Oxford, 1962).

RE

Paulys Real-Encyclopaedie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft,

ed. A. F. von Pauly, rev. G. Wissowa et al. (Stuttgart, 18931972).

RLAC

Reallexikon fr Antike und Christentum, ed. T. Klauser et al.

(Stuttgart, 1950 ).

Roscher

W. H. Roscher, Ausfhrliches Lexicon der griechischen und

rmischen Mythologie, 6 vols. (Leipzig, 18841937).

SH

Supplementum Hellenisticum, ed. H. Lloyd-Jones and P. J. Parsons

(Berlin, 1983).

TLL

Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (Leipzig, 1900 ).

Vian i

F. Vian (ed.), Apollonios de Rhodes: Argonautiques, i: Chants III

(Paris, 1976).

Vian ii

id. (ed.), Apollonios de Rhodes: Argonautiques, ii: Chant III (Paris,

1980).

Vian iii

id. (ed.) Apollonios de Rhodes: Argonautiques, iii: Chant IV (Paris,

1981).

xii

PART ONE
INTRODUCTION
Helpe therefore, O thou sacred Imp of Jove,
The Noursling of Dame Memorie his Deare,
To whom those Rolles, layd up in Heaven above,
And Records of Antiquitie appeare,
To which no Wit of Man may comen neare;
Helpe me to tell the Names of all those Floods,
And all those Nymphes, which then assembled were
To that great Banquet of the watry Gods,
And all their sundry Kinds, and all their hid Abodes.
(Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene,
Book IV, canto XI, st. x)
Well, you know or dont you kennet or havent I told you every telling has a taling and
thats the he and the she of it. Look, look, the dusk is growing! My branches lofty are
taking root. And my cold chers gone ashley. Fieluhr? Filou! What age is at? It saon is
late. Tis endless now senne eye or erewone last saw Waterhouses clogh. They took it
asunder, I hurd thum sigh. When will they reassemble it? O, my back, my back, my bach!
Id want to go to Aches-les-Pains. Pingpong! Theres the Belle for Sexaloitez! And
Concepta de Send-us-pray! Pang! Wring out the clothes! Wring in the dew! Godavari,
vert the showers! And grant thaya grace! Aman.
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, Book I, Chapter 8

I. PRELIMINARIES
A LL the worlds a text . . .
. . . or so the postmodernists would have it. And for Dionysius of Alexandria, whose
Periegesis of the Known World wraps the whole thing up in less than 1200 very cultivated
hexameters, it quite literally is. The mainstream of ancient geography was literary, but the
Periegesis is very literary even by those standards. Planting himself firmly in the tradition of
ancient didactic poetry, but glancing frequently at epic and hymn along the way, the poet sets
out to do for the earth what Aratus had already done for the heavens. Moreover, as he
obligingly expounds his subject for a keen and receptive pupil, he presents himself as a
Hesiod who is rich, not in personal experience, but in direct contact with the Muses. We are
as far as can be from the world in which lack of eye-witness or first-hand experience of a
subject was a matter for reproach.1 Other geographical poems, certainly important for
understanding the Periegesis background, advertise themselves as manageable digests which
substitute for first-hand experience on the readers part,2 but Dionysius goes still further. His
untravelled narrator, borne aloft by inspiration, has no knowledge of his subject outside the
belles lettres that his Muses represent.
We ought to decide what we want from a text like this. Christian Jacob, who has
published more on the Periegesis in the last thirty years than anyone else, has distinguished
three possible ways of approaching it.3 The first, lettura referenzionale, or positivist, studies
how it marries up with external realities. The second, lettura interna, pays attention to
matters of composition, structure, la retorica propria, and so on. The last, lettura
contestuale, directs attention to its context in contemporary culture. What is at stake in
deciding which to bring to bear on the Periegesis, or on any other text, is whether it is simply
a signifying system playing games with itself and with other texts, or there is any use in
considering its stance vis--vis the world out there.4 In this case, the poems literariness
might well encourage the second and third approaches at the expense of the first, yet the first
cannot just be given an opprobrious label (positivist) and dismissed, for we might decide
that an appreciation of the relationship between the world out there and classical literary
representations of it is essential to understanding the strengths and weaknesses characteristic
of ancient geography. There is a bend in the Nile at a certain place; what does it tell us about
ancient conceptions of space that no ancient geographer registers it? A given feature of the
landscape was there to be recognised; what does it say for the Periegesis that Dionysius has
decided to pass it over, or that he has distorted it in some describable way? In other words,
the texts relationship to the reality it describes is a measure of the kind of observation we are

As it was, famously, for Polybius in his criticisms of Timaeus and Ephorus (12.25d-h).

ps.-Scymn. 98102; Dionysius of Byzantium, GGM ii. 1, ll.1419.

Jacob 1985, 834.

Jacob 1990, 39.

3

to expect from it, a measure not to be forgone, whether the text is studied in its own right or
as a representative of an ancient genre.
Various kinds of lettura contestuale have been practised on the Periegesis over the
years. Scholars have tried to find contemporary significance in certain names: Hadrian in the
repeated reference to the Adriatic; Antinous homeland (or Dionysius own) in the
insignificant little river Rhebas; Hadrians family in the references to Gadeira/Cdiz.5 They
have seen references to Hadrians journeys, and have proposed some eyebrow-raisingly
precise dates for the poem on the assumption that it can be connected to one of the emperors
visits to Alexandria.6 The second acrostich, which mentions the god Hermes, has lent itself to
various contextual interpretations, whether to Hadrians visit to Samothrace in 123 (with the
poem itself written very shortly afterwards), or with the death of Antinous in 130 and his
subsequent deification as Hermes (51332 n.). More generally, the poem can be set against
various backgrounds: the literary culture of Hadrians court, and perhaps the contemporary
character of Dionysian cult, if indeed this can shed light on the gods portrayal in the poem.7
Over the last decade and a half a multicultural approach has become fashionable in
Hellenistic poetry, in attempts to demonstrate the amenability of Alexandrian literature to
native Egyptian mythological paradigms; that approach has now been extended to the
Periegesis as well.8
Something will be said about most of these questions. But the main aim is to
understand the Periegesis both in its own terms and as a specimen of ancient geographyfor
which reason a fourth style of approach, lettura comparativa, may be added. This
introductory chapter lays out some of the main backgrounds necessary for an appreciation of
the Periegesis, and the next four consider the Periegesis sources and characteristic ways of
handling those sources, its language, and relationships to the classical traditions of both
didactic poetry and ethnography. A wide range of material has been brought to bear on the
poem, in the further hope of shedding light on other areasand that, given the texts literary
5

Bowie 1990, 75; Birley, 253; Leo, 149; for Dionysius and the Rhebas, Suda d 1181.

Birley, 240 (stating as fact that Dionysius was one of the Alexandrian litterati in the vicinity
of the emperor during his visit to Alexandria in 130), 2523. For Leo, 1616, the occasion of
the poem was one of Hadrians visits to Alexandria, maybe as a special commission;
Dionysius was one of the learned men of the Museum who entertained Hadrian during his
stay. It was perhaps an e0pibath/rioj written for the arrival of the emperor in 124, or a
propemptiko/j, after the death of Antinous and after the visit to Thebes in Nov. 130, but
before his departure in spring 131. It was intended for oral delivery (cf. also 1556), in the
a0kroath/rion or w0dei=on. Although these interpretations, in my view, press too hard, the
present work does assume a Hadrianic date. Heather Whites attempt to take the poem back
to the reign of Augustus and Tiberius (On the date of Dionysios Periegetes, Orpheus, 22
(2001), 28890) has been refuted by Amato 2003 and Ilyushechkina 2010, 3841.
7

Literary culture: Leo, 15960; cult of Dionysus: Leo, 149, Counillon 2001b, 107, 10910,
112.
8

Amato 2005b (but see Ilyushechkina 2010, 47, 121).

4

affiliations, means above all the reception of the high Alexandrian poets in the imperial
period. My lettura contestuale refers sooner to literary, or literary-historical, than to
historical context. It is of a different order of difficulty from lettura interna, on account of
the paucity of existing studies and the enormous amount of work that still remains to do.
Nevertheless, a final section draws together those findings which might contribute most to
further studies on this neglected, yet central, question.
Reefs are awaiting us in the oceans ahead. The Periegesis covers a huge amount of
spacethe whole earthin less than twelve hundred lines, and in doing so is necessarily
brief and economical. The point is to evoke, not so much the places themselves, as the
readers awareness of them, literary associations and cultural memory.9 The problem is to
gauge how much weight a single word, or an epithet, can carry: in other words, to understand
the relationship between the poems extreme economy of means and the enormous weight of
cultural tradition that underlies it.10 How many associations are carried in the penumbra of a
single name? The question arises with every unembellished geographical name, whose
historical, mythological, and other associationsoften very richdo not break the surface.
Indeed, it arose already in Eustathius commentary on the poem without being posed as a
problem, for Eustathius assumes that he is simply expanding whatever already was there:
names have their backgrounds already built in.11 But this is not the end of it, because
questions also arise about silences and suppressions; about things that are not mentioned
directly but are evoked, if at all, in a roundabout way; about the use of devices that both
reveal and conceal. For example, Estelle Oudot has argued that although the Periegesis does
not mention Athens, Greeces most famous city is evoked through the mention of the Attic
river, which figures in a famous passage of Platos Phaedrus; granted that allusion, further
associations are also carried over from the Platonic dialogue that we are entitled to consider
as reflections on Dionysius poetics.12 The Periegesis tends to encourage such an approach,
but neither confirms that these associations are present nor rules them out. We ought to be
aware, if we proceed like this, that we have responded to the texts implicit encouragement to
read in to it,13 that we are constructing meanings for ourselves. To take a different example,
the city of Sinope is mentioned, on the southern coast of the Black Sea, and Dionysius tells
the most extensive of his mythological stories about it. But the story turns out to be a
composite of earlier myths, and the location is wrong. The real Sinope had a rich history,
9

On cultural memory, see Chaniotis, 2559, with further bibliography in n. 9.

10

Compare Chaniotis, 256: Cultural memory is usually expressed through a few keywords;
ibid. 262, writing of a fragment of an encomium on Athens pronounced by the Hellenistic
historian and orator Hegesias of Rhodes: He could afford to be merely allusive in his
references, precisely because the sites, persons and events to which he referred were parts of
the Athenian cultural memory.
11

Eustathius, GGM ii. 2056; cf. Jacob 1981, 689.

12

4235 n. Oudot also endorses Christian Jacobs wish to see an allusion to Hadrians
Panhellenion (also based in Athens) in 333.
13

As did ancient readers (410 n.).

5

supposedly founded by the Argonaut Autolycus, then refounded by Milesians; it was the
chief city of the Mithridatic dynasty for some decades until it was conquered by Lucullus, but
in Dionysius day was once again an important trading town, the chief port in its area, finely
and distinctively situated. Why has Dionysius chosen to bury all this under pretty
mythography?14 Does the gap between his account and others, such as Strabos (12.3.11),
with a more topographical or political or biographical focus, itself contribute to the poems
interpretation?

1. POETRY AND PROSE

In truth, mountains, rivers, heroes, and gods owe a great part of their existence to the
poets; and Greece and Italy do so plentifully abound in the former, because they
furnished so glorious a number of the latter.
(Fielding, The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, Monday, July 8.)

The Periegesis puts a broad construction on the didactic tradition. Its ultimate model is the
Homeric Catalogue of Ships, and it draws on other poems with a geographical dimension
(Apollonius Argonautica; Callimachus fourth Hymn). Among specifically didactic poems,
its most important Hellenistic forerunners are not geographical, though the representation of
space is also central to its celestial counterpart, Aratus Phaenomena. But there is also a prehistory of specifically geographical didactic, including iambic poems by ps.-Scymnus15 and
Dionysius son of Calliphon16 (which are partly extant) and a hexameter poem by the firstcentury didactic poet Alexander of Ephesus17 (which is not, although it apparently influenced
the Periegesis). At the same time, Dionysius avails himself of the riches of prose geography.
14

Though Apollonius treatment of Sinope was even more reticent about the city: Thalmann,
11314.
15

742 lines survive in manuscript, and it was Diller who rescued almost 300 more from the
anonymous compilation Periplus Maris Euxini (1952, 16576). There are recent editions by
Marcotte 2002 and Korenjak (with German translation and commentary). For a detailed study
of the authors Pontic geography, see K. Boshnakov, Pseudo-Skymnos (Semos von Delos?):
ta\ a0ristera\ tou= Po/ntou: Zeugnisse griechischer Schriftsteller ber den westlichen
Pontosraum (Stuttgart, 2004); Bianchetti 1990 studies selected aspects of the poem; cf. also
Meyer 1998b, 7280. For the epistolary preface, which also contains an important declaration
of method and principle, see Hunter 2006. The work is dedicated to Nicomedes, king of
Bithynia, generally thought to be II or III; for discussions, see Marcotte 2002, 716 (with a
date range of 133 or 127/6110/9), Bianchetti 1990, 2335 (1373), Boshnakov, 46, 708
(dedicated to Nicomedes III, c.120).
16

Ed. Marcotte 1990, who suggests (pp. 348) a date-range of 10087 BC.

17

Fragments in SH 1939; cf. A. Meineke, Analecta Alexandrina (Berlin, 1843), 3717.

6

The Periegesis shows all the eclecticism characteristic of ancient geography, with its mixture
of routes and descriptions, its attention to both the physical landscape (especially rivers and
coastlines) and human settlement. Capaciousness (to use the word of Katherine Clarke) is a
characteristic of ancient geographical writing evident throughout its history, from the little
embellishments and digressions throughout the Catalogue of Ships (p. 99), to the
combinations of itinerary and ethnography that begins with Hecataeus, and above all in the
speculative mapping, ethnography, and historiography of Herodotus.18
The first task, then, is to justify the claim, not only that the prose and poetic traditions
must be studied side by side, but also that Dionysius is the product of centuries of give-andtake between the two. This section is intended to pre-empt any tendency to treat the poetic
and prose aspects of Dionysius inheritance as disseverable.
Geography is at home in the earliest Greek poetry. It lists places and peoples,
describes journeys into the known and unknown, and with the description of Tartarus in the
Theogony even sets out to explicate the architecture of the cosmos. Spatial description is
strongly linked to mythology and to adventure narratives, as witness the archaic Argonautica,
poems about Heracles, the wanderings of Odysseus or Menelaus, or the nostoi of other heroes
of the Trojan war. Other geographical passages in archaic poetry are lists of places, usually
inset within larger frames: alongside the Catalogue of Ships there are smaller-scale
catalogues, such as the Trojan rivers of Il. 12.202, or the rivers of the oi0koume/nh in Hes. Th.
33745; or even the peoples to the north of Troy in Il. 13.46.19 And others again seem to
represent a combination of forms. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women includes a
geographical review of places through which the Boreadae chase the Harpies, whose literary
form is somewhere between narrative (in which it is embedded) and list.20 It also contains
name-etymologies and tribal eponyms.
Conversely, there is, and remains, a strongly literary, even poetic, streak throughout
ancient prose geography. Within it, an essentially scientific tradition has been repeatedly
distinguished from a more humanist one, implying various sorts of contrast, between
mathematics and belles lettres, pure science and empiricism; description can be invoked on
either side, contrasted with schematism on the one hand, with an imaginative or poetic
tendency on the other.21 This second, humanist, current shows that capaciousness and
18

Clarke 1999, 5965; for capaciousness, see 127, 130, 138, 177, al. See also Rawson, 250,
on the interrelationships of geography-cum-ethnography with mythology-cum-history.
19

I. de Jong, Homer, in de Jong 2012, 2138, at 312, notes that other Homeric spatial
descriptions may also be structured in the form of lists.
20

Hes. frr. 1507 M.W. See M. L. West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford,
1985), 845; A. Rengakos, Hesiods Narrative, in F. Montanari, A. Rengakos, and Christos
Tsagalis (eds.), Brills Companion to Hesiod (Leiden, 2009), 20318, at 218; Thalmann, 11.
21

Van Paassen; cf. Aujac 1981, 9 (la double tendance qui se manifeste dans la gographie
grecque: la tendance scientifique, illustre par ratosthne et le dcoupage gomtrique de la
carte en sphragides, la tendance empirique ou imaginative, qui assimile les contours des pays
des objets familiers et cherche faire de la carte gographique un beau dessin, vocateur et
7

diversity just described; it is affiliated to history, ethnography, and mythography. It tells

stories, especially about foundation traditions and colonisation. It is influenced by traditional
learning, stories, and fables in literature as well as by empirical knowledge.22 In particular it
remains in thrall to Homer, who was seen as the founding father of ancient geography as of
so much else. Eratosthenes, who held that Homer was an entertainer, not a sombre purveyor
of geographical Realien, was a breakaway; the vast majority were united in the belief that it
was legitimate and worthwhile to locate Homeric geographical referencesOdysseus
wanderings, the Hippemolgoi, the divided Ethiopians, and so onon a map of the real world.
A further ramification of the non-scientific character of ancient geography is in the subjective
and affective way it tends to regard space. Space is not understood as something that can be
analysed by geometry or calibrated in standard units; no grid can be imposed on it. Rather, it
is imbued with the experience of those who have travelled through it, and becomes
significant through memory and literary association.
So when geographical writing begins to appear in prose, there is give-and-take
between it and poetry. Seen in this perspective, the Periegesis is simply a latecomer in a long
tradition in which poetry has shown itself receptive to the conventions of geographical prose.
About the archaic period no certainty is possible, though scholars have been willing to
speculate how far the authors of any given archaic poem were familiar with the accounts of
early travellers (and in what form), and whether there were any early signs of awareness of
the literary form of the periplous and periegesis, which would later become the standard
literary form for the travelogue.23 The influence of early geography has been conjectured for
the Homeric poems,24 for the Arimaspeia of Aristeas,25 and, later, for ps.-Aeschylus

donc facilement mmorisable); Prontera 1984a, 1901, 254. For empirical/descriptive versus
scientific or theoretical geography, see also Nicolet, 589. On the other hand, A. Podossinov,
Die antiken Geographen ber sich selbst und ihre Schriften, in M. Horster and C. Reitz
(eds.), Antike Fachschriftsteller: Literarischer Diskurs und sozialer Kontext (Stuttgart, 2003),
88104, distinguishes scientific (including practical) geography from works of popular
science (including Strabo) and these again from belletristic works like the Periegesis.
22

Meyer 2008, 276.

23

Jacoby, RE s.v. Hekataios, 2687.222688.15, infers the existence of epic periegeses and
periploi (cf. Meyer 1998a, 199 and n. 28). The pre-Odyssean Argonautica narrated a voyage
out and a voyage backthough how far it reflected any formal features of the periplous is
entirely unclear (Vian 1987, 250 un priple argonautique; Meyer loc. cit. der lteste
fabare Periplus).
24

Jacoby, loc. cit.; Elliger, 11112; Meyer 1998b, 645. Norden, 1318, tries to show that
the Odyssey poet is familiar with die Entdeckungsfahrten ionischer Kauffahrer, and even
with the technical language of such accounts. He certainly demonstrates the Odysseys
interest in ethnography, while Janni 1984, 1201, discusses the Odysseys use of hodological
language. For the Catalogue of Ships, see Norden, 16 and n. 1.
8

Prometheus Bound.26 With Hellenistic poetry the influence of prose writing becomes clear
and demonstrable: Apollonius Argonautica used Herodotus, Timaeus, Timagetus, and other
historians and geographers;27 Callimachus geographical interests found parallel expression
in poetry and prose;28 the proem of ps.-Scymnus iambic geographical poem expressly cites a
panoply of prose historians and geographers.29 The loss of all but scraps of the
complementary geographical and astronomical poems of Alexander of Ephesus is
unfortunate, but fragments of his geographical books suggest that he availed himself of all the
elements of the ethnographical tradition: descriptions of placement (qe/seij), geometrical
comparisons for the shapes of countries, fauna (and presumably flora), and foundation
traditions.30 In other words, a set of formal conventions, or conventionalised elements, has
developed for geographical description, and they may appear in either medium, poetry or
prose.
So Dionysius not only stands in the mainstream of ancient geography, but is also heir
to many of the ways in which poetry handled geography and spatial description.
In the first place, it is highly amenable to catalogue treatment. If the Catalogue of
Ships is the single most important precedent, geographical catalogues and enumerations are
also very prominent in Hellenistic poetry; geographical particularism is one aspect of the
general Hellenistic taste for minutiae. As with Hesiodic Boreadae, these lists are usually more
than pure enumeration; they are narrativised in some way.31 (Callimachus lists the regions of
25

Meuli, 155 nach Art der peri/ploi; Bolton, 1719; Ivantchik, 3941, 67; cf. also Norden,
202, who suggests, not that Aristeas was influenced by specific prose models, but that his
work shows signs of the influence of the spirit of i9stori/h.
26

Accepting a 5th-c. date, Bonnaf, 143; arguing for a 4th-c. interpolator, Finkelberg, 131
suggests that he reflects knowledge of the voyage of Pytheas for north-west Europe, and of
Ctesias for the geography of Asia.
27

On Apollonius geographical sources, see Delage; Pearson; H. Herter, Hellenistische

Dichtung II. Teil: Apollonios von Rhodos, Bursians Jahresbericht, 285, Jahrgang 1944/55
(1956), 213410, at 3024; Vian, i. 12833, 15468; iii. 1168 passim, esp. 2946, 5764;
id. 1987, 2512, 2535; Hunter 1993, 945; Meyer 2008, 2712.
28

Prose works on rivers (SH 294; frr. 4579 Pf.), winds (404 Pf.), barbarian customs (405
Pf.), foreign names (406 Pf.), thaumata (frr. 40711 Pf.).
29

ps.-Scymn. 10927; cf. Korenjak, 1618, Boshnakov (n. 15), 79. The poem of Dionysius
son of Calliphon also contains an epistolary preface in which the author/narrator presents his
work as a synthesis of earlier writings (810).
30

For the elements of the ethnographical tradition, see Thomas 1982a, 17. SH 25 and 29
indicate qe/sij, SH 33 a local landmark, SH 34 a kti/sthj, SH 36 both geometrical shape and
fauna.
31

Weber, 31618, cites Call. Hymn 1.18 ff.; 4.1622, 4154, 70205; Theocr. Id. 15.100 ff.,
17.68 ff. A Latin example in V. Georg. 4.36773, the catalogue of subterranean rivers
witnessed by Aristaeus.
9

Greece as they flee from Leto, or the islands as they gather before Ocean and Tethys, or the
rivers of Arcadia not yet in existence when Rhea gave birth to Zeus.) In this perspective it is
interesting that Dionysius own catalogue turns back to the Homeric model. The catalogue is
primary, rather than secondary to some other structure such as narrative in which it is
embedded.
In the second, the familiarity of the landscape with mythological travellers is still
reflected in the Periegesis, a work shot through with traces (explicit and implicit) of
Odysseus, Jason, Heracles, Dionysus, Io, and sometimes with reminiscences of the poems in
which they figured. The addressee is imagined proceeding along the course these heroes and
heroines once took, and the persona loquens even as the narrator of those earlier exploits.
In the third, Dionysius is still in thrall to Homeric geography. He takes his place in a
long tradition of critical reflection on geography in Homer, especially the wanderings of
Odysseus. One question here concerns Dionysius adaptation of Homeric geography to the
real world, and how he relates to the various ancient schools of thought on this matter;
another concerns his knowledge of the Homeric commentary tradition and creative use of
Homeric exegesis.
Once geography developed as a discipline, it had to take a stance on Homer, to whom
a range of attitudes developed over the Hellenistic period.32 Some would defend Homers
basic geographical knowledge and competence (Polybius); some would even make him
anticipate Hellenistic science (Crates). At the opposite extreme, Eratosthenes utterly rejected
the conventional view of Homer as a didactic poet, famously asserting that you will find the
scene of the wanderings of Odysseus when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of the
winds.33 Homer meant to entertain, not to instructa view not wholly remote from those of
Aristarchus and Apollodorus, author of a commentary on the Catalogue of Ships, who
remarked that even if one admitted that Odysseus wanderings took place in the vicinity of
Sicily, one should go further and add that the poet placed them out in the ocean for the sake
of story-telling (muqologi/aj xa/rin) (7.3.6, cf. 1.2.37).34 Even Strabo, convinced of
Homers geographical competence, allowed that an overlay of fantasy and myth was
appropriate to the nature of poetic story-telling (1.2.811). Although Dionysius certainly
shows Eratosthenic influence (pp. 28-9), he reverts to the conservative position, first that the
Homeric poems do refer to precise geographical locations, and, second, that it is reasonable
to attempt to locate legendary places on the maptwo assumptions shared with Strabo.
32

D. M. Schenkeveld, Strabo on Homer, Mnemosyne4, 29 (1976), 5264; Jacob 1991a, 20

4.
33

Eratosthenes I A, 16 = Strab. 1.2.15 to&t' a2n eu(rei=n tina pou~ 0Odusseu_j pepla&nhtai,
o3tan eu3rh| to_n skute/a to_n surra&yanta to_n tw~n a)ne/mwn a)sko&n (transl. Jones) = Polyb.
34.2.11; cf. I A, 11 = Strab. 1.2.7, Homeric commentators and Homer himself purvey
flua/rouj; I A, 19 = Strab. 1.2.3, poetry as graw/dh muqologi/an. On Eratosthenes view of
Homer, see Berger 1880, 1940, Thalamas, 199201, and tude, 13849.
34

See Lehrs, 2416, esp. 2435 on Aristarchus and Apollodorus.

10

Dionysius accommodates Homeric geography to the real world in a variety of ways,

now referring explicitly to Odysseus adventures, now quoting or closely paraphrasing from
the epics, now simply suggesting that the world described in his poem is compatible with
Homers. He refers to the home of the Lotus Eaters beyond Lepcis Magna in Libya, and then
appends a notice about Odysseus visit thereas if the place could stand on its own two feet,
and the reference to Odysseus were only supportive (2067). The reference to the Isles of
Aeolus, given a specific geographical location since the time of Thucydides, is fortified with
unmissable allusions to the Odyssean original (4614), and an apparently new location
proposed for the Plotai which justifies and substantiates the islands Homeric epithet.
Egyptian Thebes is embellished with its Iliadic epithet (249). Some allusions go further: it is
as if Homer provides the point of departure, with which the world must be brought into
conformity, because this is what Homer said. The Ethiopians are divided between west and
east Africa (not to mention another group in the south), and a place found on the map for the
Eremboi (180), the tribes of Agauoi and Hippemolgoi of the steppes of southern Russia (308
9), and the Abantes of Euboea (511), even at the price of anachronism or the confusion of
myth and reality.35
Sometimes an ingenious interpretation or combination permits a Homeric reference.
In 336, the apparently casual similarity between the names of Abila (one of the Pillars) and
Alybe (Il. 2.857) allows Dionysius to suggest that the Homeric birthplace of silver is
located in the mines of southern Spain (336). Perhaps he has been similarly opportunistic at
8890 in suggesting a link between the Cretan promontory of Kriou Metopon and the rock
where some of Menelaus fleet was dashed to pieces on the return from Troy. In other cases,
the approach seems more suggestive and tentative. No definite reference is made; at the most,
Dionysius suggests that certain Homeric places might be so located, or at least that they have
characteristics shared with the real world as portrayed on his map. This is the case with the
allusions to the land of the Cimmerians on the northern ocean (335), and to the home of the
dawn and rising-place of the sun in the island of Chryseia in the eastern ocean (58990). In
neither case is the location definite: the Cimmerians are not located on the northern ocean (as
some said they were), nor Aiaia located on the edge of India. It is interesting that this
technique of gentle shading rather than positive assertion is used precisely for the two
locations on the ocean. Dionysius certainly avoids the hard-line position on exokeanismos
the idea that Odysseus wanderings took place in the outer ocean rather than the
Mediterraneanwhich was espoused by Crates;36 or even Strabos modified view that most
of the wanderings were outside the Pillars of Heracles (3.4.4, ta\ polla/). He refuses
definitely to locate any of the Odyssean wanderings in the outer ocean; at most he concedes a
touch of Odyssean colouring to places in the far north and far east, both times in connection
with the appearance of the sun.
There are layers of tradition behind every pronouncement about Homeric geography,
and parallels with the Homeric scholia and other sources suggest that Dionysius worked with
35

Also an issue in the Argonautica: Delage, 37.

36

Fr. 31 Mette (cf. pp. 5960) = F 77 Broggiato, cf. F 44 Broggiato.

11

the full range of ancient interpretation of Homer. There are several apparent parallels with
Cratesthe interpretation of pro\j h0w= to mean southwards (243, 332; (?)437; fr. 21 Mette
= F 52 Broggiato), the implied exokeanismos of the Cimmerians (335; fr. 37a Mette = F 54
Broggiato); and also the implication that the Erembi were black-skinned (9629; fr. 46 Mette
= F 41 Broggiato)but there are also dissonances,37 and above all Dionysius approach is
quite remote from Crates attempts to make Homer into a proto-scientist. Whatever his exact
sources, his use of them aligns him with other learned poets who turned Homeric exegesis to
their own endsApollonius, who consulted lexicographical material on Homeric glosses, or
Virgil, who used the Homeric scholia, not only for the interpretation of contested words, but
also for commentary, interpretations, and criticisms, to which his recrafting of the Homeric
epics responds.38 Unlike Virgil, who was largely concerned with matters of decorum and
propriety, Dionysius Homeric researches are driven by fact, specificity, and identifications
of place. In the next chapter Dionysius will be seen to blend Homeric learning with his other
geographical data in his own typically combinatory way.
In sum, ancient geography is so poetic in character that it is artificial to treat the
prosaic and poetic elements in Dionysius heritage separately. Sometimes this has proved
necessary in what follows, but only in the interests of organising the material; the real gain
comes, not from dissevering them, but from appreciating the intricacy and felicity of their
combination. As we shall see, Dionysius is extremely eclectic in his use of sources, especially
those that purvey concentrated geographical information. Prose and poetry are equally
exploitable, and can be combined, tessellated, and harmonised. As for language, Dionysius
uses a basically poetic register, but one which is hospitable to some prosaic or technical
terminology. Poetic language may also serve as a counterpart to prose, with associations of
its own that meet and match the language of a prose treatise; moreover, as with the notion of
the circumambient ocean (27 n.), the poet is sometimes able to use traditional poetic ideas as
a counterpart, or complement, for more recent ones, whether empirical or speculative. And
finally, in terms of genre, we can appreciate the heterogeneity of Dionysius poem, the
combinability of poetic catalogue with world description, periplous, ethnography, and so on:
the Periegesis is an outstanding case, but it stands in an ancient tradition of geographical
writing characterised by eclecticism and the interpenetration of literary form.

2. HYPOTYPOSIS GEOGRAPHIAS: THE OVERVIEW OF THE KNOWN WORLD

There is no part of the world which I have not visited.

37

He does not accept the corollary of Crates theory about the Erembi, that they were
Indians; nor does he pick up Crates connection of the Planktai with the verb pela/zein (fr.
41a Mette = F 48 Broggiato).
38

For Apollonius use of a collection similar to the D scholia, Rengakos 2008, 24950. For
Virgil, see R. R. Schlunk, Vergil and the Homeric Scholia, AJP 88 (1967), 3344; id. The
Homeric Scholia and the Aeneid (Ann Arbor, 1974).
12

(Osiris, ap. Diod. Sic. 1.27.5.)

The Periegesis is a description of the whole world. Let us consider how such descriptions
arose.
In antiquity the conceptualisation of the world took leaps forward at times of
intellectual adventure, exploration, or both. The Ionians drew up the first world maps
(peri/odoi gh=j) which they accompanied with explanatory commentary.39 In the wake of
Alexanders conquests, Eratosthenesdrawing on the Alexander historians, as well as the
Seleucid general and explorer Patrocles and Pytheas of Massilias account of his sea voyage
through the Pillars of Heracles and beyond, into north-west Europesystematised this
knowledge in a work in which the word gewgrafi/a may have appeared for the first time.40
Certainly his approach was new. While the first two books tackled the history of the subject
and methodological issues, the third outlined a new, quasi-geometrical division of the world.
Eratosthenes was critical of the traditional analysis into three continents, and at least for
southern and eastern Asia proposed a series of divisions into sphragides or approximately
geometrical shapes.41 The greatest length and greatest breadth of the whole oi0koume/nh were
measured by a main line of latitude, which Eratosthenes had taken over from Aristotles
follower Dicaearchus, and a main meridian; they may or may not have been reinforced by
subsidiary parallels.42 The basic approach was cartographical, geometrical, and schematic.
39

Corcella on Hdt. 4.36.2 gh=j perio/douj (with bibliography).

40

Fragments of Eratosthenes geographical work collected by Berger 1880; with English

translation (no Greek) and a new commentary by Roller. On Eratosthenes use of the term
gewgrafi/a, see van Paassen, 34 and 364 n. 3, 445. For the different forms in which the
title of the work is attested, see Berger 1903, 387 n. 2; Knaack, RE s.v. Eratosthenes, 367.23
33. On Eratosthenes sources, see Roller, 1620.
41

Continental division: Strab. 1.4.7 = II C, 22 Berger; sphragides: III B, 24 Berger, and

1880, 166, 2234, 229; id. 1903, 4336; Thalamas, 227, 2417; van Paassen, 424, 478, 52;
Dicks, 1289; Pdech, 105; Roller, 257, 175.
42

For Eratosthenes meridians and lines of latitude, see Berger 1880, 188210; Thomson,
1636; Aujac 1981, 7; Roller, 245. Dicaearchus had traced a main line of latitude (fr. 110
Wehrli = 123 FortenbaughSchtrumpf, cf. P. T. Keyser in W. W. Fortenbaugh and E.
Schtrumpf (eds.): Dicaearchus of Messana: Text, Translation, and Discussion (New
Brunswick, 2001), 367; Berger 1880, 166, id. 1903, 3789; F. Boll, RE s.v. Diaphragma,
341.64342.3, and Knaack, RE s.v. Eratosthenes, 369.3243; Dicks, 30; Shipley, 17; Dueck
and Brodersen 2012, 95) and perhaps a main meridian on which Syene/Lysimacheia lay
(Berger 1880, 1734; F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles, i: Dikaiarchos (Basel, 1967), 77;
Pdech, 978; Nicolet, 60; Zimmermann 1999, 57). Eratosthenes certainly took over the
former (Strab. 2.1.1 = III A, 2 Berger), and his main meridian (1718 n.) is a prolongation of
the NileHellespont line which Dicaearchus may already have traced. Beyond that, there is
disagreement about how many other parallels and meridians he established. According to
13

From his sources he took over ethnographical and chorographical details, but this was
subsidiary to his project of dividing up the oi0koume/nh into rational portions, defining their
perimeters, and measuring lengths.43
In the early empire a number of world geographies emerge which revert to a basically
non-geometrical approach and to the traditional three-continent system. Strabos Geography
is by far the most important (he also takes on Eratosthenes and is our main source for his
theories), but there are also several shorter or potted descriptions of the oi0koume/nh. This is
Dionysius proper context. I shall be arguing for the possibility or probability that he knew
Strabo himself, but in terms of its scale and ambition the Periegesis is in some ways better
compared with these handy, traditional digests or inventories of the main components of the
oi0koume/nh. Although they never quite settled down into a fixed scheme, they nevertheless
represent a consensus view with more or less recurrent elements. The texts in question are:
(i) the pseudo-Aristotelian De Mundo, which is generally dated (by those who do
not consider the work genuine) to approximately the end of the first century BC or
first half of the first century AD;44
(ii) a sketch, or hypotyposis, of the inhabited earth which Strabo offers before
launching into his detailed exposition;45

Thalamas it was Hipparchus who developed parallels and meridians into a network (190,
20915, and tude, 1567, 1637; Thomson, 166; van Paassen, 41); recently, however,
Shcheglov has tried to show that Eratosthenes anticipated Ptolemys seven bands of latitude,
or klimata, defined by length of longest solstitial day.
43

See 92761 n. for the character of our longest fragment of Eratosthenes, on the Persian
Gulf.
44

See Festugire, 460518; J. P. Maguire, The sources of Pseudo-Aristotle De mundo,

YClS 6 (1939), 10967; Prontera 1984a, 2289; Moraux, 582 (for geography, see 1620,
unsurprisingly finding Eratosthenic influence); J. Kraye, Aristotles God and the
Authenticity of De mundo: An Early Modern Controversy, JHPh 28 (1990), 33958; J.
Mansfeld, Peri kosmou: A Note on the History of a Title, VChr 46 (1992), 391411; D.
Holwerda, Textkritisches und Exegetisches zur pseudo-aristotelischen Schrift Peri tou
kosmou, Mnemosyne4, 46 (1993), 4655; G. Reale and A. P. Bos, Il trattato Sul cosmo per
Alessandro attribuito ad Aristotele (Milan, 21995); J. P. Martn, Sobre el autor del tratado
De mundo en la historia del aristotelismo, Mthexis, 11 (1998), 10311. As for date, Moraux
(812) and Martin favour the end of the 1st c. BC or first half of the 1st c. AD; Mansfeld (400)
suggests a terminus post quem of the late 1st c. BC; and Reale and Bos regard the work
quite untenablyas genuine.
45

2.5.1833, with u9potu/pwsij at 2.5.18. The same word was used as the title for a little
treatise, the 9Upotu/pwsij Gewgrafi/aj, ascribed to Agathemerus son of Orthon, whence it
was taken for another, anonymous, treatise, here cited as Hypotyp. Geogr. (Mller, GGM ii.
xli f., 494509; Aly, 3*, Test. 18, and 109*110*; Diller 1975a, 401; Pdech, 193; Radt, i.
xiii; Marcotte 2002, xl f.). The latter certainly leans on Strabo, but seems also to show the
14

(iii) a similar sketch (summa . . . rerum . . . figura) in Manilius astronomical poem,

where it sets out the area on which the stars exert their influence;46
(iv) the Chorography of Mela, especially the introduction (1.423);47
(v) two accounts from later encyclopaedic compilations by Martianus Capella and
Isidore of Seville;48
(vi) and, as an outlier, a couple of chapters in the memory-treatise of Ampelius, which
is not a description, but which simply lists the major components of the earth
under various headings.49
One feature common to all these texts except the Periegesis is that they acknowledge that the
known world is only part of a larger whole. Some give a sketch of zone theory, others explain
that the world we inhabit is balanced by others in different quarters of the globe.50 Ps.Aristotle acknowledges the probability of other continents, and even Manilius, who is briefest
at this point, explains the cardinal points and the winds that blow from the four quarters of
the heavens. Eschewing cosmography,51 Dionysius overleaps all this and commences with an
account of the circumambient ocean, which in these other world-sketches tends to follow the
exposition of spherical geography.

influence of Dionysius: (i) the Aegean, Pontus, and associated seas follow the eastern
Mediterranean rather than precede it, as in Strabo; (ii) the same three names appear for the
northern ocean in 45 as in Periegesis 323; (iii) the extent of the Pamphylian sea is similarly
defined in 50 and in Periegesis 1278; for further arguments see Anhut, 204; Counillon
1983, 1645.
46

Astr. 4.585696; on this section see Abry 1997 and 2000.

47

Text, commentary, and French translation by Silberman; German translation by Brodersen

1994b, cf. id. 1995, 8794; annotated English translation by Romer; text and Italian
translation by Mosino (very difficult to use, because section numbers are not marked). See
also G. Winkler, Geographie bei den Rmern: Mela, Seneca, Plinius, in W. Hbner, 141
61, at 1426. The work is dated to AD 43/4 on the grounds that it refers to Claudius British
triumph of 44 as imminent.
48

Martianus Capella, De Nupt. 6.590703; Isid. Orig. 1314.

49

Lib. Mem. 6 De orbe terrarum, 7 De maris ambitu.

50

Zone theory: Strab. 2.5.5; Mela 1.4; Isid. Orig. 13.6; Mart. Capell. 6.602; four habitable
regions: Strab. 2.5.56, 13; Ampelius 6.1; Mart. Capell. 6.6046.
51

Ilyushechkina 2010, 52: Das Werk des Dionysios entspricht nicht den Aufgaben der
kosmologischen und physikalischen Naturphilosophie, sondern denen der kulturhistorischen
Ethnographie.
15

Other elements are shared by all the texts. These include the oceans four gulfs;52 a
tour of the component seas within the Mediterranean, beginning at the Pillars of Heracles;53
and the three continents (in a fluctuating order) with their divisions.54 There is also (usually)
a place for islands, Mediterranean and oceanic.55 It is hard to say where these shared elements
come from. The circumambient ocean and its four gulfs are apparently Eratosthenic, but he
can hardly have originated the form, since he rejected the traditional division into continents.
In general, the sketches repeat the same basic elements over and over again, and in so doing
speak to the strongly conservative strain among the geographers of the Roman Empire.
Eratosthenes had set out to systematise new knowledge, and had boasted of the recent
advances made in the knowledge of the inhabited world;56 likewise, it was available to
Roman geographers to advertise their works by appealing to the broadening of horizons by
the Romans and their neighbours (and sometimes to their own personal explorations).57
52

ps.-Arist. De Mundo 3 (393b211); Strab. 2.5.18; Manil. 4.5957, 64257; Mela 1.5;
Ampelius 7.1; Isid. Orig. 13.17; cf. Mart. Capell. 6.619, 624.
53

The Mediterranean in an extended sense, also including the Propontis, Black Sea, and
Maeotis: ps.-Arist. 393a1834; Strab. 2.5.1925; Manil. 4.597629; Mela 1.67, 17;
Ampelius 7.25; Mart. Capell. 6.6245, 64951, 6612; Isid. Orig. 13.16; further references
in Radt on Strab. I p. 47,2933.
54

ps.-Arist. 393b23394a3; Strab. 2.5.2633; Manil. 4.65895; Mela 1.923; Ampelius 6.2;
Mart. Capell. 6.626702; Isid. Orig. 14.35.
55

The greatest differences arise with respect to the islands. Some treat them in a section of
their own; others append them to the nearest portion of mainland. Mediterranean: ps.-Arist.
393a1216 (unsystematic); Strab. 2.5.1921, 30 (dealing with them in groups within the
individual seas of the Mediterranean); Manil. 4.63041; Ampelius 6.1215; Mart. Capell.
6.6438, 65860; Isid. Orig. 14.6.1444 (broadly from east to west). Oceanic: ps.-Arist.
393b1119 (again unsystematic); Strab. 2.5.15, 30 (no separate review of oceanic islands,
only a few mentioned in passing); Ampelius 6.12; Mart. Capell. 6.666, 6969, 702; Isid.
Orig. 14.6.113 (Britain, the islands of the western ocean, then those of the Indian Ocean).
Mela treats islands, not in his introductory review, but in the main body of the Chorographia,
the Mediterranean islands in the course of his circuit of the Mediterranean (working from the
Maeotis down through the Black Sea and Propontis to the Mediterranean, and then from the
east end of the latter to the west), the oceanic islands in his review of the outer ocean
(between the Pillars and the Caspian there is a separate section, 3.4658, but from that point
onwards they are appended to the corresponding section of the mainland). Oceanic islands
are not treated by Manilius.
56

Strab. 1.3.3 = I B, 11 Berger. On the advances of which Eratosthenes took advantage, see
Thalamas, 2017.
57

On the extent to which late Hellenistic and early Roman geography benefited from the
opening-up of new areas, see Rawson, 25066; Nicolet, 645, 8594; Mosino, 10, 14. See
Polyb. 3.589, who contrasts the practical difficulties faced by earlier writers, so prejudicial
to the accuracy of their accounts, with the new knowledge of the world opened up by
16

Nevertheless, there is also a strong contrary tendency to stasisa systemic inertia which
leaves writers content to pass on traditional, outdated information, reaping little or no benefit
from the opening-up of new areas by Roman conquest and exploration.58 These little
overviews of the component parts of the oi0koume/nh contain nothing new. Artistic effort may
be invested in their composition, but as far as geographical knowledge is concerned, sclerosis
has set in.
Naturally the Romans could put geography to extremely political purposes.59 Strabo
conceives his Geography (which takes in the whole world, not just areas under Roman
control) as partly philosophical and partly functional or instrumental, something of
immediate practical importance to statesmen. Some authors specifically review the contents
of the empire.60 But the oi0koume/nh schemes in which we are interested set out to describe
everything in it; the scheme in principle is non-politicalexcept insofar as descriptions of the
oi0koume/nh ipso facto could be seen to have ideological resonance under the Caesars. Their
authors have very varied interests. Manilius is trying to explain the theory of astral influence
over regions of the earth; the pseudo-Aristotelian De Mundo is a philosophical disquisition on
the universe which culminates in praise of the divine principle that guides it. It is a matter for
the author himself whether to invest his description with political overtones. Some may have
an eye to the blessings of Roman rule,61 have an enhanced awareness of the position of Rome
in the world they describe;62 or associate features of the landscape with historical events
(especially Roman triumphs).63 Strabo calls his descriptive enterprise his first and most

Alexander and the Romans (and partly by himself, in the course of travels through Africa,
Spain, and Gaul); Diod. Sic. 3.38.3, on Julius Caesar in the far north; Strab. 1.2.1, 2.5.12,
11.6.4, on new knowledge obtained through Roman exploration, Mithridates, and the
expansion of the Parthian empire. Mayer, 534, shows how Roman poets sometimes
exploited this new geographical knowledge, at least in the use of resonant place-names.
58

Ossification: F. Gisinger, RE Suppl. IV (1924), s.v. Geographie (Verfall), 67085; Tozer,

287; Pdech, 151; Rawson, 252; Aujac 1987, 1713 (on the conservatism of cartography);
Silberman, pp. xxvxxix; Mattern, 26, 65; on the survival of ethnographic stereotypes,
Woolf, 89117. For Manilius, see Abry 2000, 901.
59

Nicolet; P. Counillon, Gographie et pouvoir imprial Rome, in A. Baand and C.-G.

Dubois (eds.), Imperium Romanum: images romaines du pouvoir (Talence, 1994), 1925;
Dueck 2012, 1016.
60

App. Praef. 118.

61

Strab. 2.5.26, in his paean of Europe.

62

Manil. 4.6945; Mela 2.60 (though see Batty 2000, 768); Dionysius, 3546; Mart. Capell.
6.6367.
63

Mela 2.105 (a victory which Mela apparently turns into a defeat; cf. Batty 2000, 834), 3.4,
3.49; Dionysius, 20910; 10512.
17

important concern, both for the purposes of science and for the needs of the state.64 But ps.Aristotles eye is on physical geography, while other texts descend into inventory,
mnemotechnics (Ampelius), or encyclopaedism (Martianus Capella, Isidore).
The impulse in these descriptions is very often graphic, if not cartographical: they aim
to convey a distinct visual impression. Manilius calls his description a figura. Strabo uses
cartographical language,65 and the anonymous hypotyposis which is based partly on Strabo
actually sets itself up as a mental substitute for a map.66 All except Ampelius, who merely
lists, aim to convey in words a two-dimensional picture. They do not simply enumerate one
place after another.
But what sort of cartography? In the opening chapter of his Geography, Ptolemy
distinguishes two kindsworld and regional. The former, he says, is schematic, and aims to
represent whole or large parts; the focus of the latter is on smaller details. The concern of the
first is with relationships and proportionality between parts; of the latter with likeness. In
other words, it is partly a matter of scale and partly a qualitative difference in the kind of
representation aimed at. These two methods are sometimes implied by the literary sources
themselves.67 On the other hand, Strabo speaks of both a gewgrafiko\j pi/nac (2.5.13),
which represents the oi0koume/nh as a portion of the whole earth, and a xwrografiko\j pi/nac
(2.5.17) which shows the outlines of continents as well as details (poiki/lmata) such as the
location of cities, without making it clear that he is making a distinction between the two.68 In
both the hypotyposis and the Geography as a whole, Strabo includes schematic elements
especially in the form of geometrical comparisonsas well as close-focus detail on
practically every page. Yet he extends the regional approach to the oi0koume/nh as a whole,
which an actual map would presumably be taxed to do. Much the same can be said of the
Periegesis. Dionysius offers for the whole oi0koume/nh the sort of visualised description of
landscape features that is envisaged by regional, rather than world, cartography.
In this and in many other ways the best comparison for the Periegesis is the
hypotyposisfor whose probably direct use I shall argue in the next chapter. Some elements
of the account match Strabo better than any other ancient source, especially the four gulfs of
the ocean, the review of the seas and islands within the Mediterranean (especially the western
64

2.5.13 ta\ me\n ou]n prw=ta kai\ kuriw/tata kai\ pro\j e0pisth/mhn kai\ pro\j ta\j xrei/aj
ta\j politika/j; transl. Jones.
65

2.5.13 pi/nac, sxh=ma, 2.5.18 u9potu/pwsij, 2.5.26 u9pograpteo/n.

66

Hypotyp. Geogr. 5 . . . w9j du/nasqai r9a=|sta/ tina . . . th\n o3lhn oi0koume/nhn mhde\n
ei0ko/noj dehqe/nta tw=| nw=| periaqrh=sai.
67

Ptol. 1.1 (see J. L. Berggren and A. Jones, Ptolemys Geography: An Annotated

Translation of the Theoretical Chapters (Oxford, 2000)); cf. Eustathius, GGM ii. 212.15
213.11; S Dion. Perieg. GGM ii. 428.16; Nicolet, 4, 1712; Meyer 1998b, 61.
68

Nicolet, 1001. The tide seems to have turned against the notion that the xwrografiko\j
pi/nac is a reference to Agrippas map (Prontera 1984a, 2467 and n. 116; cf. also Radt on
Strab. II, 120.31).
18

Mediterranean), and the tribal review of Libya. There are also matters of sequence: the
general order, with the circumambient ocean first, then its gulfs, then the Mediterranean, then
the continents.69 And finally there are matters of general method: both accounts might be
described as both seaward and landward, tackling the ocean and its gulfs and the internal
parts of the Mediterranean where the land is background to the sea, rather than vice versa,
and also reviewing the continents and their parts, where the focus is on the land. Important
coastal areas are liable to be treated from a double perspective.70
There are of course also differences from Strabodifferences in content, sequence,
and genre. The hypotyposis is much more taken up with physical geography, and less with the
inhabitants of the landscape. Most of Strabos effort is invested in presenting overviews of
large areasoceans, seas, continents, and countries; in delineating their boundaries and
sketching their shape, and even in trying to evoke their surface appearance. His itinerary
follows an order which is particularly close to Dionysiusbut as we shall see, Dionysius has
reverted to the model of a periplous, or at any rate linear itinerary, the traditional form for
accounts of the oi0koume/nh.71
The simplest and most traditional form of the whole-world periplous starts at the
Pillars of Heracles72 and completes a clockwise circuit of the Mediterranean (with forays
inland), returning to the Pillars via the north African coast. Some authors introduce
sophistications: they begin their itinerary at some point other than the Pillars;73 or they break
off halfway through and undertake a different itinerary from the same starting-point;74 or they
combine internal periploi with external ones that follow the course of the ocean.75 In this

69

In general, all authors put the ocean and seas before the land. Mela has the same sequence.
So do Manilius and Isidore, save that they place the Mediterranean before the other gulfs.
70

The Pillars: Strab. 2.5.19 + 33, Dionysius, 645 + 2812; the Syrtes: Strab. 2.5.20 + 33,
Dionysius, 1048 + 198203.
71

Prontera 1984a, 21631; Nicolet, 58: one form of the periplous can be a visualization
(eventually graphic) of regions so extensive that it becomes a drawing of the world, a
graphic and global representation (on a small scale) of the world (known, inhabited, or
accessible, as the case may be).
72

Jacoby in RE s.v. Hekataios, 2691.248, traces it back to him.

73

Menippus of Pergamum, who started from the Hellespont (Prontera 1984a, 224).

74

Artemidorus of Ephesus, who went from the Pillars to the Tauric Chersonese but then
returned to Libya to proceed along the African coastline (Prontera 1984a, 222).
75

Mela has a double periplous, first of the interior and then of the exterior seas. He proceeds
anticlockwise round the Mediterranean and clockwise round the ocean (Prontera 1984a, 224
5; Batty 2000, 878). Pliny takes the usual route from the Pillars to the Tanais, thence crosses
overland to the ocean and returns round northern and western Europe to the Pillars. Then he
sets out again from the Pillars along the African coast, and when he reaches the Caspian
crosses to the eastern ocean as far as India, and works back through Parthia, Mesopotamia,
19

respect Dionysius has several peculiarities. He arranges his western material in repeated
circuits beginning at the Pillars. There are six such departures;76 no other periplous returns so
obsessively to the starting point (Strabo does so only twice77). His treatment of Europe is
peculiar as well: he departs first from the Pillars for a tour of northern Europe, in which the
Danube figures as a boundary line between peoples of the north and peoples reaching south
as far as Thrace; then he returns to the starting-point and tours Mediterranean Europe,
following the coastline through three great promontories or peninsulas (Spain, Italy, and
Greece). This is not Strabos way. The hypotyposis reviews Europe only once, never
doubling back on itself, but proceeding from west to east with a repeated zigzag movement
from north to south, so that it glances at Italy and Greece as it moves eastwards. However,
Strabo does mentioneven if he does not followthe three-peninsula system for
Mediterranean Europe, which he derives from Eratosthenes;78 and he also shares with
Dionysius the use of the Danube as a boundary-line through the centre of northern Europe,
allowing him to review, first, the races on the north, and then those on the south.
As for Asia, there is again a greater similarity with the hypotyposis than with any
other ancient itinerarybut still an inexact match. Asia needs only to be surveyed once, not
recursively in a series of journeys. Like Strabo, Dionysius starts off with the northern half of
the continent. Both begin with the continent-dividing Tanais and work eastwards, eventually
reaching the peoples to the north of India, then return to the Caucasus, whence they proceed
on an anticlockwise tour of Asia Minor (Strab. 2.5.31, cf. 11.1.57). The rupture comes next,
because Strabo takes southern Asia from east to west, while Dionysius takes it from west to
east. So, having reviewed northern Asia, Strabo shuttles from Phrygia, Lycaonia, and Lydia,
via the mountain peoples who live along the great chain of the Taurus, to India (2.5.32).
Dionysius, meanwhile, completes his circuit of the entire coast of Asia Minorwhich he has
already rendered more periplous-like by drawing substantially on the Argonauts voyage
along the southern shore of the Black Seaand then, after pausing to overview the whole of
southern Asia (88193) simply returns to the point where he had left off, where Syria
succeeds Commagene (87780, 8946). In other words, while there comes a moment on the
northern tour when both authors have to bring themselves back westwards (and both return to
the same point), Dionysius manages the tour of southern Asia as a whole in the unbroken
fashion of a periplous/periegesis.
Arabia, the Arabian Gulf, Ethiopia, and the oceanic coast of Africa, eventually to Mauretania
(Prontera 1984a, 224).
76

(i) The seas within the Mediterranean (723), (ii) the northern coast of Africa (1845), (iii)
northern Europe (2812), (iv) Mediterranean Europe (3346), (v) the Mediterranean islands,
beginning with Gadeira (4502), and (vi) the oceanic islands, beginning with Erytheia (558;
though the Pillars themselves are not mentioned here).
77

2.5.19, 26 (the reviews of the Mediterranean and of continental Europe). The islands are
worked into the review of the Mediterranean; the review of Libya begins in the south; and
there is no double periegesis of continental Europe.
78

Strab. 2.4.8 = Eratosthenes III B, 97 Berger.

20

In sum, the Periegesis makes the linear principle even more prominent than it is in
Strabo. This can be seen in the great circles which the narrator traces so repetitively from
the Pillars, and in the orderly reviews of sections of coastline (along the coast of north Africa,
round Italy, along the coast of Black Sea) which we miss in the hypotyposis. Sequence is
close, but not identical: taking Libya before Europe, Dionysius first landward route is along
the north coast of Africa, a route shared (presumably coincidentally) with Mela.
Nevertheless, taken as a whole, it is preferable to see Dionysius itinerary as a modification
of Strabos rather than as an independent variation on it. The similarity is thrown into relief
by the other immediate comparanda, especially Mela and Pliny: their itineraries are
conducted on different principles, rather than modifications of the same one.
The basic difference between the two is that where the hypotyposis is offered as a
preparatory sketch, the Periegesis is both an overview and a finished work in its own right. In
this respect, with its range of interests, it is closer to Melas Chorography or eventhough it
falls out of the series of tricontinental whole-world descriptionsto the geographical poem
of ps.-Scymnus. Since Hecataeus, the normal ancient method for geography was the orderly
review, combining the forward movement of the journey and the descriptive pause,79 and
Dionysius, like ps.-Scymnus and Mela, strikes his own balance between the coastal voyage
and the description of lands and peoples.80 This latter is used mainly used for non-classical
peoples outside Europe, who are dealt with as ethnic units, whereas the linear itinerary is
used where more detail is available.81 Strabos hypotyposis does indeed mention ethnic
groups, but usually apropos of some landscape feature; landscape is the dominant element, to
which other aspects of the description are secondary. Descriptive ethnography is almost
entirely absent,82 as is the history of colonisation and settlement; absent, too, are all the rich
details (potamography, curiosities and marvels, gemstones) with which Dionysius account is
embellished. This is hardly surprising in a sketch, only intended as prelude to the densely
informative books that follow. In contrast, the works of ps.-Scymnus and Mela, though they
take a different path through their respective universes, are generally similar in texture, with
strong emphasis on myth and history, especially ktisis myth, as well as paradoxography and
natural marvels. Each author proceeds to impose his own selections and emphases on the

79

Jacoby, RE s.v. Hekataios, 2691.720; Janni 1984, 122 n. 118; Meyer 1998a, 200.

80

Melas journey is organised by two large circuits (n. 75). For a given country we generally
have a mixture of coastal review and chorographical/ethnographical detail (though, as in
Dionysius, the treatment of Egypt is basically chorographical/ethnographical, beginning with
a southnorth review of the Niles course). But the focus remains on the coast, from which
movements inland are deliberate departures; this differs from Dionysius, who gives up the
coastal review in certain places (especially Asia) altogether.
81

For a similar situation in Pliny, see Evans 2005a, 512; Doody, 66.

82

Save for the Libyan Nomads at the very end, 2.5.33.

21

enormous range of material that the chorographical and ethnographical traditions made
available;83 this discussion continues in section 5.

3. CONCEPTIONS OF SPACE

I soon learned not to expect knowledge of the country they passed through. Except for the
truck stops, they had no contact with it.

Another kind of traveler requires to know in terms of maps exactly where he is pinpointed every moment, as though there were some kind of safety in black and red lines, in
dotted indications and squirming blue of lakes and the shadings that indicate mountains.
(John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley, Part Two).

Scholarship, especially in the second half of the twentieth century, has opened up a new
branch of geography: the study of mental maps, cognitive geography, or perceptions of
space, both those we take for granted ourselves and those of pre-modern societies. The
Periegesis, which displays the literary character of ancient geography to a high degree, offers
an excellent opportunity to reflect on ancient conceptions of space. Moreover, the shifting
forms and genres of the Periegesis imply different ways of looking at its subject-matter and
accordingly slightly different conceptions of space; the narrators focalisation of his subject
will be considered further in section 4.
Modern geography has reflected extensively on what is meant by concepts such as
place and location;84 sometimes an antithesis is drawn between place and space. The
contrast usually intended is between space that is abstract (mathematical, geometrically
disposed upon a grid) and place that is experienced (affective, subjectively-perceived).85 Yet
space, too, may be experienced subjectively; the influential modern geographer Yi-Fu Tuan
83

For instance, save for Thule and the sun in northern climes, Dionysius seems considerably
less exercised by meteorology and natural science than Mela (Brodersen 1994b, 67).
84

See for instance F. Lukermann, Geography as a formal intellectual discipline and the way
in which it contributes to human knowledge, The Canadian Geographer (1964), 16772,
esp. 16970; J. Agnew, Place and Politics: The Geographical Mediation of State and Society
(Boston, 1987), 28; Thalmann, 1517, drawing on the work of David Harvey. The relational
aspects within and between places are usually stressed (demographic, social, economic), as
are process and the dimension of time.
85

Clarke 1999, 810, 1718, 259. Already O. F. Bollnow, Lived-space, in N. Lawrence

and D. OConnor (eds.), Readings in Existential Phenomenology (Engleton Cliffs, NJ, 1967),
17886, distinguished mathematical space from lived-space.
22

instances the perception of someone from a small north German town gazing out at the open
spaces of the Baltic.86
These thoughts suggest various applications to ancient texts. While much ancient
geography is concerned with the lived environment, some geographers are more interested in
the physical landscape than its human population.87 An approach which concentrates on the
experience and history of those who live in a landscape and travel through it contrasts with
one concerned with its geometry, for example the calculation of the earths circumference,
estimates of the length and width of the oi0koume/nh as a whole or portions thereof, the
imposition of lines of longitude and latitude.88 Texts pay attention to different aspects of
place, and to the external or internal relations of a given locale, for instance its topography,
wider environment, and how these relate to the social relations within or across communities;
the Periplus Maris Erythraei is particularly interested in economic networks. The attention
the historical dimension receives is especially variable.89 It is developed in geography that
places a premium on traditions of settlement, of migration and colonisation, but is completely
absent from an account only concerned with the placement of coordinates on a map.90 We
shall find Dionysius more sensitive to certain aspects of place than others: some aspects of
environment interest him, as does the history of settlement, while economic exchange is less
important, and social relations rank still lower. The only evidence he provides for the
subjective affiliation of an individual to a given location isand it is only implicitin his
own identity as an Alexandrian.
The distinction between (experienced) place and (abstract) space is also related to the
two different approaches to space distinguished in Pietro Jannis monograph on the thoughtworld of ancient geographers and travellers, conceptions of space, and the use of maps.91
Janni distinguished between the one-dimensional, or hodological principleexpressed by
itineraries which record the experience of the landscape as one passes through it from A to
86

Y.-F. Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis, 1977), 34.

87

Such as Agathemerus, son of Orthon (Diller 1975a).

88

In practice, the opposition between mathematical and human geography is not so clearcut, for Eratosthenes and even Ptolemy included ethnographic material (Clarke 1999, 10 n.
18).
89

Clarke 1999, 1718, citing Tuan, for the idea that passage of time [is] essential for the
transformation of abstract space into significant place.
90

Famously, Pliny tries to exclude it (NH 3.2 locorum nuda nomina), an enterprise doomed
to failure (Evans 2005a); Strabo embraces it (6.1.2).
91

Janni 1984; cf. id. Athenaeum 60 (1982), 6027, esp. 606. Jannis book was published in
the year before Rawsons Intellectual Life, and one assumes that they wrote in mutual
ignorance, though she entirely concurs with his conclusions (259). On the hodological view
of the world, see also T. Bekker-Nielsen, Terra Incognita: The Subjective Geography of the
Roman Empire, in Studies in Ancient History and Numismatics Presented to Rudi Thomsen
(Aarhus, 1988), 14861; Mattern, 3940; Purves, 1458.
23

Band two-dimensional thinking, which is a prerequisite for mapping. According to Janni,

the former dominated ancient spatial thinking; but perhaps he underestimated the extent to
which it coexisted with the latter, which is entailed (for example) by the comparison of
countries and regions to shapes (n. 100), as well as by later and more sophisticated attempts
to draw up lines of latitude and longitude, and to establish coordinates.92 Nevertheless, the
latter tended to be handled less adroitly and less happily, if only because of technical
shortcomings. The difficulty in antiquity was the lack of, or failure to use, technical means of
determining position; this in turn implied the failure to measure and to represent large,
complex shapes, except with disappointing schematism.
The two mental systems are not mutually exclusive. They can co-exist, with one
predominating over the other, or there can be slippage between them,93 so that it is no
particular surprise to find them combined, as they are in the Periegesis.94 Indeed, because the
poem draws so widely on so many kinds of earlier writing, we must expect Dionysius to
show the characteristic features, the strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies, of ancient
geography in its presentation of space.
The one-dimensional principle is illustrated in the linear itineraries which the
Periegesis favours95whether following routes that stick (more or less) closely to a
coastline,96 or surveying whole regions, one after another, in sequence. The separate items in
linear itineraries are strung together with words implying sequence (ei]ta, meta/, e9cei/hj,
e1nqen; a1nw, ka/tw), contiguity (a1gxi, e0ggu/qi, o9mou/rioj; e0pi/, para/, u9pe/r, u9po/; a1nta,
(kat)antikru/, pro/paroiqe, pro/sqe; perhaps even expressions like kata\ me/sson), or still
more basically the idea of going forwards (prote/rw(se), e.g. 478 prote/rwse perh/saj,
580 pollh\n de\ prote/rwse tamw\n o9do\n 0Wkeanoi=o, 923 th=j d a2n i1doij prote/rw,
notiw/teron oi]mon o9deu/saj). The hodological principle is even clearer where a dative
participle foregrounds the participation of a traveller in this route.97 Other details, not so
immediately obvious, betray the influence of this same principle. The notion of seas, or other
92

Nicolet, 701, and for a similar criticism of Rawson, Clarke 1999, 103 n. 59. Gehrke
redresses the balance by discussing signs of geometrical and two-dimensional thinking
already among the pre-Socratics, Ionians, and in Herodotus; Danek, 689, argues that the
hodological principle in the Catalogue of Ships is already ousted by a more cartographical
notion of successive regions, rather than points on a route.
93

Janni 1984, 81, with the review of B. Nicolai, RFIC 113 (1985), 235: i due modelli sono
poli di attrazione, non esistono in forma pura ed esclusiva in nessun essere umano.
94

Brodersen 1994a, 1419, id. 1995, 959.

95

Ilyushechkina 2010, 579, 11820.

96

But which are also ready to make detours inland to register notable features of the interior.
This has been a feature of the periplous since Hecataeus, and is clearly instantiated by ps.Scymnus large-scale excursuses on the Celts and other peoples, the Borysthenes, and the
Scythians (see Korenjaks map, opposite p. 10).
97

Janni 1984, pp. 123, 125, 127.

24

bodies of water, having a muxo/j, or inmost point, is born of the idea that there is a route
round them which comes to an end somewhere.98 And promontories and harbours as coastal
features loomed larger in the ancient concept of space than they do for us because ancient
voyages tended to hug the coast.99
The two-dimensional approach, meanwhile, is illustrated by the use of shape
comparisons, both geometrical comparisons and to more mundane objects (p. 122).100 This is
the way the two-dimensional principle has longest manifested itself. Most of Dionysius
comparisons have a traceable prehistory; the immediate background of several could well be
the hypotyposis of Strabo, who got them from Eratosthenes, Posidonius, or further afield. He
may have initiated others (the cone-shaped continents of Libya + Europe and Asia; the
comparison of the whole of Egypt, not just its delta, to a triangle), but the principle itself is
wholly traditional and solidly implanted in ancient geographical thinking. More
sophisticatedly, a two-dimenstional, even cartographical, principle is illustrated by the
attempted determination of lines of longitude and latitude. Such lines are only vestigially
present in Dionysius poem, but they are there; and it is unsurprising that they have the
characteristic weakness of ancient attempts to trace meridians and parallels, for they are not
conceived as neutral lines on a grid but are already value-laden, chosen because significant
98

93, 117, 147, 382, 688, 924, cf. 988, of a lake; Janni 1984, 968.

99

Promontories: 87, 111, 129, 364, 469, 507, 561, 606, 785; harbours: 75, 195, 480, 516, 617
(generalising); Janni 1984, 1301, 134.
100

Geometrical comparisons are used for continents (17580; 2778, 6202; 887), for India
(11301, with an Eratosthenic background), and for Egypt (2424, based on the traditional
notion of the triangular Delta). Non-geometrical comparisons are more miscellaneous: 7 (the
world sling-shaped); 15662 (the Black Sea bow-shaped); 287 (Iberia an ox-hide); 4047
(the Peloponnese like a plane-leaf). On shape comparisons, see Gthe, 89; Bernays, 50;
Aujac 1981, 89, 1987, 1745; Thomas 1982a, 3; Janni 1988, 147; Lund, 202; Brodersen
1994a, 1417, 1995, 94, 957; Dueck 2005, 2010, 2478, 2012, 83; Ilyushechkina 2010, 70
2. Specifically on geometrical comparisons, see Berger 1903, 85, 4325; Jacob 1981, 39;
Janni 1984, 47 and 49 n. 85; Greaves, 7587; Clarke 1999, 1035; Dueck 2005, 2438. For
geometrical schematism already among the Ionians, see Jacoby, RE s.v. Hekataios, 2703.60
6; Burkert, 418; K. von Fritz, Schriften zur griechischen Logik, i (Stuttgart, 1978), 401, 42
3; Gehrke, 175, 1812. For example, Herodotus compared Scythia to a square (4.101.1). For
comparisons with everyday objects, see Berger 1880, 3325, 1903, 437; Aujac 1981, 9; Janni
1984, 48; Dueck 2005, 3852; such comparisons can be traced back at least as far as
Timaeus, FGrH 566 F 63; ps.-Scylax, 106.3 (the passage is defended against Mller by
Shipley, 10 n. 14). Whole-world comparisons come later: if the (possibly) Eratosthenic
description of the oi0koume/nh as chlamys-shaped is interpreted as Zimmermann 2002
suggests, then the earliest example is Posidonius sling-shaped earth (57 n.). The utility of
such comparisons in forming a mental conception of an area otherwise difficult to grasp is
brought out in Rutilius Namatianus comparison of Italy to an oak leaf (De Reditu Suo 2.17
20, esp. 1718 Italiam ... qui cingere visu | et totam pariter cernere mente velit).
25

places lay on them.101 In ll. 1018, by an elaborate system of sleights and manipulations,
Dionysius manages to reconcile three different systems of continent division: by river, by
isthmus, and by lines of latitude and longitude, thus locating Alexandria at the point of
intersection of the lines separating Europe from Libya, and Asia from both Europe and Libya.
There could be no better illustration of the affective principle at work in ancient mapping
than the manipulation of a grid to centre on an authors home.
A weaker manifestation of two-dimensional thinking is the use of cardinal points for
orientation: in their simplest form, directions for how to get from A to B list the features of
the journey the traveller must pass, and have no need to locate the journey in abstract space.
Nonetheless, the use or failure to use cardinal points does not constitute a strong opposition
between one- and two-dimensional systems of thought, for many periploi make uninhibited
use of cardinal points as well.102 And some systems of reference are compatible with either
approach. One of Dionysius favourite, and one of the commonest, ways of locating one thing
with reference to another is to say that it is next to it. This is of course both the language of
the linear itinerary and also compatible with the (verbal) description of what is represented on
a map: Herodotus Aristagoras describes the scenes represented on his map, occasionally
using cardinal points, but above all in terms of what is next to, contiguous with, or
adjoining.103
In sum, Dionysius uses the hodological language which is a hallmark of ancient
landscape description, but combines it with a certain cartographic sense and with an
impression of perspective to be discussed further in Section 4. He is indeed happier listing
things one after another; abstract concepts of space are not handled well: lines of latitude and
longitude are well off-beam, references to cardinal points schematic and four-square; rivers
and mountain-ranges are conceived as straight lines, or straight lines with angular bends.
Throughout antiquity, thinking about space and representing it in abstract terms tends to be
the affair of intellectuals, not for practical mariners or soldiers. Dionysius has produced a
didactic poem, obviously not a practical manual, but one whose literary character locates it in
the mainstream of traditionally subjective, affective ancient geography.

101

Janni 1984, 6670, cf. Berger 1880, 199; contrast, however, Shcheglov, 3578, arguing
that Eratosthenes used objective methods to define his main parallel. Nonetheless,
Eratosthenes was taken to task by Hipparchus, who insisted on the use of better empirical,
above all astronomical, data (Thomson, 2058; Dicks, 356, 1604). On the difference
between Eratosthenes and his more rigorous successors, see Berger 1880, 199200.
102

ps.-Scylax very often refers to bore/aj and no/toj; the Periplus Maris Erythraei to all
four compass-points; see also Hannonis Periplus, 3 pro\j e9spe/ran, 11 e0pi\ meshmbri/an.
This is acknowledged by Janni 1984, 123. On the compatibility of periploi with compasspoint directions see also Gehrke, 1856; he shows how Hecataeus already uses them for
inland features which cannot be oriented by the coastline.
103

5.49.57; expressions of place include a0llh/lwn e0xo/menoi, tou/toisi de\ pro/souroi,

tw=nde e1xontai, e1xetai de\ tou/twn.
26

II. SOURCES

Twixt us the difference trims:

Using head instead of limbs,
You have read what I have seen;
Using limbs instead of head,
I have seen what you have read
Which way does the balance lean?
(Butler, quoted by Sir Walter Scott, St Ronans Well, epigraph to ch. xvii.)
S C HO LAR S H IP has certainly not been silent on the subject of Dionysius sources, but neither
has it made as much progress as it might have done. The first efforts were in the spirit of
nineteenth-century Quellenforschung.1 They tended to rest content with first-level
identification of a source, and to assume that, a source for a given detail having once been
identified, it could serve as the basis for inferences about a whole passage, like a clew
through a labyrinth. Given Dionysius eclecticism, this is precisely what one cannot do.
Moreover, they were inept at handling the relation of poetry to prose. Gthe concentrated on
the prose sources almost, but not quite, to the exclusion of poetry, while Bernayss
dissertation, coming thirty years later, did something to redress the balance, but adopted a
pan-Callimacheanism which a centurys further study of the Periegesis permeation with
Hellenistic poetry has now left behind. Nevertheless, there has been no real attempt to set the
two traditions, prose and poetry, side by side. Now it is time to reopen the question and,
especially given recent interest in the relation between didactic poetry and didactic prose,2 to
address it more sophisticatedly.
Seen in this light, the Periegesis is particularly complex and interesting. Not only
does the poem have multiple backgrounds and affiliations, but the poet also employs a
compositional technique that has produced an extremely elaborate stratigraphy. As we have
seen, the Periegesis is rooted in the traditions of catalogue and didactic and what can be coopted into them, and is also shot through with evocations of hymnody, epic, and epyllion. At
the same time, however, this is a didactic poet who indisputably uses prose sourcesa good
number of which are either extant or so nearly related to extant texts as to make it feasible to
study the latter in lieu of their putative lost relatives, in the confidence that the outcome will
be little affected. We can, then, test what happens when prose is recast into poetry, and
should do so by acknowledging that each has a distinctive identityneither regarding poetry
as mere versification, prettification of hard facts, nor prose as mere source material to

Gthe (drawing heavily on the notes of Mllers edition), followed by Bernays.

G. O. Hutchinson, Structuring Instruction: Didactic Poetry and Didactic Prose, in Talking

Books: Readings in Hellenistic and Roman Books of Poetry (Oxford, 2008), 22850; id.
Read the Instructions: Didactic Poetry and Didactic Prose, CQ2 59 (2009), 196211.
27

which the poet then adds all the surplus value that endows it with interest and charm.3 The
inquiry extends well beyond questions about lexicon (how receptive is the traditional
hexameter lexicon to technical vocabulary? does it reject or assimilate it?) and style (is it
really possible to see the distinction between poetry and prose as one between decoration and
embellishment, on the one hand, and specificity and hard fact on the other?) to the
competing claims of prose and poetic catalogues to provide comprehensive accounts of their
subject-matter. It is of particular interest to consider how Dionysius has selected and
manipulated his sources to convey changing impressions of selectivity and amplitude; and
crucial, too, to be aware of his technique of interleaving sourcespoetry and proseso as to
create a thick texture of allusion as well as an assemblage of (sometimes barely coherent)
geographical data.
Eratosthenes is where we should begin, for his system is woven deep into the fabric of
the poem.4 This was already apparent to ancient commentators5and it remains the case
despite divergence on matters of such fundamental principle as the traditional continental
divisions and the whole enterprise of locating Homeric myth in the real landscape (pp. 8, 14).
Dionysius adopts his basic notion of a circumambient ocean enclosing the known world,
which it penetrates in four major inlets (assumed to be Eratosthenic: 4357 n.); the three
promontories with which southern Europe extends into the Mediterranean sea; the Taurus

Assumption of the poets essential passivity has vitiated study of both Aratus and Nicander.
(i) Aratus. Vitae I and III of Aratus tell us that Antigonus gave him a work of Eudoxus to
versify. In his extant commentary on the poet, Hipparchus sought to demonstrate that he was
substantially dependent on Eudoxus Phaenomena, though Jean Martin, Aratos: Phnomnes
(Paris, 1998), i, pp. lxxxvixcv, has contended that the work from which he cites is itself
dependent on Aratus; we still await a proper response to this theory. At all events, as Martin
says, Aratus demonstrably modifies his material in the Diosemeia, and may be presumed to
have done so in the Phaenomena as well. (ii) Nicander. Otto Schneider formulated what
became the consensus view, that Nicander had versified Apollodorus Peri\ Qhri/wn.
Jacques shows that, although he used it, he both omitted and apparently added much, since
many items are unique to him. Our major opportunity to compare them is in the compound
antidote based on tortoise blood (70013 ~ Apollodorus fr. 6 Jacques, ii. 288, ap. Galen, xiv.
184.112 Khn), though complicated by the fact that Apollodorus original has not survived;
for discussion, see Jacques, ii. 1946. (Comparison between Nicander and his poetic
predecessor Numenius also reveals considerable divergence: Jacques 2006, 401.) Jacques
places Nicander in a therapeutic tradition whose very essence was modifiability, as remedies
were handed on from one doctor to the next.
4

Berger 1880, 16; Greaves, 516; Ilyushechkina 2010, 7680.

S 1 (GGM ii. 4289) 0Eratosqe/nouj de\ w2n zhlwth/j . . . Dio/nusioj de\ tou=
0Eratosqe/nouj w2n e0rasth/j, cf. S 4 (Ludwich, 578); Eustathius on 1 . . . kaqa_ kai\
0Eratosqe/nhj doca&zei, ou{ zhlwth&j e0stin e0n polloi=j o( to_ oi0koumeniko_n touti\
suntagma&tion poihsa&menoj.
28

range cutting Asia into a southern and northern half. It is worth stressing these similarities
and, simultaneously, the absence of any correspondingly impressive similarities with what we
know of the foundations of Posidonius system, especially the notion of zones whose
inhabitants had their own distinctive ethnographical characteristics.6 The excesses of
nineteenth-century pan-Posidonianism have had their day; a more sober review of the
evidence now suggests that the Periegesis owes significantly less to Posidonius than to his
Alexandrian predecessor. This is still more evident from the consideration of details than it is
from the consideration of the system as a whole (lists of tribes, the courses of rivers, the
comparison of India to a rhombus, or the Sacred Cape as the furthest point west in the
oi0koume/nh). These details are not usually taken over straight; rather, they are part of a
bricolage which frequently compromises or undermines their original significance.
Eratosthenes main meridian ran through Alexandria, Rhodes, and ultimately through the
mouth of the Borysthenes, but Dionysius wavers rather unsatisfactorily between the
Borysthenes and Tanais (31213 as against 1718) because he wants the line to coincide with
the continental division of Europe and Asia. Eratosthenes compared India to a rhombus
projecting sharply to the south east, but it is not easy to see how that figure, which Dionysius
echoes (1131), can be reconciled with the idea of a cone-shaped continent, which seems to be
his own (277, 621; 27080, 88796 nn.). But that is an illustration of Dionysius technique,
not an argument against the use of the source. What remains is to consider the form in which
Dionysius was using Eratosthenes, whether directly, or mediated through an author such as
Strabo; but the discussion of Strabo himself has to come first.
Strong similarities with Strabos sketch or hypotyposis of the known world have
already been noted.7 The general sequence of sections is similar, though the continents are
treated in a different order, and Dionysius reserves a separate section for the islands in the
6

Contra Counillon 1983, 13, 182 (though Bernays, 556, does not say what Counillon
attributes to him). If zone theory is implied at all, it is in a very attentuated form (see on pp.
3940; Ilyushechkina 2010, 21518, inter al. notes the overlap in 11769 with Eratosthenes
Hermes, which does contain zone theory). Certainly, Dionysius uses patterning and contrast
(p. 180-1, e.g. Libyan Nomads and Egyptians, or Erembi and Blessed Arabians), but there is
little sign that differences of cultural level are to be attributed specifically to climatic zones.
For Posidonius zone theory, see Strab. 2.2.13.8 = F 49 E.K. = 13 Theiler; Clarke 1999,
146, 172, 208.
7

p. 19; Greaves, 6575. For further arguments for Dionysius use of Strabo see Gthe, 33
(certain details in the description of Greece), 378 (Phrygia and Lydia, 80938), 402
(Arabia and the Troglodytes, 92769). The use of a common source was the view of
Mommsen, 809, and Knaack, RE s.v. Dionysios, 920.43, is not altogether discountenanced by
Radt on Strab. II pp. 121.1628, 124.42125.2, 130.25131.22, and is maintained mit groer
Sicherheit by Ilyushechkina 2010, 8793 (but if the reversed directions in the review of
Libyan tribes and Aegean islands constitute an argument against direct dependence, then
Dionysius and Apollonius ought, by the same logic, to have used a common source for the
southern Black Sea coast); less dogmatically on 211, 228, 283.
29

centre of the poem. There are some similarities, too, with the internal organisation of the
continents: the Danube bisects northern Europe (270446, 298330 nn.); Libya is described
as a series of tiers (south to north in Strabo, north to south in Dionysius), in which many
tribal names overlap (174219); while the northern half of Asia, which as a whole is bisected
by the Caucasus (beginning at Pamphylia and running due east to the eastern ocean: 639),
begins at the Tanais and goes, first eastwards, then west to Asia Minor (6201165, 652
880 nn.; Strab. 2.5.312; 11.1.57). Three shape-comparisons are shared between Strabo and
the hypotyposisthe Black Sea as a Scythian bow (15762), Libya as a trapezium (17480,
cf. that of its surface to a leopard-skin, 1813), and Iberia as an ox-hide (287)of which the
second is unique, while the first, though reasonably common, displays particular similarities
in these two sources. Perhaps the most impressive correspondences are with particular
sequences or liststhe four oceanic gulfs (4357 n.); the seas within and adjoining the
Mediterranean (58169, 14662 nn.), and (although treated simultaneously in Strabo,
separately in Dionysius) the islands within both, especially from the Balearics as far as the
Peloponnese and the islands of the eastern Aegean (447619 n., cf. 499, 51332, 525, 533
7); the European tribes north of the Danube (30220 n.). Finally, we could note some
passages where Dionysius seems to be paraphrasing either the hypotyposis itself, or
something extremely like it (44, 50, 51, 567, 70, 76, 109, 139, 156, 15960, 1612, 1813,
525, 53940).
If we are sufficiently impressed by the cumulative weight of this evidence to accept
the likelihood or strong possibility Dionysius was working from either the hypotyposis itself
or something very like it, is there any sign that he knew and used the Geography as a whole?
This is where matters become murkier. There are indeed various broad similarities, but
specific links are harder to prove. I would suggest, first, the continued use of parts of Strabo
as ground-plan. If the hypotyposis provided a model to which the Periegesis could very
broadly adhere, its divisions of northern Asia are further elaborated at the beginning of book
11, and these correspond solidly with those of the Periegesis, at least for the peoples east of
the Tanais (652880, 65289, 6809 nn., comparing Strab. 11.1.57 and 11.2). Another part
of the Geography which parallels the Periegesis division of space is the description of
Greece in books 810. If the similarity were accepted, it would imply a different approach,
the shadowing of a large tract of description rather than the use of relatively short passages as
templates; but it might be objected that that similarity is only relative to the greater
dissimilarities with other extant sources. In general, the matches that we find are local in
scope. Some are more compelling than others, but particularly suggestive are the account of
silk-making (752b757 n.); the understanding of Coele Syria as a region bounded by two
mountain-ranges (897922 n.); the tribes which exemplify the three zones into which Persia
is banded (1069, cf. the palaces of Strab. 15.3.3).8 A few geographical names are unique to

Perhaps also the situs of Arabia (92734); the placement of Armenia to the west of Media
(101619); the northsouth treatment of Persia (1062b1065); Patalene treated specifically as
an island (108993). The tribes on the east coast of the Black Sea overlap partly with Strab.
11.2.1, but other lists were no doubt available and several are extant (65289 and 6809 nn.).
30

the two authors (687, the Zygii; 752, the Frou=roi/Fau=noi); but in the light of all the
literature that has been lost it is not safe to infer that Strabo is the source for these items.
Finally, verbal correspondences between the Geography and Periegesis drop off notably
outside the hypotyposis, but it is still worth drawing attention to 408 (Peloponnesian
coastline); 6067 (Ogyris); 643, 6446, 6479 (Taurus range); 988b989, 990 (Tigris); 1130,
1131 (shape of India).
My own view is that Dionysius used the hypotyposis and probably the rest of the
Geography as well. Alternatively, he might have been working from an epitome in which the
hypotyposis (a handy digest, after all) was generously reproduced,9 but the supposition that he
knew the entire work permits all the correspondences to be explained more economically.
Even if references to the Geography are few and far between before Strabos great
renaissance in Stephanus of Byzantium and afterwards,10 that is not to say that the work
languished in total obscurity. Perhaps residence in Alexandria, or the distinct possibility that
his father worked as a librarian in Rome,11 gave Dionysius an advantage; we cannot say.
After all, if we deny the use of Strabo, we should simply have to posit the use of an unknown
text or texts remarkably similar to his.
Another factor when considering the parallels between the Periegesis and the
Geography as a whole are the frequent correspondences between the poem and excerpts from
other authors, above all Eratosthenes, but also Posidonius and some others, transmitted by
Strabo. With Eratosthenes, there are indubitable links with the lists of tribes around the
Caspian (7266012) and in Arabia (9549). Other Eratosthenic details include the
identification of Meninx as the island of the Lotus-Eaters (47980); the Sacred Cape as the
furthest point west in Europe (5614); the location of the Sakai, Sogdians, and Bactrians
(7367, 73951); the course of the Euphrates (97682, 981, 982); and India as a rhombus
9

Compare (although on Alys dating it is later than Dionysius) the anonymous u9potu/pwsij
gewgrafi/aj, whose final sections, describing the Mediterranean and associated seas (47
53), are agreed to draw extensively on Strab. 2.5.1823 (p. 15 n.45; the exception is Gthe,
1011, who held that 4850 went back to a common source, but that 512 came from
Strabo himself). Nevertheless, any epitome that Dionysius used must have reproduced Strabo
still more extensively.
10

Honigmann, RE s.v. Strabon, 151.3050; Aly, 1*8* (esp. Test. 1216); Diller 1975b, 7
10; F. Lasserre, in G. Aujac (ed. and transl.), Strabon: Gographie, i. (Paris, 1969), xlix;
Clarke 1997, 93; Ilyushechkina 2010, 93.
11

Suda d 1173; Leue; Bernays, 216; A. Klotz, Zu Dionysius Periegetes, RhM2 64 (1909),
4745; W. Schmid and O. Sthlin, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur, ii. (Munich,
1924), 677 (681); Diller 1975b, 8; Bowie 1990, 778; Tsavari, 28; Leo, 157; Amato 2005a,
667 and 2005b, 98 n. 5. For some inconclusive considerations about Strabos final place of
residence and of the Geographys composition, see Honigmann, RE s.v. Strabon, 83.3085.6.
12

Cf. 7335, where Dionysius follows Eratosthenes rather than Strabo himself on the
placement of the Derbices.
31

(1131). If Dionysius could read Strabo when hardly anyone else did, then presumably the
same could be argued for Eratosthenes; and since it is Strabo to whom we overwhelmingly
owe our knowledge of Eratosthenes, it is self-evident that it is in Strabo that correspondences
will be found. Weighed against Dionysius sheer eclecticism, the divergences from
Eratosthenes system (Berger 1880, 16) count for little. My hunch remains that Strabo was
the mediator.13 In 1062b1065 the misleading implication about the Caspian Gates looks to
have been based on the wording of Strabo, who transmits the fragment in question. We might
also point to 773, the mistaken connection of the Thermodon with Armenia. Strabo mentions
this, stigmatising it as an error; but that does not rule him out as mediator of the notion.
With Posidonius my hunch that Strabo was mediator is stronsger. True, the total
harvest is meagre. Contrary to that self-generating momentum of Posidonian studies in the
nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries which saw his influence everywhere it looked,14
Dionysius simply does not seem to have been especially interested in Posidonius ideas. They
part company, for example, over the two sets of Ethiopians (180), over the status of
Hippemolgoi as epithet or noun (309), over the identity of the Erembi as Arabians (9629),
and Dionysius takes no notice of his interpretation of the Cimmerians of northern Europe
(335). He does echo Posidonius theory of a sling-shaped earth (57), and Patrick Counillon
has argued persuasively that the trapezoidal shape of Libya (17480 n.) reflects Posidonius
definition of that figure. He also reports on the women of the Loire estuary (5709), and
Posidonius theory about the Pillars of Heracles seems to be one element in the general
medley in 647. The last two passages are transmitted by Strabo, and in 563 Dionysius
Homeric vocabulary was possibly designed to tessellate with Strabos rendering of
Posidonius prose. Much the same applies to 1010, save that the transmitting author is
Diodorus Siculus, and the Posidonian origin of the passage unproven; if a further echo of
Posidonius is to be discerned in 278, the channel by which the material reached Dionysius is
wholly unclear. Again, one can do no more than establish probabilities, but given (say) that
Dionysius did not have a section on oceanic islands handed to him on a plate and had to
create one for himself, it seems more economical to suppose that he took the Loire island
(Posidonius) and Tauropolos on Icaria (Eratosthenes) from Strabo, where they both figure,
13

Gthe believed in Eratosthenic influence, but allowed that it was direct only in the passage
about the Euphrates and Tigris (1875, 424; 9761013); if his conjecture about the
Eratosthenenic origin of the name Siris (223) was right, then it would show that Dionysius
had access to Eratosthenes other than through Strabo. Counillon also prefers the influence to
be direct (1983, 170, 174, 182, 197, 292, 304, and passim).
14

Mller, GGM ii. xxiiiiv (the position of India and the downsizing of Asia); Gthe, 78,
1114, 16, 334; Bernays, 478, 546, 61, 63; Knaack, RE s.v. Dionysius, 920.32921.32 (an
extraordinarily enthusiastic survey); Rostovtzeff, 73 (the description of the races of the Black
Sea coast, via Alexander of Ephesus) and 77 (the tableau of Scythia). More recently,
Counillon makes ambitious claims for Posidonian influence (1983, 1213, 1378, 142, 146,
180, 184, 202, 226, 227, 256, 2945, 306; 2001b, 111); so too Ilyushechkina 2010, 806, 143
(30220 n.); a more cautious overall account in Greaves, 569.
32

than that he took them from their original sources and happened to preserve unique
correspondences with Strabo in both cases.
The Periegesis contains a vast quantity of chorographical and ethnographical
material, theory and observation, travellers reports and literary topos, and looking at it from
the opposite perspective it is barely possible to say by what channels much of it was filtered
through to Dionysius. Pytheas underlies the northern ocean and Thule (323, 335, 31619,
5806 nn.). The accounts of Italy and the far west have a number of points of contact with
Timaeus (367, 4556 nn.) and Ephorus (3479, 3767, 55960 nn.), though it is hard to
prove the extent of their influence (33982 n.). The Alexander historians still underpin the
accounts of the far East, and the account of Dionysus in India, in particular, seems to have
been erected on the foundations of Cleitarchus account of the god and his foundation of
Nysa. Traces of Megasthenes also show up in the account of India (110765 n.);
Agatharchides lies behind the much-transmuted account of Arabia (92761 n.). A detail in
the account of tribes round the Caspian sea concurs strikingly with Artemidorus, as
transmitted by Strabo (6809 n., the placement of the Kerketioi), and the Caucasian source of
the Tanais with Theophanes of Mytilene (6635 n.), also via Strabo. On the other hand,
certain traditions manifestly were not transmitted via Strabo: Ctesias on Semiramis buildingworks in Babylon (10058 n.); Pytheas on the northern ocean (three names feature in 323,
only one of which is transmitted by Strabo); the traditions about the colonisation of Italian
Locri by slaves (3656 n.) and the Sybarites hybris towards Olympian Zeus (3724 n.). In a
handful of cases Dionysius geographical sources are relatively up to date: excluding a barely
conceivable reference to the Huns in 630, we still have the Heptanomia in Middle Egypt
(251), the Alani (305), and the Indo-Scythians on the Indus in 1088; a reference to Dalmatia
as a province is uncertain (95102 n.).
There are also a few real rarities. The Pisidian city of Lyrbe (859) figures in only a
single other literary source (Ptolemy), and one suspects that Aigila (499) figured in a list of
Aegean islands whence it was inserted into an island-sequence derived from the hypotyposis.
In other words, as well as consulting literary geographers and poets, Dionysius may have run
the gamut all the way to itineraries and lists. A number of passages which either name rivers
which figure in no other ancient writer (5756, 733b735, 913, 1144b1148 nn.) or give
unparalleled, sometimes eccentric, information about familiar ones (31415, 4967, 780
1 nn.) suggest the use of a specialist tract or tracts on rivers. Callimachus wrote a peri\
potamw=n, though the extant fragments, 4579 Pf.,15 do not seem to tie up with Dionysius
treatise. And once we allow the use of specialist potamography, we must do the same for
minerals. A poem on precious stones is ascribed to a Dionysius which, given the striking
overlaps in the tiny sample available, must be by the same writer (p. 151); but admitting the
connection still leaves the problem of sources open, because much of what Dionysius says
about precious stones is entirely sui generis.

15

Demonstrably used by Latin poets: Thomas 1986, 1923. For Callimachus on rivers, see
also Williams on Hymn 2.108.
33

It is a relief to turn to Herodotus, where we have an opportunity to study how

Dionysius availed himself of a famous text which is extant, in full, and where there is no need
to worry about channels of mediation. In many passages Herodotus is the fountainhead of a
tradition, rather than the direct ascertainable source,16 but where he has been used directly, a
distinct pattern emerges. Unlike Eratosthenes and Strabo, Herodotus has not been used for
deep structure, the shape of the world, the layout of continents or the orientation of countries.
On the contrary, he had rejected such traditional notions as the circumambient ocean, the
three continents, the Caspian as an oceanic gulf, all of which Dionysius inherits, while his
own eccentric view of the continents (4.3741), elaborated as a challenge to the Ionians, is of
no interest to Dionysius whatsoever. Irrelevant for the armature of the universe, Herodotus is,
nevertheless, used for details of a bigger picture whose principles derive from elsewhere.
Such details include physical geography (648, 11516, 1656, 2227, 244 (perhaps), 262b
264, 7846 nn.); miscellanea about tribes (211, 309, 6529a, 73951 nn.); and other colourful
topographical details (6712, 100910, 111415 nn.). What Herodotus was most famous for
in antiquitytall stories, anecdote, court talesbarely register, though the Massagetan lack
of wine (744) could evoke the story of Tomyris and her son; sensational tales have little to
offer the kind of world Dionysius wanted to create. And although Herodotus stood at the
beginning of the ethnographical tradition, Dionysius ethnographies in practice draw on
Hellenistic sources which have superseded his badly outdated pictures of, say, the tribes of
Libya or India. Nevertheless, Herodotus remains useful as a source of occasional detail,
which is treated to the typical Dionysian techniques of fragmentation and recombination
(clearest of all in his treatment of Mount Atlas) and of interleaving with poetry (100910 n.),
which we are about to study more closely.
Dionysius poetic sources are considerably easier to identify than his prose ones.
While undoubtedly important influences such as Alexander of Ephesus geographical poems
have been lost,17 all-important early Greek hexameter and Hellenistic poetic models are still
extant. We are directed towards them, not by the kind of explicit referencing that we find in
some Hellenistic poetry (Hesiod in Callimachus Aitia, Homer and Hesiod in Nicander), but
by programmatic passages (especially at the beginning and end) which construct the tradition
into which the poet inserts himself, and by ubiquitous citations and echoes of words and
phrases. While these necessarily raise the question of how to distinguish between deliberate
reference, unconscious reminiscence, and chance concatenation,18 the number of

16

55960 (Long-lived Ethiopians); 906 (Phoenicians from the Erythraean Sea); 911
(antiquity of Tyre); 9445 (cinnamon-bearing birds); 11257 (Indian kalamoi).
17

Another possible mediator of Eratosthenes? Cf. Berger 1903, 5323; Tka, RE s.v. Saba,
1493.2832. For his influence on the Periegesis, see 593, 6067, 91020 nn.; Greaves, 48
51. SH 34 i9mero/essa La/phqoj recalls the delightsome tone of Dionysius, and SH 38
indicates that the poem also contained mythological narrative, possibly following recherch
Hellenistic poetic models (Euphorion fr. 52 P. = 72 L.).
18

Thomas 1986, 174.

34

uncontestable allusions is nevertheless so high that it allows us to proceed more confidently

with an analysis of Dionysius methods than we can, say, with the poets of the Sibyllina, with
their flotsam and jetsam of far-flung correspondences.
The Periegesis is wrought from a series of core texts, augmented by a large number of
outliers. Beside the massive use of Homer and Hesiod, echoes of the Homeric Hymns are
much less extensive, but can occasionally be heard.19 The influence of the pseudo-Hesiodic
Scutum is detectable as well.20 Again, beside the enormous impact of Apollonius
Argonautica,21 Callimachus (especially the fourth Hymn), Aratus, and Nicander, there are
reminiscences of Theocritus,22 Posidippus (319, 328, 439, 724; 1120; p. 154), Euphorion (90
and 1159, 221 = 246 and 296; 558; 722; 947; for correspondences that are not unique to
Euphorion, cf. 22 = 94; 780; 811), Moschus Europa (141, 157, 264, 716, 720, 791, 1118;
perhaps the Megara in 1115); perhaps also Alexander of Aetolia (659) and Parthenius (485).
Nor is the range of allusion altogether confined to hexameter poetry, archaic or Hellenistic.
Lyric, elegy, and tragedy are the source of geographically specific allusions (Mimnermus,
1108; Aeschylus, 227, 515; Sophocles, 227, 521, 522; Euripides, 227) and of epithets
(Sophocles, 972; cf. also 542, 860 megalw/numoj, an epithet of divinities before Philodamus
and Dionysius apply it to the landscape), for which Pindar is a particularly valuable fund of
suggestion, given his encomiastic treatment of place (p. 135; 244, al. baqu/krhmnoj; 554
a0gakle/hj; 770 baru/gdoupoj). In 843, Anacreon seems to have been used to convey the
light-hearted, gladsome tone appropriate to a Dionysian revel. Dionysius was clearly imbued
with classical poetry, but even here the question arises whether, once in a while, he echoes a
fragment that was mediated to him by a source which quotes itin practice Strabo once
again (1108, Mimnermus; 213, 8513, Callimachus).23

19

In many cases the correspondence is not unique to the Homeric Hymn in question, but see
210, 289, 447, 524, 737, 777, 885, 899, 922, 1055, 1079.
20

Cf. esp. 358, 464, 500, 702, 966, 1062.

21

Dionysius relationship to Apollonius is remarkably undersold by the scholia, which

remark (on 1) zhloi= (de\) to\n 0Apollw/nion, ou0 xarakth=roj w2n e0rasth/j, a0ll e0pikai/rou
dia\ th\n xrei/an e0pibolh=j, as if the former does little more than make sporadic raids on the
latter.
22

With geographical names or local relevance to a particular locale: 113, 179, 436, 509, 811,
837, 916, 1088; others: 227, 353, 372, 528, 529 = 873, 792, 838, 842, 873, 965, 997, 1010,
1022, 1033, 1077, 1100(?), 1112, 1134, 1157, 1168.
23

For Strabo and Callimachus, see F. Pontani, Callimachus Cited, in B. Acosta-Hughes, L.

Lehnus, and S. Stephens (eds.), Brills Companion to Callimachus (Leiden, 2011), 93117, at
100; and for Strabos poetic citations, D. Dueck, Strabos Use of Poetry, in D. Dueck, H.
Lindsay, S. Pothecary (eds.), Strabos Cultural Geography: the Making of a Kolossourgia
(Cambridge, 2005), 86107; Dueck 2010, 2467.
35

From the very beginning of the poem, with its evocations of Homer, Hesiods
Theogony, and Apollonius, which simultaneously advertise poetic models, generic
affiliations, and techniques of allusion, we are primed to look for the kind of micromanagement of sources familiar, of course, from the Hellenistic poets themselves, and
studied in Virgils Georgics by Richard Thomas (1986). Dionysius runs the gamut of these
techniques: most often he signals his models by verbatim allusion, but sometimes pointedly
varies his models by eschewing citation in favour of synonymity (e.g. 10911, 190, 4634,
48990, 9423 nn.), or by miniaturisation and condensation (e.g. 3412 ~ Il. 15.41012; 416
~ Call. Hymn 1.216; 443 ~ Ap. Rhod. 4.1434; 445 ~ HHom. Ap. 6; 527 ~ Call. Hymn
4.2789; 1170 ~ Il. 23.255). What this section will concentrate on is Dionysius use of the art
of combination and its implications, while the linguistic content of those allusionsthe
quotation and manipulation of words and phrases, per aures echoeswill be considered
further in the next chapter. First, however, it is appropriate to reflect briefly on some of the
ends to which allusion is used.
Many borrowed phrases are simply ornamentalespecially at line-end, and especially
concerning running water.24 Also useful are naming-formulae, the aetiological so too even
now,25 place-names and embroidery on them.26 In more sophisticated instances,
geographical information in the original is relevant in the echo, and it depends on the reader
to spot the appositeness.27 A still more sophisticated example is the echo of Callimachus
description of the Peloponnese at 386, which in the new context is talking about a peninsula
in Illyria. The echo is not to be explained by ransacking Callimachus himself, but must be
connected with the belief (elsewhere attested) that the two peninsulas were the same size.
Dionysius does not signal this explicitly: it is a piece of buried learning, and depends on
knowledge of the sources context and further geographical learning to appreciate it.
Imitation is very often a matter of analogy. In straightforward cases, there is a more or
less clear analogy between the imitated passage and the new context. The astronomical data

24

140 sto/ma Bospo/rou ~ Ap. Rhod. 1.1114; 267 Tritwni/doj u3dati li/mnhj ~ Ap. Rhod.
4.1391.
25

226 ei9ligme/noj ei0j a3la pi/ptei ~ Hes. Th. 791 (respectively the Nile and Styx); 326 ku=ma
polufloi/sboio qala/sshj ~ Il. 2.209; 644 kanaxhda\ r9e/ousin ~ Hes. Th. 367, Call. Hymn
4.45; 950, 1029 tou1neken ei0se/ti nu=n ~ Ap. Rhod. 1.1354, 4.534.
26

389 ta\ Kerau/nia kiklh/skousin ~ Ap. Rhod. 4.519; 415 0Arka/dej 0Apidanh=ej ~ Ap.
Rhod. 4.263; 739 kela/dontoj 0Ara/cew ~ Ap. Rhod. 4.133; 767 polu/rrhnej Tibarhnoi/ ~
Ap. Rhod. 2.377; 975 sto/ma Qermw/dontoj ~ Ap. Rhod. 2.370, 805.
27

203 e0pitroxa/ei yama/qoisin from Ap. Rhod. 4.1266 (the Syrtis); 325 9Ellh/sponton
a0ga/rroon from Il. 2.845 (the territory of the Thracians); 338 u9pai\ po/da from Il. 2.824 (rich
people under a mountain); 1066 trixqa\ de/ from Il. 2.668 (threefold living-space). Cf.
Thomas 1986, 176, 1789, on Virgilian allusion which depends on the readers awareness of
the original context to appreciate the connection.
36

from Pytheas concerning Thule suggested a connection with Hesiods reference to the winter
sun; hence the black-skinned southerners of Op. 527 were transferred to 586. Mining in harsh
conditions links Apollonius Chalybes (2.1006) to the Arieni quarrying their rocks for
sapphire (1106); at the same time there is a piquant contrast between the crude metal, black
smoke, and the blue-and-golden stone. The Dionysian choruses of 8412 are a conglomerate
of earlier passages united by the theme of celebratory circular dances, sacred and secular.
Again, the gods in question in 702 and Ap. Rhod. 2.701 may be different (Dionysus and
Apollo respectively), but both passages involve divine epiphany, the institution of choruses,
and divine epicleses.
This kind of imitation can be quite sophisticated when it relies on recognition of
something in the models context for the allusion to be appreciated. Take 948, which echoes
Ap. Rhod. 4.4312. Both times Dionysus is described as tipsy with wine (a0kroxa/lic
oi1nw|), but the special relevance of Apollonius to Dionysius, who is describing the god in
Arabia, is that just a few lines earlier Apollonius has called his deity lord of Nysa (a1nac
Nush/ioj), a motif Dionysius has implied (rather than stated) in his own treatment. There
may be another example in 1445 (on the Kyaneae or clashing rocks at the Bosporus), where
Dionysius borrows a line-end from Apolloniusand his art is fully appreciated only when it
is realised that the model is already concerned with a rock, a different one, withstanding the
elements in the middle of the sea. Such additional resonances are like a series of echoes
following after a sound, or ripples spreading out from a centre: Dionysius enables a
philologically astute reader to catch them, but does not obtrude them.28
On other occasions, the analogy between x and y is bien trouve: Dionysius
demonstrates ingenuity and wit. His description of the wretched life of the iron-working
Chalybes (76871), based on Apollonius laced with Callimachus, also draws on Hesiods
description of the Iron Age (Op. 1767), which he wittily literalises as if its denizens
themselves worked iron ore (they do not). A couple of passage imply, rather than state,
serpentine imagery through echoes of Nicander. In 183, with kata/stiktoj foli/dessin
Dionysius takes us from a leopards spots (Cornelius Pisos description of the surface of
Libya) to the dappling of a snakeskin, via similar compound adjectives used by Strabo and
Nicander. An echo of Nicander in 47, which seems to describe the long, narrow channel
connecting the Caspian Sea with the ocean, implies the serpentine imagery which Dionysius
elsewhere applies overtly to his coastlines and waterways. In such cases, Dionysius uses
analogy to create new associations through his combinatory ability. But there are also
instances where simple opportunism seems to have prevailed, and any echo of the original
context would be plain bizarre.29

28

For this sort of effect in Callimachus, see Reinsch-Werner, 3623; for Aratus, Kidd, 245
(overtones that enhance the significance of the Aratean word or phrase).
29

e.g. 212 (the sandy oracle of Ammon) and (probabilmente: Magnelli 2006a, 245) Od.
14.136 (the imagined death of Odysseus); 460 (Corsicas abundance of wood) and Call.
Hymn 2.42 (Apollos abundance of skill); 654 (the race of Sauromatae) and Ap. Rhod.
37

Dionysius allusions are interleaved with one another; they are conflative or
combinatory. He rarely sticks to a single source for long; his treatment of the southern
coastline of the Black Sea is therefore unusual in its sustained reliance of Apollonius,
although even here there is plenty of further embroidery (76198). With this technique
inherited from his Hellenistic modelsDionysius constructs the literary tradition to which he
wishes to affiliate himself. Enrico Magnelli has drawn attention to passages in later
Hellenistic poets (Euphorion, Nicander) where similar concatenations of models draw
attention to the literary tradition in which the poet stands.30 Richard Thomas has illustrated a
very similar way of proceeding in Virgils Eclogues and Georgics; he called it the art of
multiple reference or (in its most sophisticated form) conflation. Thomas pointed to
passages where Virgil combined an early Greek hexameter with a Hellenistic model, or a
Hellenistic model with a neoteric one in such a way as to advertise the active tradition of his
own verse.31 He paid particular attention to G. 1.23146, a scientific passage on zone theory
in which Virgil has engrafted onto the basic fabric, from Eratosthenes and Aratus, a multitude
of other poetic sources (Homer, Apollonius, the Latin poetic translators of Eratosthenes and
Aratus, and other Latin didactic poets).32 This last is a particularly close parallel for
Dionysius, not for subject-matter alone, but above all for technique, for the embroidery of a
source which provides the basic framework with an array of allusions to other poetic models.
What remains to be seen is whether Thomas interpretation of this technique in Virgil as

3.1366 (the lump of rock Jason throws into the midst of the Sown Men); 742 (the
Massagetae) and Od. 20.376 (Telemachus); 744 (no wine at home) and Od. 13.46 (no
Hephaestus at home); 845 (costume of the Lydian women) and Il. 9.490 (the infant Achilles);
953 (Arabian raiment) and Il. 24.796 (Hectors funeral); 1053 (if sweet desire should seize
you) and Il. 3.446, 14.328 (seduction scenes); 1130 (four sides of India) and Ap. Rhod.
1.946 (six-armed giants of Cyzicus); 1168 (only the gods enjoy true ease) and ps.-Theocr. Id.
25.175 (Heracles). This category comes very close to that of mere sound-echoes.
30

For Nicander, see Magnelli 2006b 1936, Combination technique. For Euphorion, see
Magnelli 2002, 621 (on Homer) and 2237 (on the Alexandrians); also De Stefani and
Magnelli, 5378.
31

Thomas 1986, 1935 (G. 1.138, from Il. 18.486 and Call. Hymn 1.41; G. 1.332, from
Theocr. Id. 7.77 and a putative neoteric propempticon), 1978 (G. 1.246, from Arat. 48 and
Il. 18.489); id. 1982b, 145 (Ecl. 6.52, from Theocr. Id. 11.72 and Calvus Io, fr. 20 Hollis);
cf. 1986, 195: Taken together they represent the chief areas of Virgils reference and also
represent in microcosm the method of his poetry in broader terms: to fuse, subsume, and
renovate the traditions which he inherited. For combined allusions to archaic or classical and
Hellenistic Greek models by Roman authors wishing to claim them for the Latin context,
see also K. Gutzwiller, A Guide to Hellenistic Literature (Oxford, 1997), 214, tracing the
technique back at least to Ennius.
32

Thomas 1986, 1958.

38

ultimately polemical, that is, as serving to revise the tradition,33 also holds good for
Dionysius. The terms combination and conflation are certainly appropriate, but
harmonisation is perhaps a better description of the intellectual implications of the method
in the Periegesis.
One of Dionysius trademarks is to interweave a Hellenistic source with Homer and
Hesiod, but he is equally fond of combining one Hellenistic poet with another, or even with
himself.34 So elaborate is this interweaving that each member of a three-word phrase may
refer to, or evoke, a different model, but they are integrated and held together by some
common theme or motifa lump of rock in 1445, Delian festivals in 527, metallurgy in
76871, maidens dancing in 8412and sometimes by a specific word or common root,
such as the shrill (ligu-) cries of the birds in 528 (Od. 19.51819, Il. 14.2901), the choruses
in 527 (Call. Hymn 4.279 xorou/j, 313 xorou=), or the Asopid maidens in 7779 (Ap. Rhod.
2.947, 4.567).35 When Dionysius cites two sources, the later of whom has himself used the
earlier, he uses the well-known technique of window-allusion,36 certainly practised by the
Hellenistic poets themselves and then adopted, with relish, by their Latin successors (on
whom more work has been done):37 examples in the Periegesis include 123, 30711 (298
33

Ibid. 193.

34

e.g. 534 (Apollonius); 5267 (Callimachus); 1008 (Odyssey). By way of comparison, Nic.
Th. 2668 is of particular interest, a passage which Magnelli describes as a remarkable
patchwork of Apollonian echoes (2006b, 195). For the conflation of different passages from
the same author in Accius and Catullus, see Thomas 1982, 15860.
35

Thereby implying a procedure not unlike that of ancient biblical exegetes who felt justified
in interpreting one passage in the light of another on the basis of lexical correspondences
between them. Rabbinic rules of exegesis included that of gezera shava, or the law of
analogy, where the Torahs use of analogous words or phrases permitted the application of
one passage to the elucidation of another (cf. S. Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine
(New York, 21962), 5862; D. Daube, Rabbinic Methods of Interpretation and Hellenistic
Rhetoric, HUCA 22 (1949), 23964, at 259).
36

The term was suggested by Thomas 1986, 188 (the intermediate model thus serves as a
sort of window onto the ultimate source, whose version is otherwise not visible). F. Cairns,
Tibullus: A Hellenistic Poet at Rome (Cambridge, 1979), 63, described it as looking
through a source to a precedessor (and notes that it was well enough known in Latin poetry
to be spotted by the 1st-c. scholiast on Persius); while J. C. McKeown, Ovid: Amores, i
(Liverpool, 1987), 37, called it double allusion (which does not differentiate it clearly
enough from other sorts of combination). The term should only be used where there is a
reasonable probability that source a is indeed itself alluding to source b.
37

Bibliography on window-allusion, mostly in Latin poetry, but with some Greek examples,
in Nelis 2001, 5 n. 24. In Hellenistic poetry, for Theocritus see R. Hunter, Theocritus and the
Archaeology of Greek Poetry (Cambridge, 1996), 81 n. 19; M. Grazia Bonnano, Allusivit
teocritea, RFIC 115 (1987), 196202 (unautentica immagine teocritea, scorciata e
39

330 n.), 8338, 966, 10767, 1181, and possibly also 3412, 443, 6001. The already
formally-demanding arts of combination and window-allusion require special dexterity in the
selection of models that tessellate with each other and whose original contexts contribute
something to the present passage, but in Dionysius hands it can be done. The interwoven
allusions in the first three lines to the beginning of the Argonautica and the main body of the
Theogony (after the proem) are one example; another is the salutation to Delphic Apollo at
the end of the tour of Europe in 447. This miniature gem combines the salutation of Apollo at
a transitional (i.e. structurally parallel) moment in HHom. Ap. 165, but the third-person
salutation i9lh/koi is replaced by the apostrophe i9lh/koij from an Apollonian salutation to the
same god which occurs precisely in the context of the slaying of Delphyne (2.7058). In
other words, both members of the coalition have something to contribute.
So far we have been speaking about Dionysius prose and poetic sources as if they
were separate and separable, but it is a falsification of his project if they are not considered
together. The engrafting and interlacing of sources is one of the best ways to appreciate how
inextricably connected poetry and prose are. There are instances of all possible combinations,
besides the ubiquitous interlacing of poetic sources. The sections of the poem which rest on
Strabos hypotyposis, or something very like it, are recast in poetic terms (take the
comparison of the Black Sea to a drawn bow in 15762, which is tricked out with diction and
clausulae drawn from Hellenistic poets) and spiced up with detail drawn from Herodotus; the
Black Sea coast, which leans on Apollonius, is embellished with further poetic allusion and
details drawn from Herodotus once more. Moreover, felicitous choice of vocabulary may
simultaneously evoke more than one background. The epithet kata/stiktoj in 183 both
echoes Cornelius Pisos description of the surface of Libya, quoted in Strabos hypotyposis,
and evokes a Nicandrian clausula which insinuates the image of a snakeskin alongside the
primary one of a leopards spots. In 100910, on the date-palms of Babylonia, the
Herodotean underlay is updated with a detail from (possibly) Posidoniususing a word
(a0kro/komoj) which also evokes Theocritus, and the whole cast in terms of a traditional
verse-pattern for species of tree. These are instances of showmanship, bravura combinations
by which Dionysius displays his virtuosity.
From an informative point of view, all varieties of source are treated to the same
ultimate end. Poetic geography is treated no differently from prose; information furnished by
Homer or Apollonius stands on the same footing as Herodotus, or ps.-Scylaxs, or Strabos,
and can be combined with it in the same way (e.g. 6914 n.). It is a sort of hyper-didaxis and
minute mosaicwhich depends for its full effect on the readers ability to appreciate
precisely how each tiny individual piece has been tessellated with the rest, with infinite pains,
sintetica, ed anzi sovrimpressa); Fantuzzi and Hunter, 205 (suggested but not
demonstrated). In Callimachus: Reinsch-Werner, 90, 35963; the interpretation by Bing
(1056) of Callimachus tribute to Aratus in Ep. 27.34 Pf. = HE 12991300, with a
reference to both Arat. 2 and Hes. Op. 4. In Posidippus: Hunter 2004b, 1034. Euphorion fr.
131 P. (127 L.) refers both to Call. Hec. fr. 34 Hollis (whence kele/bh and (a0f)afu/ssw) and
its model, Od. 19.387 (whence u3dwr).
40

into a harmonious whole.38 Not a word is to be lost in packing the poem with content, and to
this end material is both compressed and amplified and augmented with supporting allusions
and ancillary references. Where the different sources contain no discrepancy, there is no
particular problem. For example, if Dionysius inserts into a hypotyposis-based passage about
the four main inlets of the ocean (4357) a detail about the narrow neck of the Caspian, that
procedure might be described as supplementation; the detail complements the whole (and
presumably originally belonged with the same set of observations) and the result is coherent.
But sources are also combined which not only did not originally belong together, but which
may be talking about different things, or offer incompatible information about the same
thingor even belong to different orders of reality, as when 30910 combine vague tradition
about steppe nomads of whom the poet of the Iliad was dimly aware, historical peoples, and
one of the semi-bestial tribes which haunt the imagination of the fringes. Often the result is
geographical chaos. In 2889, Apollonius tableau of Celts beside the Eridanus is conflated
with the geographers who made the Pyrenees the border between Iberia and the Celtic
country, with the strange result that the Eridanus seems to flow from, or very near, the
Pyrenees.39 And if, apropos of the Pillars of Heracles, Dionysius brings together a notice
from Herodotus about Mount Atlas (in a different part of Africa) and Posidonian speculation
about a bronze pillar in the temple of Melqart at Cdiz (678), these items refer to different
things and can only have been brought together in a dense display of erudition which cares
nothing for the integrity of separate sources, or the patient exposition of a complex reality.
Combination and conflation occur with all sorts of subject-matter. The passage on
Delian festivals (5277) combines elements of three distinct occasions, two from
Callimachus, one perhaps from a Hellenistic source known also to Virgil. So many
backgrounds clamour for attention that the result, from the informative aspect of the poem, is
38

The following description of Callimachus technique applies to Dionysius perfectly: Die

Verknpfung beider Szenen bei Kallimachos ist so eng, da man annehmen mu, der
Philologe Kallimachos habe die Abhngigkeit beider Szenen voneinander erkannt und wolle
den Leser mit seiner Anspielung gerade auf die Gemeinsamkeiten in beiden Partien
aufmerksam machen. Er gibt ihm die einzelnen Mosaiksteine in die Hand und fordert ihn auf,
mit dieser Gedchtnishilfe die beiden Vorbilder jeweils gesondert zusammenzusetzen, um
dann selbst eine kleine philologische Untersuchung vorzunehmen. Die ntigen Kenntnisse
brachte das alexandrinische Publikum mit (Reinsch-Werner, 8890). Jacob 1982, 229, also
uses the mosaic metaphor, though not of the combinatory treatment of sources; Counillon
2004b, 201, speaks of patchwork and mosaque of the reworking of Callimachus in 525
7. Roberts, 7091, explores the implications of the metaphor for late antique poetry.
39

Other examples: 5614, apparent conflation of Hesperides and Cassiterides; 6635, sources
of the Tanais; 6914, sources of the Phasis; 73951, three rivers of north-eastern Asia; 899
901, Coele Syria (897922 n.); 10971110, Aria and Ariene. Apollonius does not seem to
proceed in quite this way, but see Mooney on 1.936 ff. and Delage, 938, 281 (le pote aime
contaminer lorsquil se trouve en prsence de plusieurs variantes dune mme tradition)
on his simultaneous description of Cyzicus as an island and a peninsula (1.936, 938).
41

only to throw dust into the readers eyes if she reads in expectation of being informed in a
simplistic way. Mythology is treated similarly, as we see with the harmonisation of different
traditions about Cadmus and Harmonia (3907) and the Delphic serpent (4412); it does not
even seem to matter if the result is incoherent (as it is in 86873, the naming of Tarsus:
whose footprint was it, anyway?). The art is in the combination, and it is an art who
antecedents can be found in Hellenistic and neoteric poetry. Nicanders myth of the dipsas
begins with a couplet combining the Homeric with the Hesiodic and Callimachean account of
Zeus accession to power: this micro-combination within a familiar story is an excellent
parallel to Dionysius technique.40 Richard Thomas has illustrated something very similar for
the first fourteen lines of Catullus 64, where the poet is similarly in possession of a number of
models which he is at liberty to conflate and indeed to pass implicit judgement on.41
One step further, and it is possible to create stories ab initio through bricolage. The
best example is Sinope (77482), which conflates at least two Apollonian stories about
Asopid nymphs together with the common myth of Ioand transposes them to a new
location, where Apollonius had recorded something entirely different. We can once again
point readily to analogies in Hellenistic poetry for the construction of new myths out of old
for example, to Aratus story of Dike, which combines elements of Hesiods Myth of Ages,
culminating in the departure of Aidos and Nemesis from the earth in the present age (Op.
109201), with his personified Dike (Op. 2204, 25662).42 Apollonius version of the myth
of the Argonauts in Libya is an ingenious composite of the archaic version, in which they
arrived in southern Libya and then carried the Argo across the continent, together with a later
one in which they were carried to the north African coast by the north wind.43 But if the
technique itself is not new, Dionysius nevertheless makes it his hallmark; and by extending
the art of combination from mythography into geography itself he emphasises the literary,
confected, character of the latter.
For Richard Thomas, the combinations and conflations which he identified in
Catullus and Virgil were ultimately polemical in spirit. Conflation, or multiple reference . . .
allows the poet to refer to a number of antecedents and thereby to subsume their versions, and
40

Ther. 3445. Zeus is both Cronos first-born son (Il. 13.355, 15.166), and also apportions
the brothers their kingdoms, following Hes. Th. 8845 and Call. Hymn 1.606, rather than
Homer, where the brothers drew lots for their realms (Il. 15.18792). Delages analysis (108
13, cf. 290) of Apollonius story of the Argonauts, Doliones, Heracles, and Giants in Cyzicus
(1.9361077) is another example of the art of combination in Hellenistic poetic mythography,
this time involving the reconciliation of competing accounts by local historians.
41

Thomas 1982b, 15864. His last example, showing that Catullus 15 combines two separate
episodes from Apollonius (1.54951 and 4.930) with a possible reference to Accius, who did
the same, provides another excellent parallel to Dionysius technique.
42

Fakas, 15160.

43

Vian, iii. 5764 (noting, however, on 60 that on ignore si cette construction est luvre du
pote ou si elle a t puise quelque source); id. 1987, 2512.
42

the tradition along with them, into his own . . . This type may include within it the category of
correction, and like that category its function is ultimately polemicalthat is, its function is
to revise the tradition.44 In general this adversarial spirit is missing in the Periegesis. If
Dionysius learnt the technique of combination from the Hellenistic poets and their heirs, he
nevertheless for the most part eschews an even more characteristically Alexandrian way of
handling multiple sources or multiple variants of a traditionthat is, to discuss, to evaluate,
to reject, and to do so in an ostentatiously clever way.45 In one case, a traditional formula is
subjected to reinterpretation (523), and in 829, by a deft substitution within an imitation of
Callimachus, he engineers a learned allusion to one of Ephesus former names, thereby
outdistancing the master himself in learning. The scholiast on 364 also indicates
disagreement with Callimachus over the origin of the name of Ephizephyrian Locri, but the
passage hardly reads as a strident challenge.46 So too Dionysius combinations seem more in
the spirit of harmonisation and reconciliation than of correction and self-assertion. His
contentedness to allow different views to sit down side by side is a little like degree-zero
doxography: doxography, that is, which does indeed juxtapose different points of view, but is
so little concerned with formalities as neither to distinguish those viewpoints nor to identify
their owners. Another analogy is with the gospel harmony, where it is assumed that the
different strands can indeed be brought together without contradiction, as parts of a perfect
whole. Perhaps Dionysius would indeed have liked his reader to believe that the world was so
beautiful that all things therein could be reconciled. From the many passages where he
carefully compiles different authorities or conflicting pieces of data it is at least evident that
he is keen to display his mastery of literary tradition. The effect is clever, and its learnedness,
at least, might be called Hellenistic. But the Hellenistic poets, who certainly loved to register
44

Thomas 1986, 193; cf. id. 1982, 146 Reference to earlier poetry is potentially far from
casual . . . but has a specifically polemical function: to demonstrate the importance of the
poets models, and often to indicate the superiority of his own treatment; art. cit. 154 the
spirit is essentially polemical, 158 an implicitly polemical commentary on those models.
45

What Thomas calls correction: 1982b, 14654; id. 1986, 171, 1859. G. Giangrande
makes repeated use of the term oppositio in imitando, which he apparently derived from K.
Kuiper, Studia Callimachea i. (De Hymnorum iiv dictione epica) (Leiden, 1896), 114, but
opposition in this context means reversal, or the choice of antonym, rather than correction
(CQ2 17 (1967), 84; PLLS 1 (1976), 273; and for reversal, see also AC 39 (1970), 46).
46

Other possible examples, if they are to be seen polemically: (i) 292 u9fh/menoi ai0gei/roisi,
if this is to be seen as a demythologisation of, and challenge to, Apollonius Heliades (4.604
e0elme/nai ai0gei/roisin); (ii) 389, if this is meant to link the tomb of Cadmus and Harmonia
with the Ceraunian mountains, from which, in Ap. Rhod. 4.51619, it is kept separate; (iii)
415, where, in a passage intensely connected with Callimachus, Erymanthus is pointedly
made a mountain (as in Od. 6.103) instead of a river (as in Callimachus); (iv) 315, which
echoes Ap. Rhod. 4.287, on rivers whose source is in the Rhipaean mountains. It does not
directly contradict Apollonius, but does name rivers other than the Isterof whose sources
Dionysius takes a more up-to-date view.
43

variants, kept them distinct, where Dionysius is amalgamative; and where they would have
exercised their ingenuity in selecting, correcting, and advertising their preferred version,
Dionysius is happily ecumenical. He inhabits a calm, happy world where all sorts of
conflicting testimony can simultaneously be true.
In the process of combination the material is transformed. In the first place, recasting
prose into the traditional register of hexameter poetry has certain consequences. The
hexameter lexicon per se makes available a range of connotative and figurative language,
even if some metaphor is so conventional as no longer to be perceived as such. For example,
it endows running water with an intrinsically animate quality, a vivacity which expresses
itself in verbs of movement, twisting, rushing, seething, roaring, and so on (p. 126), and one
can measure the difference from a prose source by contrasting, for example, Dionysius
account of the four main oceanic gulfs with Strabos.47 Again, the use of catalogue poetry and
other passages with informational content or didactic character in hexameter poetry puts a
whole repertoire of idioms and stylistic devices at Dionysius disposal: descriptive epithets,
naming formulae, repetitional devices, and poetic stylemes such as the priamel. These
devices mark an obvious shift away from the prose registerthough not an altogether
conclusive break, because Dionysius is sometimes (as is his way) able to frame the one in the
idiom of the other.48 The transformative effect of the poetic idiom is visible at every point:
take the variatio of sea-names (58169), the well-chosen epithets and content-packed
appositional phrases which supply local colour and detail to the Mediterranean islands
(compare 5204, 5337 with the bare lists in Strab. 2.5.21); or, in a more specifically
Callimachean vein, the replacement of the prepositions in Strabos account of the rivers
flowing from the central mountain range of Asia Minor (ei0j, ei0j, pro/j) with the calculated
variatio of pro/j, e0j, and e0pi/ (644; for the same mannerism cf. 446).
But it is more than simply the translation into a different idiom; it is the imposition of
a new world-view. This world-view, as we shall see repeatedly, is based on natural beauty
and sanctity. If there is a connection between Strabos account of silk-making and
Dionysius, the latter has nevertheless struck out bark as raw material for the precious fabric
47

4357 and Strab. 2.5.18: e.g. 43 ko/lpouj d e1nqa kai\ e1nq a0pereu/getai ~ Strabos h9
kaq h9ma=j oi0koume/nh gh= . . . de/xetai ko/lpouj ei0j e9auth\n. Dionysius has many more verbs
of animation (suro/menoj, a0pokidma/menoj, ai0pu\ r9e/eqron e0piproi5hsi, kumai/netai), than
Strabo, though compare 52 to\ Persiko\n oi]dma proxeu/wn and Strabos o9 de\ Persiko\j kai\
0Ara/bioj a0po\ th=j noti/aj a0naxe/ontai qala/tthj. Dionysius imports (or implies)
serpentine imagery in 47. Tackling the seas within the Mediterranean, Strabo simply lists the
Iberian, Ligurian, Sardinian, and Tyrrhenian; contrast the lively water language Dionysius
uses for the same seas in 815.
48

4950 Kaspi/h| . . . qala/ssh|, | h3nte kai\ 9Urkani/hn e3teroi diefhmi/canto ~ Strab. 2.5.18
. . . w[n o9 me\n bo/reioj Kaspi/a kalei=tai qa/latta, oi9 d 9Urkani/an prosagoreu/ousin.

44

and replaced it by variegated flowers (7527); similarly, the hard grind of Apollonius ironworking Chalybes has been rewritten and recast into the mining of a rare and precious stone
(11046). Whatever ethnographical data about the natural produce of Arabia Felix have
trickled down to Dionysius from Agatharchides, he has transformed them into a vision of a
utopian landscape blessed by the birth of a deity (92761); and even when Cleitarchus gave
him the material for a far-eastern city founded and distinguished by a god, Dionysius took
that tradition and transformed Indian Nysa into something more exotic still, site of a display
of divine might and power at the utmost ends of the earth.

45

III. LANGUAGE
T HIS section will consider some aspects of Dionysius language: lexicon, word-formation,
the use of formulae and pseudo-formulae, and the effectprecise or otherwise, technical or
non-technicalin a didactic poem. The key to all is manipulation of Homers language, and
Dionysius use of techniques refined and elaborated especially by the Alexandrians. It was
mile Cahen who coined the term presque homrique, which well captures the effect of
much Hellenistic poetry, and of the Periegesis itself. Cahen illustrated it from Callimachus
Hymns.1 He showed how Callimachus creates a sort of synthetic or second-order Homer.
Eschewing the inert reproduction of linesalthough content to reproduce half-lines and
phraseshe delicately remodels the original by means of small modifications, substitutions,
combinations of more than one passage in the original, and verbal and metrical echoes. There
is a particular tendency for the presque homrique to concentrate at line-ends.
Practitioners of the presque homrique use the same art to different ends.
Callimachus uses it to suggest Homeric hymn, Apollonius epic. Dionysius, in whom we find
many or most of the devices Cahen analysedavoidance of cento but reproduction of units
smaller than the verse, substitutions, recombinations, and a tendency to Homer-heavy lineendssuggests both archaic catalogue poetry and also the Hellenistic predecessors who had
already practised the technique before him.2 Cahen implies that a good deal of Callimachus
own effect consists in the arts of frustration.3 Dionysius certainly demands readers who are
capable of being teased by his alternate solicitations and deflections of the Homeric style, but
also those who appreciate how cleverly he is hitting off a manner already perfected by the
Hellenistic masters.

1. LEXICON
Dionysius lexicon is of course based on Homer, Hesiod, and early Greek hexameter poetry.
This is thoroughly intermingled with vocabulary from later hexameter poetry, especially
Hellenistic; debts to Apollonius are especially marked. A few words are first attested in
1

E. Cahen, Callimaque et son uvre potique (Paris, 1929), 51923.

For Euphorion and the presque homrique, see Magnelli 2002, 1115. Magnelli notes
echoes of Homeric word-groups and phrases (some mediated by Apollonius) and versepatterns; combinations of different passages from Homer or from Homer and Hellenistic
poetry (e.g. fr. 9.7 P. = 11.7 L. and Il. 22.395 = 23.24, Call. Hec. fr. 60.2 Hollis; for the
combinatory approach, see p. 34 and n. 39); variation of Homeric phrases with synonyms;
modifications of case; and resemanticisation or reapplication of individual words (compare
fr. 40.2 P. = 44.2 L. Ai0aki/dao, of Ajax, and Dionysius own 0Arhtia/dh| in 685: see ad loc.).
3

Op. cit. 519: Son [sc. Callimachus] dessein parat, par la ressemblance de certains de ces
groupements au texte pique, den veiller le souvenir prcis, par les mots et leur son, sans
jamais en faire une imitation troite; il semble quil veuille mettre le lecteur ou lauditeur sur
la voie du rappel, et puis len drouter.
46

imperial hexameter poetry. A small but significant stratum also comes from lyric and/or
tragedy (pp. 35-6). To catalogue all this would be tedious and analytically pointless. It is
more important to look for patterns and to consider how Dionysius manipulates inherited
vocabulary; this is what marks him out as heir of the Hellenistic poets. They stake out the
territory which he continues to inhabit.
One of the most obvious ways in which Dionysius places himself in the tradition of
the Alexandrians is through the exploitation of Homeric hapax legomena and other rarities.
Several come via Hellenistic poets who have already homed in on them (Dionysius prefers to
reflect the words metrical sedes in the text that mediates it, where that differs from the
Homeric original): 239 o0li/zonoj, 651 i0qu/ntaton, 704 fi/lato, 718 and 987 peri/troxon,
961 peripro/; 1115 e0u+gna/mpth|si. 586 me/sf e0pi/ extends the Homeric hapax me/sfa with a
preposition, as several Hellenistic poets have already done. Other examples occur in echoes
of specific Hellenistic passages: 257 qew/teron (from Od. 13.111), 599 te/trhxen.
Sometimes parallels with Homeric scholia suggest that he may be reflecting a words
interpretative tradition: this seems to be so at 936 khw/essa, and perhaps also at 1087
megakh/teoj, though in the latter case there are also precedents in Hellenistic poets.
Homer may be refurbished by taking over Homeric vocabulary in unfamiliar senses.
By resemanticising words, an author attributes to them new, but morphologically plausible,
meanings.4 In 523 the Homeric phrase Dhmh/teroj a0kth/, usually bread of Demeter is
reinterpreted as cliff of Demeter, and in 459, 1093 e0pixqo/nioi means locals (those in a
terrain) rather than mortals (those on the earth). The use of e0pi/strofoj in 75 to mean
curved, rather than conversant with, as in Homer, was pioneered by Ap. Rhod. 2.979.
From these displays of ingenuity are to be distinguished 714 knhmi=daj for knh/mouj; 951
quhlai=j incense instead of sacrificial animals, a new meaning which is not implausible
given both root and suffix (cf. also 936 n. on qu/oij); 1044 gene/qlh, birth instead of
family.
Dionysius also takes over many novelties from Hellenistic poetry, both in allusions to
specific passages and as choice items in their own right. Not all these items are remarkable in
themselves. They include regularly formed compounds: the adjectives 215, 959 a0gxi/guoi;
466, 718 a0mfie/likton; 31, 285 a0reimane/wn; 946 e0pwmadi/aj; 317 h9dufah/j; 642 v.l.
o0cuka/rhnon; 649, 686, 1132 o9mou/rioj; 898 polu/ptolin; 1116 linerge/aj. More recherch
are 126 nh/xutoj, epithet of liquid; 337 r9uhfene/wn; 948 a0kroxa/lic. Compound verbs new
in Hellenistic poetry include 148 e0pitroxa/ousi, 203 and 665 e0pitroxa/ei; 383
peribo/sketai; 471 ei0sane/xei; 579 a0neua/zousi; 998 e0n . . . a0e/cein; conversely, with 1115
laxai/nontej, it is the simplex that is new. Our ability to trace Dionysius models suffers
from the high attrition rate of literature from this period, but even so it is clear that a wide
range of Hellenistic authors is involvedand that Apollonius is at, or very near, the top of
the list: to a0gxi/guoi, a0kroxa/lic, ei0sane/xei (above) add 363 tossa/tion, 276 e0pipro/, 1158
4

See e.g. Callimachus Hecale frr. 55 and 162 Hollis (ghfa/goi and a0mazo/nej a1ndrej); for
Euphorion, Magnelli 2002, 489 and Lightfoot 2009, 195; also Nic. Ther. 605 o0ktapo/dhn
(with Jacques ad loc.).
47

pleonastic h]moj o3t, all of which occur in others authors too, but are particularly close to
Apollonius.
Relatively few of Dionysius borrowings from Hellenistic poetry consist of simplex
formseither unfamiliar roots, or derivatives from familiar roots which are themselves,
however, rare: 286 o0ro/gkouj; 544 kinw/peta; 936 qu/oij; 1118 a0nau/rwn; 1157 e9li/noio
vine. There are no dialect glosses. Plenty of precedent for their use could have been found
in Hellenistic models, and, in Nicander, specifically for their use in a didactic poem. Perhaps
more to the point, Apollonius eschews them too (Erbse, 1856). It would seem that Dionysius
aspired to be exquisite in his choice of vocabulary, and to cull the most ingenious and
felicitous inventions of his Hellenistic sourcesbut not to be obscure. He wanted a readable
poem. He also wanted to write like Apollonius.
This impression is fostered by Dionysius neologisms. Excluding adjectives and
nouns in -ij, to be dealt with separately, these are as follows.

HAPAX LEGOMENA

PROTON LEGOMENA

(i) Uncompounded forms

(a) Verbs
a0ti/thsan < *a0tite/w 1158

kuane/ousi

1111

(b) Adverbs

kanaxhdo/n

145

(c) Nouns

a0lhmosu/nh

716

koirani/h

464

(d) Adjectives
borew=tij

243, 565

leimwni/j

756

(v.l. -h=tij)
(ii) Compounds with a nominal, adjectival, or numerical first element
(a) Adjectives

a9limhdh/j

908

[a9lidinh/j5

908 v.l.]

e9pta/polij

251

bootro/foj

558

kerw=nuc

995

ligu/qrooj

574

melandi/nhj

577

lino/xlainoj

1096

penta/poroj 301

melisso/botoj

327

poulutenh/j 99, 340

mesh/peiroj

211, 1068

Nonn. D. 39.212, Par. 21.22.

48

taurofanh/j 642

poludi/nhtoj

407

e0peprh/u+nen

1052

(b) Nouns
mesou/rion

17

suoktoni/h

853

(iii) Compounds with a prepositional first element

(a) Verbs
a0mfe/lketai

268

e0pimwmh/saito

896

peribre/metai

132, 475

e0piprobe/bhke

128

proxeu/wn

52

peripiai/nousi

1071

u9pocu/ousa

61, 385

u9po\ . . . kuane/ousi

1111

u9fh/menoi

292

u9paino/tioj

151

u9peira/lioj

851, 1085

[u9fespe/rioj

450 v.l.]

e0pilado/n

763

u9phre/ma

1122

(b) Adjectives
meth/ludej

689

diamfi/j

5, 903, 1136

a0gxi/poroj

381

(c) Adverbs

(iv) Compounds with an adverbial first element

Dionysius is nowhere near as innovative in word-formation as Callimachus, Nicander,

or Euphorion (Magnelli 2002, 469). The great majority of his innovations are compounds:
(i) those with a nominal or adjectival first element (mostly adjectives, a couple of nouns), and
(ii) those with a prepositional first element (mostly verbs, with a few adjectives and adverbs).
The number of simplex coinages (two verbs, an adverb, two nouns, and twoornamental
adjectives with a new suffix) is very small in comparison.
In most cases the pedigree of Dionysius new adjectival and nominal compounds is in
Homeric and/or Hellenistic hexameter poetry (251 e9pta/polin, 301 pentapo/roij, 577
melandi/nhn, 908 v.l. a9lidine/oj, 995 kerw/nuxa, 1096 linoxlai/nouj), though the -di/nhtoj
compound in 407 is better paralleled outside hexameter poetry. On the other hand, 642
taurofane/j, in the straightforward sense of looking like a bull, has its best parallels in

49

prose.6 Despite the epic or Ionic colour with which Dionysius invests it, poulutenh/j (99,
340) is not strongly characterised as a poetic formation.7 Much the same can be said for the
mes- compounds in 17 mesou/rion and 211, 1068 mesh/peiroi.8
As for the new prepositional compounds, several are again based squarely on Homer
(5, 903, 1136 diamfi/j; 128 e0piprobe/bhke; 763 e0pilado/n; 851, 1085 u9peira/lioj). 52
proxeu/wn is new, but proxe/w begins its career in the Iliad. In a few other cases the best
warrant for a new compound seems to be Hellenistic (689 meth/ludej; 1052 e0peprh/u+nen).
Occasionally one suspects that the preposition in a new compounded form is ornamental, or
an attempt slightly to defamiliarise a prosaic word (151 u9painoti/h; 1071 peripiai/nousi;
1122 u9phre/ma), a technique already perfected by Apollonius (Boesch, 66).
In sum, Dionysius is not an adventurous innovator. There are no new glosses,
dialectal or otherwise. Innovation is mostly restricted to the formation of new compounds,
mostly on Homeric or Hellenistic models. Perhaps his most interesting novelty (unless of
course there is a lost predecessor) is 1158 a0ti/thsan, which remodels a0ti/w or a0ti/zw
perhaps via reinterpretation of a1titoj. There are even some simple types of innovation
which Dionysius eschews, such as innovation by suffix. Poets have their own preferences,9
but Dionysius shuns even simple, Homeric types of suffixation. For example, Apollonius
favours abstracts -i/h and -su/nh, but Dionysius only example is 853 suoktoni/h, from
Callimachus suokto/noj.

BuckPetersen, 7223, citing from prose authors doulofanh/j, e0laiofanh/j,

krustallofanh/j, narqhkofanh/j, xalkofanh/j, yimuqiofanh/j (looking like x). In
poetic compounds, -fanh/j has a different sense: ai0glofanh/j, a0mmofanh/j (sandy),
Ei0dwlofanh/j (Parthenius, SH 630 = 18 L.), nuktofanh/j/nuktifanh/j.
7

BuckPetersen, 724, give many -tenh/j compounds before Dionysius in prose as well as
poetry.
8

James, 1301.

For Callimachus, Hollis 1990, 14 and on fr. 74.23 (-h/eij, -o/eij, -teira, -tu/j); for
Nicander, James, 220 (-o/eij), Jacques, ii, pp. xcviiici, iii, pp. xcviici; for Aratus, Kidd, 25
6 (especially adjectives in -ai=oj); for Apollonius, Boesch, 578 (-o/eij, -su/nh), Marxer, 38
(-su/nh), Giangrande, 274 (-i/h and -su/nh).
50

2. WORD-FORMATION
Hellenistic poetry provided both direct models and method for most of Dionysius
refurbishment of the traditional language of epic. There are pseudo-epicisms (259
Ei0doqeei/hj, 365 e0te/essin, 922 ferbe/menai), analogical forms (1180 e9teroi/i+oj), and forms
which fill out incomplete Homeric paradigms.10 Callimachus and other Hellenistic poets are
the origin of a couple of second-declension heteroclite plurals (117, 622, 988, v.l .at 660
muxa/ and 1060 xalina/),11 and recharacterisaton of the Homeric noun to\ ka/rh as feminine
(562). Certain manipulations of noun-stems proceed directly from Hellenistic poetry (77
ui9h=ej), are particularly favoured there (66 prhw=na), or have an analogy in a Hellenistic poet
(604 tera/ata), and the new ending of 455 naeth=rej (beside 224, 373, 397, 952, 1111
(e0n)nae/thj) is in vogue in agent nouns from the Alexandrian poets onwards. This is also the
background for various irregular comparatives and superlatives (172 ai0doie/steroj; 382, 924
mu/xatoj; 927 o0lbi/stwn; 485 thli/stwn), recharacterisations of verb stems (391 e0ni/spei;
436, 996, 1140, 1142 (e0f)e/spetai), creations of new parts of verbs (264, 1032
nenasme/noj), uses of the middle for active (377, 859 poli/ssato; 702 xoro\n e0sth/santo;
716 a3la metrh/sasqai; in the case of 997 a0qeri/ssato the middle seems to be Dionysius
own creation). Post-Homeric forms in the large majority of cases find their warrant in
Hellenistic poetry; unless, then, we are to postulate lost Hellenistic models, cases like 349
naih/santo (which has only dubious precedent, in Empedocles) and 341 i0qumme/non, the only
attested form of a perfect passive from i0qu/nw,12 are unusual. Finally, Dionysius uses a couple
of relatives in t-: to/qi for o3qi (179, 300, 380, 444, 563, 635, 764, 1138, alongside seven
instances of o3qi) and to/qen for o3qen (831). Neither is new in the Hellenistic period, but both
are in vogue then. For the former, see Gow on Theocr. Id. 22.199 and Livrea on Ap. Rhod.
4.772, 1131; for the latter (first in Aesch. Pers. 100), Call. Hymn 3.114, Ap. Rhod. 4.639.

Additional note on the -ij terminations of nouns and adjectives

10

123 blosurwpo/j, masc. counterpart to Homeric fem. blosurw=pij; 350 me/rmeron, n.

sing.; 936 khw/essa, fem.; 997 a0qeri/ssato (aor. mid.); the various cases of Ai0qioph=ej in
179, 218, and 559, extend Homeric Ai0qioph=aj, cf. Ap. Rhod. 3.1192 Ai0qioph/wn, and Call.
Hymn 4.208 Ai0qioph=oj. 468 e9sthui=a, preceded by Apollonius and Nicander, supplies the
feminine for Hesiodic e9sthw/j (Th. 519, 747).
11

These have their origin in Homeric ku/kla and druma/: cf. Schwyzer, i. 581, ii. 37; for
dru8ma/, see 492 n.
12

Dr L. A. Holford-Strevens comments that one might have expected i0qusme/non, cf. the
frequent a)peuqusme/noj in medical writers of the empire, h9dusme/noj from Plato onwards,
memhkusme/noj in Galen, bebaqusme/noj in Simplicius; but parwcumme/noj is found in
Lysias, Demosthenes, and Aeschines; parw&cummai in Menander, -cusm- (in other
compounds) not before Polybius (besides -cumm-); bebarumme/noj appears in Simplicius and
other late authors, bebarusme/noj never.
51

This is Dionysius real idiosyncrasy in word-formation. Not that it is at all unusual.

Chantraine says that le suffixe . . . a t productif durant toute lhistoire du grec ancien
depuis Homre jusqu la koinh/ et il a t admis par tous les styles.13 What is notable is the
scale on which Dionysius uses it, and his creativity in doing so: he is far readier to coin new
words with this than with any other formation.
The majority of his -ij forms are ethnic adjectives, usually the feminine counterparts
of masculine adjectives in -ioj or - euj. His new forms are: 339 Au0soni/j; 378 Kalabri/j;
606 Karmani/j; 729, 748 Kaspi/j, cf. 1035, 1064 Kaspia/j; 185 Maurousi/j; 46, 639, 854
Pamfuli/j; 129, 507 Patarhi5j; 422 Sarwni/j; 914 0Orqwsi/j; 957 Xatrami/j. 1148
Kwli/j may be paralleled by Mela 3.59, but 592 Kwlia/j appears unique. 243, 565
borew=tij (v.l. -h=tij) and 756 leimwni/j are not ethnic adjectives, but see below.
Dionysius takes over several of these forms directly from Apolloniusin whom all
those that Dionysius subsequently borrows are attested for the first time. When he does, he
varies the nouns with which they agree, and/or the metrical context. So, 110 Salmwni/doj
a1xri karh/nou for Ap. Rhod. 4.1693 u9pe\r Salmwni/doj a1krhj; 614 Libusti/doj
a0mfitri/thj, for Ap. Rhod. 4.1753 h0pei/roio Libusti/doj.
The commoner pattern, however, is for Dionysius to take over metrical patterns form
Apollonius (or elsewhere), but to vary them with adjectives either of his own making, or
taken from elsewhere. Apollonius metrical patterns with -ij adjectives are easily extendable.
So, 185 Maurousi/doj e1qnea gai/hj, 294 Turshni/doj h1qea gai/hj, 378 Kalabri/doj h1qea
gai/hj, 409 Trifuli/doj h1qea gai/hj (cf. 820 Ai0oli/doj . . . h1qea gai/hj) are all based on
the same scheme as Ap. Rhod. 1.1177 Kiani/doj h1qea gai/hj, 4.511 Kutaii/doj h1qea gai/hj
(cf. 4.741 9Ella/doj h1qea gai/hj). Two of these forms are new; the others (Turshni/j and
Trifuli/j) are attested in earlier writers,14 but there is little practical difference: they simply
have to fit the pattern. Another favoured scheme: 129 Patarhi5da thlo/qen a1krhn, 507
Patarhi5doj e1ndoqen a1krhj, 606 Karmani/doj e1ktosqen a1krh, 785 Karambi/doj e0ggu/qen
a1krhj are based on the pattern in Ap. Rhod. 1.929 9Roiteia&doj e1ndoqen a1krhj, 2.806
0Axerousi/doj u9yo/qen a1krhj, 4.1444 Tritwni/doj e0ggu/qi li/mnhj (not to mention other
line-ends of same general shape, 3.639 0Axaii/da thlo&qi kou&rhn, 4.1391 Tritwni/doj u3dasi
li/mnhj). Similarly, both Dionysius and Apollonius have a series of -i/doj ai1hj formulae, in
several of which the epithet is new, though this time the pattern is also found in other
Hellenistic poets (Call. Hymn 4.287 Mhli/doj ai1hj, cf. fr. 186.13 Pf = 97 M.; Nic. Ther. 460
9Rhskunqi/doj 3Hrhj) and has Homeric ancestry (patri/doj ai1hj).15 Lastly, 243 a0kta\j
13

P. Chantraine, La Formation des noms en grec ancien (Paris, 1968), 3412 (quotation on
342); for Callimachus, see Schmitt, 226 (list) and 478 (analysis).
14

Xen. Hell. 3.2.30 Trifuli/daj po/leij; Eur. Med. 13423 Turshni/doj | Sku/llhj.

15

20, 138, 230, 627, 661, 1080 0Asi/doj; 25 0Asih/tidoj; 1148 Kwli/doj; 805 Musi/doj; 46
Pamfuli/doj; 957, 1038 Persi/doj; of these, Kwli/doj and Pamfuli/doj are innovations. In
Ap. Rhod.: 3.313 Kolxi/doj; 4.337 Ne/stidoj; 4.131 Tithni/doj Ai1hj; 4.568 Fleiounti/doj;
of these, the second and fourth are innovations.
52

borew/tidaj recalls Ap. Rhod. 4.660 a0kta\j Turshni/daj and/or 4.1781 a0kta\j
Pagashi/daj (both in the same sedes).16
As well as substituting new ethnic adjectives for Apollonius, changing case and
word-order produces further variation.17 The noun can be replaced by a synonym (385 qi=naj
for a0kta&j), and the metrical template as a whole filled with new material: 756 leimwni/doj
a1nqesi poi/hj thus comes out of the same stable as the gai/hj and a1krhj formulae we have
been considering. All this gives Dionysius scope greatly to extend his use of - ij adjectives.
There are a few nouns in -ij, three of which are substitutes for the familiar form (80,
344 porqmi/j for porqmo/j; 459 Korsi/j for Ko/rsika /Korsikh/; 914 0Orqwsi/j for
0Orqwsi/a), and one of which is a catachresis (714 knhmi/j for knhmo/j). But in general, the
-ij nouns seem to be a by-product of his enthusiasm for -ij adjectives.

3. FORMULAE AND PSEUDO-FORMULAE

Dionysius style is repetitive.18 It is formulaic, or pseudo-formulaic, in two senses. First, he
borrows formulaic expressions from hexameter poetry. Most obviously, he borrows noun
epithet combinations, but he also takes over many other types of phrase (noun + dependent
genitive, verb + subject, verb + object, verb + object + epithet; verb + adverb; prepositional
phrase; verb + prepositional phrase) which may or may not qualify as formulae in Homeric
studies, but do in some sense qualify as formulaic or para-formulaic in Homers imitators,
even if they occur only once in the Homeric poems themselves, in virtue of their prestigious
origins.19 The second sense in which formulae, formulaic, and pseudo-formulaic will be
used here refers to repetitions in Dionysius himself. Especially at line-end, word-groups and
sometimes whole lines are repeated throughout the poem, both verbatim and with an
impressive amount of variation. Patterns of metre and syntax are constantly recycled, filled

16

cf. 565 borew/tidaj a0kta/j, and Ap. Rhod. 1.2378 a0ktai/ . . . Magnh/tidej; 2.548
Qunhi/doj a0kth=j; 4.856 a0ktai=j Turshni/sin.
17

So, in addition to -i/doj h1qea gai/hj, cf. 639 gai/hj Pamfuli/doj. A pattern like Ap.
Rhod. 4.1693 Salmwni/doj a1krhj may be modified to produce 339 Au0soni\j a1krh, 729
Kaspi/doj a3lmhj.
18

Whitby, 107.

19

Fantuzzi 1988, 10 A questo punto per formule non si intesero pi solo le formule della
tradizione orale che aveva usato Omero, ma qualsiasi sintagma di Omero stesso (o di Esiodo,
dopo Esiodo): sia frasi che in Omero o in Esiodo (o in entrambi) erano state formulari, sia
frasi che non lo erano state e che magari erano attestate una sola volta, ma acquisivano uno
statuto para-formulare, ossia per cos dire formulare di riflesso, nel momento in cui venivano
riprese da opere, come lIliade o lOdissea, che erano conosciute a memoria da gran parte del
pubblico.
53

with metrically equivalent alternative forms. The machinery that generates this formular
variation is the basic motor of Dionysius poem.20
While it would be impossible to illustrate all instances, or even all types, of variation
in Dionysius, I begin with nounepithet combinations and phrases containing them; in the
notes below, line-references are intended in the first instance as a cue to the register of echoes
and allusions in the Periegesis (Appendix 1), where more details can be found. These
examples show as well as any that Dionysius is an opportunist, and will recycle anything that
serves his purposes, especially (but far from exclusively) geographical names and common
nouns. Simplest is to recycle them at the same place in the hexameter, the next simplest to
relocate them. Dionysius is equally willing to do this with all his literary models: Homer and
the Homeric Hymns,21 Hesiod,22 the Hellenistic poets23 (and Homeric/Hesiodic combinations

20

Parrys analysis of the first 25 lines of the Iliad had already drawn attention to phrases with
more or less parallel syntax and metre within the Homeric poems themselves (M. Parry, The
Making of Homeric Verse (Oxford, 1971), 3012; see also A. B. Lord, The Singer of Tales
(Cambridge, MA, 1960), 143, with notes on 2913, reproducing the first 15 lines of the
analysis with an even greater willingness to find formulae). These loose analogies, with
approximately parallel metre and syntax (and sometimes even echoes of sound), are also
found between Homer and later poetry (Lord compares Il. 1.6 and HHom. Herm. 313; I am
grateful to Oliver Thomas for noting also Od. 10.191 ou)d' o(/ph| h)e/lioj faesi/mbrotoj ei]s'
u(po\ gai=an and HHom. Herm. 339 ou)d' a)ndrw=n, o9po/soi lhsi/mbrotoi/ ei)s' e)pi\ gai=an). See
also Fantuzzis useful review of different kinds of formulae and formular expressions (1988,
1114). He illustrates them from Homer, but his last two categories are particularly relevant
to Dionysius: (i) analogical formulae (with substitutable components, e.g.
ku=doj/teu/xe/a1lge e1dwken/e1pasxon/e1xousin/e1qhken) and (ii) structural formulae, based on
pure metrical equivalence (w1mw| e1ni stibarw=|/eu0nh=| e1ni malakh=|; dw=ken e9tai/rw|/teu=xe
ku/nessin), with other phrases falling midway between the two categories (e.g. phonically
similar, but with different syntax and/or different sense: pi/ona dhmw=|/pi/ona dh=mon;
a0mfh/luqen h9du\j a0utmh//a0mfh/luqe qh=luj a0uth/). Fantuzzis analysis (1988, 746) is highly
stimulating: he shows how Apollonius favours analogical variation rather than verbatim
quotation from Homer, increasingly so as his poem progresses, but his analysis suffers from
two weaknesses: (i) vagueness about how he produced the figures in his statistical analysis,
and (ii) an overpointed contrast with Callimachus, for whom analogy is fundamental in the
creation of his presque homrique style. Further on Apollonius, see F. Cairns, Orality,
Writing and Reoralisation: Some Departures and Arrivals in Homer and Apollonius
Rhodius, in H. L. C. Tristram (ed.), New Methods in the Research of Epic (Tbingen, 1998),
6384; his description of the technique of the Argonautica as one of reoralisation, an
attempt at a new written orality, displaying at least an attenuated understanding of
orality (pp. 656) is equally apposite to the Periegesis.
21

Same sedes: 1 eu0re/a po/nton; 3 0Wkeanoi=o baqurro/ou; 268 eu0re/a ko/lpon (v.l.); 325
9Ellh/sponton a0ga/rroon; 326 ku=ma polufloi/sboio qala/sshj; 771 kai\ o0i+zu/oj ai0nh=j;
838 a0glao\n u3dwr; 879 polih=j a9lo/j. Phrases: 1053 gluku\j i3meroj ai9rei=. Different sedes;
54

already recycled by the Alexandrians24), and the odd example from hexameter poetry of other
periods.25 More often, however, they are modified in some wayby varying the number
and/or case,26 by replacing one of the elements,27 or by some combination of these methods.28

212 yama/qw| . . . pollh=|; 323 a0pei/rona gai=an; 393 liparo\n . . . gh=raj; 394 te/raj
a1llo; 815 1Ilion h0nemo/essan.
22

Same sedes: 497 di/nh|j a0rgure/h|j; 677 kakh=| qui5ontej a0e/llh|; 789 ku/na xalkeo/fwnon;
869 Ph/gasoj i3ppoj; 1149 0Wkeano\n baqudi/nhn; 1183 ou1rea bhssh/enta. Different sedes:
712, 1057 a1speton o1lbon. The following also occur across more than one work of early
Greek hexameter poetry. Same sedes: 81 a9lmuro\n u3dwr; 268 eu0re/a po/nton; 743 si/toio
meli/fronoj. Different sedes: 815 1Ilion h0nemo/essan. 753 bo/aj me\n . . . kai\ i1fia mh=la
stretches bo/aj kai\ i1fia mh=la. On Dionysius use of Homeric and Hesiodic clausulae, see
Wifstrand, 91.
23

Same sedes: Ap. Rhod.: 389 ou0re/wn t h0liba/twn; 739 kela/dontoj 0Ara/cew; 767
polu/rrhnej Tibarhnoi/; 960 periw/sia fu=la; 966 au0ale/oj xrw/j; 1063 peri/dromoj
ou1resi gai=a. Callimachus: 257 qew/teron a1llon; 416 u9gro\j 0Ia/wn. Theocritus: 179
kelainw=n Ai0qioph/wn. Posidippus: 724 h0ero/essan i1aspin. Different sedes: Ap. Rhod. 415
0Arka/dej 0Apidanh=ej; 534 Pelasgi/doj . . . 3Hrhj; 1018 e0riqhle/a gai=an; 1106 bioth/sion
w]non. Callimachus: 520 0Abantia\j . . . Ma/krij. Aratus: 760 xeimeri/oij a0ne/moisi.
Theocritus: 529 ligu/fwnoj a0hdw/n.
24

Same sedes: 65 me/ga qau=ma; 1055 a0ena/wn potamw=n. Different sedes: 816 a0glao\n
a1stu (Homeric v.l.); 1024 fa/rmak . . . lugra/; 1033 pw/ea kala/.
25

Same sedes: 2 a1krita fu=la; 1062 o1lboj a0pei/ritoj.

26

Number: 49 ai0pu\ r9e/eqron; 976 o0re/wn a1po paipaloe/ntwn (+ change of prep.). Case:
256 xrusw=| timh/enti; 264 e9ptapo/rou Nei/loio (+ omission of prep.); 433 0Axelw/i+oj
a0rgurodi/nhj; 439 Parnhsou= nifo/entoj u9po\ ptuxi/; 452 nh/sou e0p a0mfiru/thj (+ change
of prep.); 462 Ai0o/lou 9Ippota/dao; 532 kraipnoi=o . . . bore/ao; 581 eu0erge/i+ nhi5; 669
krumo/j te dusah/j (+ te); 834 ligurh\n o1pa; 1047 a0ellopo/dwn . . . i3ppwn; 1157
polugna/mpthj e9li/noio (+ change of noun). Number and case: 598, 691 ou1resin
h0libatoisin; 808 o0trhro\n qera/ponta.
27

Noun: 816 palaigene/wn h9rw/wn; 1115 e0u+gna/mnth|si . . . make/lh|sin. Noun and verb:
298 e0pite/lletai i9ero\j 1Istroj. Epithet: 66 makro\n u9po\ prhw=na; 183 kuanh=|si . . .
foli/dessin; 203 chrh|=sin . . . yama/qoisin; 754 e0rh/mhj a1nqea gai/hj; 831 Tmw/lw| u3p
h0nemo/enti. Epithet and verb/participle: 443 a0peiresi/h|sin e0pifri/sswn foli/dessi; 475
makrh=|si peribre/metai spila/dessin; 584 locote/rh| . . . e0pistre/fetai strofa/liggi; 824
liparh=|si kate/rxetai ei0j a3la di/naij.
28

Change of noun and case: 476 poluglw/xini sidh/rw|. 143, 863 poluklu/stoio qala/sshj
hybridises Homeric polufloi/sboio qala/sshj (as in 326) and poluklu/stw| e0ni\ po/ntw|.
Different verb, or part of verb: 45, 348 e9speri/hn a3la ti/ktei/ba/ntej; 712 i3n a1speton
55

Poetic models of any period, especially but not only the Homeric poems, are susceptible to
this treatment.29 For example, the whole section on Ilium illustrates how the pseudoformulaic style can be used to conjure Homer when Dionysius most needs him. Taking
catalogic style to extremes with a quadruple epanalepsis, he uses (displaced) nounepithet
formulae (815 1Ilion h0nemo/essan, 816 a0glao\n a1stu), Homeric half-lines (817 Poseida/wn
kai\ 0Apo/llwn, 818 0Aqhnai/h te kai\ 3Hrh), condensed echoes (817 e0po/lisse), together with
a new nounepithet combination for the wide-flowing Trojan river (819 Ca/nqw| e1p eu0ru\
r9e/onti ~ Il. 2.849 (al.). 0Aciou= eu0ru\ r9eo/ntoj).
The poem is full of internally repeated words and phrases: both verbatim repetitions,
and those which allow a degree of variation. Many have identifiable sources in earlier poetry,
especially the verbatim repetitions.30 As with the nounepithet phrases, and as indeed with all
Dionysius borrowings from earlier poets, there are two main sources of variation in cases
where a source is modified: changes of ending,31 and lexical substitition,32 of which lexical
substitution is the more interesting, because it allows for the formation of groups of
expressions, especially geographical formulae. We have seen how Dionysius fondness for
o1lbon e3lwntai; 952 ma/la pi/ona dh=mon e1xousi; 1033 pw/ea kala\ ne/montej; 1078
liaroi=o geghqo/tej e0c a0ne/moio.
29

Magnelli 2002, 26, notes that Euphorions borrowings from Callimachus mancano . . .
quasi sempre di quella tendenza alla variazione formale, e spesso anche al rovesciamento
concettuale, che una costante dellapproccio di Euforione al materiale omerico. No real
difference of approach in Dionysius is discernible to Homer and to Hellenistic poetry.
30

From Homeric poetry: 37, 83, 540, 1184 oi]dma qala/sshj; 178, 876 a1gxi qala/sshj;
240, 673, 744 ou0de\ me\n ou0d(e/); 803, 1018 gai=an e1xousin. From Parmenides(?): 84, 487, 970
pro_j au)ga_j h)eli/oio. From Hellenistic poetry: 36, 451 faei/netai a0nqrw/poisin; 48, 346,
666, 727 e0k bore/ao; 70, 86, 164 a0gke/xutai; 242, 281, 815, 887, 1130 e0pi\ pleurh=|si, with
324, 833, 1075 in different sedes; 303, 307 e0j sto/ma li/mnhj; 352, 783 r9o/on ei0j a3la
ba/llei; 542 ei0n a9li\ nh=soj, cf. 461, 554 ei0n a9li\ nh=soi; 502, 921 liparh/ te kai\ eu1botoj;
950, 1029 tou1neken ei0se/ti nu=n. In 763, 821 para\ xei=loj (with sea-name) is best
supported by Mimnermus.
31

143, 863 poluklu/stoio qala/sshj; 581, 708 nhi6 perh/saij (cf. 720 nhi6 perh&seiaj);
598, 691 ou1resin h)liba&toisin; 893, 1133 a(lo_j oi1dmat'; 943 u3dasi li/mnai, 987 u3dasi
li/mnh.
32

e.g. of a preposition: 299, 1068 a1xri qala/sshj. Of a participle: 126, 200 baruno/menoj
(-me/nh) proxoh=|sin. Of an epithet: 227, 357, 858 liparo\n pe/don; 693, 981 qoh\n
a0pereu/getai a1xnhn (also of sea-name in first place in line). Of a noun: 973, 1174 h)pei/roio
baqei/hj. A few substitutions are of non-equivalent parts of speech: 694, 773, 786, 978 a0p
ou1reoj 0Armeni/oio ~ Ap. Rhod. 1.989 a0p ou1reoj a0i/cantej, 2.1258 a0p ou1reoj
a0i/ssonta, Call. fr. 186.9 H. (97 M.) a0p ou1reoj, h]xi ma/lista; 75 e0pi/strofon o3rmon
e1xousa, 480 Libustiko_n o3rmon e1xousai, 617 e0ph/raton o3rmon e1xousai ~ Call. Hymn
4.155 0Exina/dej o3rmon e1xousai.
56

ethnic adjectives in -i/j/-i/doj fuels the creation of the patterns (y) qkkai1hj; xqkk h1qea
gai/hj; and yqkk e1ndoqen a1krhj, all ultimately based on Apollonius.33
Let us consider the special case of running water, for which Dionysius vocabulary is
particularly rich. Seas and rivers are the most dynamic aspects of his landscape: they bubble
up, twist and turn, and discharge their waters with a roar; they seethe, belch, and tumble. But
this lexicon and formulary is basically highly traditional; it draws on an already rich lexicon
for running water in hexameter poetry, and on closer inspection turns out to be made up in
just the ways we have been investigating. There are a few direct copies of phrases, especially
line-ends, from early Greek hexameter or Hellenistic poetry,34 but above all there are
adaptationsof phrases both with and without identifiable poetic modelsby inflectional
change35 and/or metrical substitution.36 If the waters of the Nile descend (221, 246
kate/rxetai u3data Nei/lou), those of both the Rhine and the Orontes sweep down in
identical metrical form (296 katasu/retai u3data 9Rh/nou, 919 katasu/retai u9gro\j
0Oro/nthj), and the pattern can be further modified to fit seas and gulfs (380 su/retai
0Adria\j a3lmh, 864 perisu/retai e1qnea ko/lpoj).
Dionysius has a strong tendency to follow, and vary, favoured sourcesbut is equally
prepared to expand them in new directions and to depart from them altogether. For example,
four out of the five examples of proi/hmi follow the pattern extablished by Homer and
Hesiod, with object meaning water and decorative epithet (49, 774, 794, 806; the other is
990). Eight of nine water-expressions using e0reu/gesqai (simplex or compounded) are in one
of the two places for which there is a background in early Greek hexameter poetry and
Apollonius, and several are spliced with nounepithet combinations found elsewhere.37 The
poems many expressions using e9li/ssein and e9li/ssesqai show how Dionysius could build
up a whole range of water-phrases from an existing, but fairly limited, base.38 He also
33

Observe a looser similarity between 415, 431 u9po\ skopih\n kkqq and Ap. Rhod. 1.50 u9po\
skopih\n o1reoj Xalkwdoni/oio.
34

226 ei9ligme/noj ei0j a3la pi/ptei; 497 di/nh|j a0rgure/h|j; 739 kela/dontoj 0Ara/cew.

35

e.g. 123 a0gku/loj e3rpwn; 644 kanaxhda\ r9e/ousin.

36

81 e0reu/getai a9lmuro\n u3dwr; 315 9Ripai/oij e0n o1ressi dia/ndixa mormu/rousi; 440
katerxo/menon kelaru/zei; 660 e0j me/sa (v.l. muxa\) pi/ptei; 665 Skuqikoi=sin e0pitroxa/ei
pedi/oisin; 783 ]Irij d e9cei/hj kaqaro\n r9o/on ei0j a3la ba/llei; 824 Mai/androj liparh=|si
kate/rxetai ei0j a3la di/naij; 838 h3suxa pafla/zontoj.
37

Before bucolic diaeresis (already Od. 5.438): 43, 81, 300; 567 (with a0pereu/getai), and
824 (with kate/rxetai) are both based on Ap. Rhod. 2.368 (with e9li/ssetai). After
hepthemimeral caesura (already Il. 15.621): 122, 693 = 981. The exception is 539, before
penthemimeral caesura. Of Apollonius compounds a0n-, u9p-, and e0p- (Rengakos 1993, 135),
Dionysius uses e0p- and adds a0p- (43, 567, 981) from Nicander.
38

226, with perfect middle participle, is a direct copy of Hes. Th. 791, but Dionysius also
uses the present middle participle (301, 434, 692 e9lisso/menoj, and 108, 1072 e9lisso/menoi)
and indicative (71, 123, 125, 747 e9li/ssetai). With a direct object he also uses the present
57

enriches his water formulae by new combinations of traditional vocabulary;39 by extending

its application (e.g. 27 a0ka/matoj); and by coinages (above). Some innovations seem
designed specifically to further favoured themes, stars perhaps in 298 e0pite/lletai i9ero\j
1Istroj, elsewhere serpents (387, 433 o9lko\n a1gein; 55, 198, 733 o9lko\n e9li/ssein, cf. e.g.
Nic. Ther. 166 o9lkw=| de\ troxo/essan a3lwn ei9li/cato gai/h|, which GowScholfield render
wreathes its coil in a circular ring upon the ground).
Other repeated phrases in Dionysius have less obvious models. There may be none, or
only an underlying metrical pattern. Let us call them metrical formulae. Some are quasitechnical expressions that Dionysius has had to create for himself, for example relating to the
points of the compass.40 A number of noun-phrases name seas, tribes, and territories:41 they
are suited to the specialist nature of the poem. These expressions vary in just the same ways
as those with identifiable models, mainly by inflection and substitution of metrically
equivalent units,42 but a few simply by position in the line.43 Some are short. But because this
active indicative (198, 497, 733), participle (55, 6301), and aorist active participle (979);
and with prepositional phrase the present active participle (104). The middle forms tend to be
used in the same metrical sedes as in a Hellenistic predecessor (Call. Hymn 4.105
e9lisso/menoj and Ap. Rhod. 2.368 e9li/ssetai, after trochaic caesura), but none is a copy or
close analogue, and the active forms are more innovative still (Call. Hymn 4.13 e9li/sswn, in
same sedes, with prepositional phrase; dir. obj. in Eur. IT 67 di/naj . . . e9li/sswn).
39

52 oi]dma pro/xeuwn (cf. e.g. HHom. Dem. 14 oi]dma; Il. 21.219 proxe/ein r9o/on); 626
leuko\n u3dwr (Call. fr. 546 Pf., from Homeric u3dati leukw=|) . . . kuli/ndei (Od. 1.162); 838
e0pirre/ei (Il. 2.754) a0glao\n u3dwr (Il. 2.307, Od. 9.140).
40

160 e0j bore/hn o(ro&wsa, 6334 e0j bore/hn o(ro&wnta; 299, 926, 1034 e0j a0ntoli/hn
tetramme/noj (-oi), cf. 931 tetramme/nh a0ntoli/hnde; 429 (poti\), 470 (e0pi\), 962 (u9pai\)
r9iph\n zefu/roio; 856, 1086 tw~n de\ pro_j a)ntoli/hn; 295, 919, 976 th=j de\ pro\j a0ntoli/hn;
695 tou= de\ pro\j a0ntoli/hn.
41

92, 380 0Adria\j a3lmh, 608 Persi/doj a3lmhj, 729 Kaspi/doj a3lmhj (elsewhere a3lmh
with geographical epithets is rare: Cratinus fr. 6.1 K.A. th\n Qasi/an a3lmhn); 305 kai\
a)lkh&entej 0Alanoi/ ~ 682 kai\ a)lkh&entej 0Axaioi/; 426 Lokri\j a1roura ~ 437 Fwki\j
a1roura (different sedes) ~ 764 Xalki\j a1roura (cf. Il. 9.141 = 283 0Axai+ko\n ou]qar
a0rou/rhj?); 564 a)gauw~n pai=dej 0Ibh&rwn, 822 a)gauw~n pai=dej 0Iw&nwn. For the pattern 37
0Indiko\n oi]dma qala/sshj, 83 Turshni/doj oi]dma qala/sshj, 540 Proponti/doj oi]dma
qala/sshj (cf. 1184 e0pe/dramon oi]dma qala/sshj), HHom. Dem. 14 a(lmuro_n oi]dma
qala&sshj (cf. Ar. Av. 250 po&ntion oi]dma qala&sshj) is a part-model.
42

68 h)li/batoj, puknoi=si kalupto&menoj nefe/essin ~ 1150 h)., taxinoi=si duse/mbatoj

oi0wnoi=sin; 97 (e0nuali/wn), 337 (r9uhfene/wn), 505 ( 0Ihlusi/wn) pe/don a0ndrw=n; 504 kai\
th=j toi me/geqoj periw/sion ~ 568 ta/wn toi m. p.; 598 ou1resin h)liba&toisin e0oiko&ta ~
691 ou1. h). a)e/cetai; 605, 969 qh&kato dai/mwn ~ 704 fi/lato d.
43

65/451 e0sxato/wnta Ga/deira; 302, 726, 934, 960/285 fu=la ne/montai; 138/186, 1142
a1speta fu=la.
58

time we are dealing, not with rewritings and remodellings, but with fresh composition by
Dionysius himself, a handful are more substantial. They are meant to be seen, are adapted to
their context, and are considerably more extensive than the sparing use of whole-line
repetition, or even the repetition of metrical and phonetic patterns, in Apollonius, Nicander (a
single instance of whole-line repetition in each of the Theriaca and Alexipharmaca), and
Aratus.44 By linking passages together, Dionysius implies likeness in the objects described,
harmony and order in the cosmos, and system and method in his way of writing about it.
With appropriate modifications, in order to accommodate the names of the continents,
the Nile and Tanais get a matching couplet as the worlds two main riverine continentdividers (2301/6612); so do the racial reviews of Italy and the Caspian, both beginning
from the north-west, with a ringing and confident declaration of comprehensiveness (345
6/7267); and so too the chorographies of Greece and Arabia, which both begin by
identifying the seas to the west and east (4003/92830). The descriptions of Egypt, Syria,
and India all note the felicity of their population (247, 902, 1135 kai\ th_n me\n polloi/ te kai\
o1lbioi a1ndrej e1xousin) after the layout of the country, and before an overview of its centres
of population, which, as we are further told in Syria and India, do not live together with the
same names, but separately (903 = 1136 ou)x a3ma naieta&ontej o(mw&numoi, a)lla_
diamfi/j). Such overt links invite the reader to ponder similarities and differences in what
follows, or rather, the diversity which follows initial likeness invites the readers admiration
for Dionysius versatility in his treatment of the periegesis, chorography, and ethnography.

Additional note on naming-formulae

As usual these have a double ancestry: passages in Homer (whence they ultimately derive)
which give names and labels to things, and Hellenistic refinements. Of Dionysius verbs of
naming, 22, 94 hu0da/canto,45 993 e0ne/pousin, 181, 1151 e0piklei/ousin, 33 e0fh/misan (cf. 850
v.l. fhmi/zousin),46 90, 456, 1159 e0fhmi/canto, and 26, 50 diefhmi/canto can be traced to
Hellenistic poets, while kale/ousi47 and kiklh/skousi48the most favoured verbshave both
44

For repetition in Apollonius, see G. W. Elderkin, Repetition in the Argonautica of

Apollonius, AJP 34 (1913), 198201; F. Vian, Notes critiques au chant II des
Argonautiques, REA 75 (1973), 82102, at 989; Fantuzzi 2008, 2301. Didactic poets:
Nic. Ther. 28 = 489; Al. 191 = 615 (see Jacques, ii, p. cix, iii, pp. lxxxvlxxxvii); Arat. 396 =
895.
45

The reference in Euphorion fr. 48.3 P. (51.3 L.) is to oracular utterance. For Dionysius
meaning see also Suda h 641 hu0da/canto: e0fh/misan (Hollis 1990, 360).
46

In Call. fr. 75.58 H. (174 M.) it is not a gnomic aorist, which, depending on aspect, it might
be in Dionysius.
47

(i) Before the trochaic caesura: 32, 37, 435, 576, 899 (< HHom. Ap. 373), 1093; cf. Il.
1.403, 20.74, Od. 10.305, Ap. Rhod. 1.941, Arat. 66, 399, 444, Call. Hymn 1.14, 3.169, 199,
Nic. Ther. 49, 412. (ii) After penthemimeral caesura: 165. (iii) After hepthemimeral caesura:
153; cf. Call. Hec. fr. 117 Hollis, Hymn 1.45, Arat. 315, Nic. Ther. 579. (iv) At line-end: 38,
59

a Homeric and Hellenistic background. In general, however, we do not find the same
techniques as with the water expressions. Rarely a phrase is modelled on a metrical pattern
found in a source.49 More usually, however, Dionysius simply takes over a form in a certain
metrical sedes, sometimes adding the stock component by name.50 Naming-expressions are
an important part of the poem, and one in which Dionysius shows considerable adaptability;
but it is rare for imitation and allusion to go beyond inflection and metrical position.

4. METRE
The interest of a detailed analysis of Dionysius metre is that it permits comparison with early
Greek hexameter poetry, with his Hellenistic models, and with other imperial poets. What
follows will concentrate on comparisons with his archaic and Hellenistic models rather than
with his contemporaries and successors, but further research on the latter is desirable. He is
so close an observer of Callimachean, Apollonian, Aratean, and Nicandrian diction and
stylistic devices; will he prove to be their acolyte in the minutiae of metre as well?
To produce statistics in what follows, I have counted 1184 lines, omitting 118 and
917 as spurious (which the metrical analysis confirms: both contain departures from the
poets normal practice). In the analysis of inner metric, I have followed Magnellis guidelines
as to what to count as appositive and as continuative (that is, where an enclitic or
postpositive is not sufficient to absorb the force of a preceding prepositive, and instead acts
as a bridge to throw the weight onto the next word). That is: appositives are articles,
prepositions, conjunctions, and conjunctive particles, relative and indefinite pronouns,
enclitics, negations, and preverbs in tmesis. Interrogatives, possessives, demonstratives,
forms of the personal pronouns which are not enclitic, and adverbs are not treated as
appositive. dh/, mh/n, qhn, toi, pote, poka, indefinite tij, enclitic forms of the personal
pronoun, of ei0mi/ and fhmi/, and adverbial ti, are not treated as continuative.51

PROSODY

(i) Hiatus

402, 459, 543 (< Ap. Rhod. 2.910, cf. Call. Hymn 3.205); cf. Il. 5.306, 18.487, 22.29, 22.506,
Arat. 36, 245, 476, 544; Call. Hymn 2.69; Nic. Ther. 537, 632.
48

(i) kiklh/sketai before bucolic diaeresis: 30, 223: cf. Od. 15.403. (ii) kiklh/skousi before
trochaic caesura: 205, 343: cf. Il. 14.291. (iii) kiklh/skousin at line-end: 115, 389 (< Ap.
Rhod. 4.519), 422, 641, 850; cf. Od. 9.366, HHom. Aphr. 267, Arat. 388.
49

181, 1151 ~ Arat. 92; 422 ~ Ap. Rhod. 4.1695; 641, 850 ~ Od. 4.355.

50

543 e0pwnumi/hn kale/ousin < Ap. Rhod. 2.910; 905, 955, 1098 e0pwnumi/hn yqq with
proper name ~ Ap. Rhod. 3.245.
51

Magnelli 2002, 58, with additional precisions in n. 5.

60

There are 34 examples, that is, about one in every 35 lines. This is considerably more
restrained than Euphorion (1 in 5) and Aratus (1 in 14), but less so than Callimachus, in
whom it is largely restricted to after h1 (here in 60, 446 bis, 671, 672, 937), before
prepositions with anastrophe (here in 167 and 212), and nearly always placed between
princeps and uncontracted biceps.52 While almost three-quarters (25 instances) in Dionysius
follow the princeps (five of them70, 671, 876, 1068, 1177before a contracted biceps),
six occur in a contracted and four in an uncontracted biceps (three between it and the
following longum; one, between the two short syllables).53 In 446 Milh/toio (v.l. Milh/tou)
h2 it occurs after a short vowel at the main caesura (M. L. West 1982, 156). Several instances
are direct quotations from, or adaptations of, Homer or Hellenistic poetry.54

(ii) Correption
The commonest position for correption is, as it is in Callimachus and Apollonius, after the
second short syllable of a dactyl.55 The least favoured foot is the second, with only seven
examples (43, 72, 126, 516 kai/; 728, 758 Sku/qai; 461 Ai0o/lou). In the third, all but two
instances (446, 711) are of kai/ (30 examples) or te kai/ (51 examples), an indication of the
catalogic nature of the poem, for almost all involve the coordination of parallel entities,
especially nouns or epithets, but also phrases and occasionally short clauses. In the fifth foot,
almost two-thirds involve middle/passive third person verb endings -etai, -atai, -itai (24),
and only four examples (out of 38) do not involve the diphthong -ai (195 a0mpe/xei; 687
e1kgonoi, 730 Ka/spioi, 1062 a0lla/ toi). In the fourth foot, the overwhelming majority
involve the -ai diphthong in verb endings, participles, or feminine plurals, or failing that -oi
52

P. Maas, Greek Metre, tr. H. Lloyd-Jones (Oxford, 1962), 141; M. L. West 1982, 156;
Hollis 1990, 22; M. Campbell, Hiatus in Apollonius Rhodius, in M. Fantuzzi and R.
Pretagostini (eds.), Struttura e storia dellesametro greco (Rome, 1995), i. 193220; Kidd,
34; Magnelli 2002, 83.
53

First-foot princeps: 61, 446, 671, 1028. Second-foot princeps: 70, 412, 620, 726; biceps
(uncontracted): 916. Third-foot princeps: 133, 549, 726, 876, 1068, 1177; biceps
(contracted): 672, 937; biceps (uncontracted): 446, 726, 872(< Il. 6.201). Fourth foot
princeps: 150, 382, 784, 889, 1158; biceps (contracted): 705, 753. Fifth-foot princeps: 167,
212, 498, 510, 535, 1083; biceps: 173.
54

Quotations: 167 w{| e1ni (Od. 13, Ap. Rhod. 7), 173 ta\ e3kasta, 705 kai\ h1qea (Hes. Th.
66, Op. 222), 726 toi e0re/w, 753 kai\ i1fia (Il. 5.556, 8.505, 545), 784 r9oai\ 3Aluoj (Ap.
Rhod. 2.366), 872 to\ 0Alh/i+on (Il. 6.201), 1083 h0eli/w| a0nio/nti (Il. 18.136 = Od. 12.429 =
23.362). Adaptations: 61 h2 o0re/wn (Arat. 564 h2 o2reoj), 133 kei/nw| e0nali/gkia (e.g. Od.
24.148 h0eli/w| e0nali/gkion), 510 mega/lw| e0ni/ (e.g. Il. 5.386 kraterw=| e0ni\), 916 Posidh/i+a
e1rga (Homeric polemh/i+a e1rga), 1028 ou1 oi9 e1hn (Il. 14.141 et al. ou1 oi9 e1ni).
55

A repertory of instances of correption in the Periegesis in M. Schneider, 1012. For

comparisons with Callimachus and Apollonius, see Hollis 1990, 223, and bibliography cited
by Magnelli 2002, 84 n. 101.
61

or -ou; there are only five instances of -h (174, 408, 760, 931, 1131) and two of -w| (175,
1008). The favoured pattern (approximately once every 17 lines) is for middle/passive
present or perfect verbs with correpted endings before the bucolic diaeresis (70 examples),
with three further first person middles (-omai), two second person middles (-eai), and two
middle/passive feminine participles (-menai), all of which, combined, rival kai/ at masculine
caesura in popularity. It is not hard to understand why the pattern is so prevalent: the endings
in question belong to verbs of description, at home in a work of geography, and occur with
comparable frequency in Nicander (once in twenty-five lines) and Aratus (once in twentytwo), who are also describing a steady states or habitual actions. By way of contrast, the
Argonautica is mostly a narrative of events, rather than a description of a state of affairs, so
that although Apollonius shares some of his verbs with Dionysius (2.368 e9li/ssetai, 2.744
a0nereu/getai, 2.981 ei9li/ssetai), only one in eighty lines of the second book, and one in
eighty-five lines of the second, contain the pattern in question.
Dionysius is also happy to admit correption after the first short syllable of a dactyl,
mostly in the first (13) and third (12) feet; once also in the fifth and three times with kai/ in
the fourth.56

(iii) Elision
Excluding prepositions, particles, pronouns, conjunctions, suffixes, and four instances of
pote, but including verbs (and participles), nouns, adjectives, and a couple of instances of
prw=ta, there are 34 instances of elision in the Periegesis:57 that is, it occurs in 2.87% of
lines. Using Wests comparisons, Dionysius is closer to Callimachus 1/100 (Hymn 3),
Aratus 4/100 (though Kidd, 33, gives a total of only 20 for the whole poem), and
considerably below Apollonius 8/100 (let alone the Iliads 19/100).58 Elision at the main
caesura, generally avoided by Callimachus (but see Hollis 1990, 23), occurs with prw=t in
347 and 1091, and with te at 57, 401, 613, 733, 929, 1047. te is elided across the bucolic
caesura in 911.

56

First foot: -w| (157, 219, 444, 819, 829), -ou (644, 848, 896), -h (550, 998), -oi (29, 1028).
Third foot: kai/ (23, 194, 458), teta/nustai (75, 91), ne/montai (285, 835), kei=tai (814, 915),
ei9li/ssesqai (546), moi (619), oi3 (906). Fourth foot: kai/ (189, 768, 771). Fifth foot: ei1h
(1186). Callimachus admits this in the Hymns and Hecale, but seemingly not in the Aitia
(Hollis 1990, 22).
57

42 ou0no/maq; 133 ku/mat; 218 bo/skont; 293 da/kru; 321 Nwri/ki a1ste; 345 fu=l,
pa/nt; 347 prw=t; 401 e1llax; 509 klu/zet; 518 r9w/onq; 583 h1maq; 646 o1nom; 648
ou1nom; 723 qau/mat; 761 ku/mat; 792 ph=m; 893 oi1dmat; 912 Sidw=n; 929 e1llax; 932
klu/zet; 935 me/g, e1llax; 967 a1lge; 977 fai/net; 1024 fa/rmak; 1037 e0kte/tat; 1042
au1lak; 1091 prw=t; 1092 sto/mat; 1120 marmai/ront; 1133 oi1dmat; 1175 e1llax.
58

M. L. West 1982, 156; Magnelli 2002, 84; Ilyushechkina 2010, 1323.

62

(iv) Treatment of muta cum liquida

As a rule, muta cum liquida makes position, but failure to do so at word-boundary is far from
exceptional: 52 oi]dma proxeu/wn; 284 e1nqa Bretanoi/; 369 e0u+stefa/noio Kro/twnoj; 416
o3qi Kra=qij, 465 a0ndra/si Plwtai/; 566 e1asi Bretani/dej; 569 pa/sh|si Bretani/sin; 850
me/xri: Kra/gon; as well as with the v.l. at 485 o9ppo/te trilli/stwn. Attic correption within
a wordexceptional in Apollonius and Callimachusis rarer, but even excluding a1xri in
the spurious 118 we find 283 h0pei/roio tetramme/non; 434, 467 Trinakri/h;59 484, 509
0Afrodi/thj; 1173 e0klhrw/santo (cf. Call. fr. 18.10 H. (20 M.), but contrast Hymn 3.23
e0peklh/rwsan); also in 1086 Gedrwsw=n if As reading a0ntoli/hnde were accepted.
Dionysius admission of Homeric and Hesiodic 0Afrodi/thj contrasts with the
squeamishness of Apollonius and Callimachus, who prefer locutions such as Kypris and
Kythereia (cf. Fantuzzi 1988, 1623); on the other hand, he shuns internal Attic correption
with Heracles ( 9Hraklh=a, 9Hraklh=oj) even though Hellenistic poets had admitted
9Hrakle/hj, traditional from Hesiod onwards, and 9Hrakle/hn, newly born of the confusion of
third- and first-declension -hj. Marginal cases are prepositions, depending on how strongly a
word-boundary was perceived: 140 e0pi\ Qrhi+ki/ou; 331 e0pi\ trissh/n; 492 meta\ druma/; 746
e0pi\ pro\j bore/hn; 900 u9po\ prw=nej; in any case, they are greatly outnumbered by instances
where the following mute and liquid make position.60

(v) Lengthening in arsis

Unlike Callimachus, who employed both categories equally (Magnelli 2002, 85), Dionysius
is very much less given to lengthening short closed syllables (third princeps: 381
a0gxi/poron, 988 Qwni=tij; fourth princeps 751 qe/mij) than short final vowels.61 Counting is
complicated by the presence of variants (at 624 and 852, para/ alternates with parai/, in 674
and 962 u9po/ with u9pai/); if the artificially lengthened forms are included, it produces a total
of 21 (about once every 56 lines), a fairly comparable frequency to Callimachus (23 in 900
verses of the hexameter Hymns), and still closer if the orthographical manipulations are
59

In both cases the manuscripts vary. If we accept Trinakri/h rather than Trinaki/h,
Dionysius is following a Hellenistic licence: cf. Call. Hymn 3.57 Trinakri/h (P.Ant., and v.l.
in codd., which read mostly Trinaki/h); fr. 40 H. (47 M.) Trina/krion po/nton; fr. 43.60 H.
(50 M.) Trinakri/hj; Theocr. Id. 28.18.
60

On the practice of the Hellenistic poets, see Fantuzzi 1988, 15763; S. Slings,
Hermesianax and the Tattoo Elegy (P. Brux. Inv. E 8934 and P. Sorb. Inv. 2254), ZPE 98
(1993), 2937, at 367; Magnelli 2002, 82. In Callimachus Hymns there are 40 failures to
make position, of which a mere six occur internally within a word; in Apollonius, there are
only 10 failures to make position at word-boundary, and a mere three cases internally; Aratus
almost completely avoids it. Dionysius restraint in Attic correption was one of the criteria by
which Mommsen, 81314, ranked him among the later Alexandrians.
61

On the latter, see A. Rzach, Studien zur Technik des nachhomerischen heroischen Verses,
SAWW 95 (1880), 681872, at 71315.
63

omitted. Position in the line is largely a matter of the part of speech involved. There is a
strong preference for lengthening in the fourth foot with prepositions and preverbs in tmesis
(the only exceptions are 918 e0ni/ and 186 (W3), 979 e0pi/, in the second); in this respect he
seems to have regularised and extended a pattern already partially visible in his models.62
Four out of the five examples with te, on the other hand, go in either the second (502 pollh/
te liparh/ te; 1019 Ghloi/ te Ma/rdoi te) or fifth (469 Pelwri/j te Lilu/bh te, 914
0Orqwsi/da te Ma/raqo/n te) feet (the exception, 1074 para/ te r9ei/wn, is influenced by the
pattern with r9o/oj and r9ei=n in the fourth, cf. also 416 i3na r9e/ei). Here too Dionysius has
followed established patterns with both proper nouns (Hes. Th. 218, 905 Klwqw/ te La/xesi/n
te; 227 Lh/qhn te Limo/n te; Call. Hymn 4.292 Ou]pi/j te Locw/ te) and epithets (Hes. Th.
320 deinh/n te mega/lhn te; Od. 12.436 makroi/ te mega/loi te, 14.7 = 15.418 kalh/ te
mega/lh te, cf. 16.158 (dat.)). The only other possible examples are 343 o3 r9a/ (W3) (first
foot), cf. Od. 22.327 and Ap. Rhod. 4.251, and 1100 i0de\ r9w/pessi (fourth foot), cf. Il.
21.559; the final syllable of i0de/ is usually long by position in this sedes in Homer, but cf. also
Il. 6.469 i0de>\ lo/fon, 24.166 i0de>\ nuoi/.

(vi) Other remarks on quantity

For eccentric lengthenings, see 492 dru<ma/, 667 phgeto/n, 703 nebri=daj; for the selection of
a short vowel against the commoner long one, see 83 w0r/etai, 421 a0ntikr/.

OUTER METRIC

(i) Hexameter schemes

The figures in the following table are expressed as percentages.

Periegesis

Il./Od.63

Hymn 464

Ap. Rh. Aratus Nicander65

62

51 a0pai\ noti/hj; 572 kata\ no/mon; 1090 e0pi\ no/ton; 1147 e0pi\ Gaggh/tida; 624, 852,
1023 para\ r9o/on, 555 peri\ r9o/oj; 429 poti\ r9iph/n, 470 e0pi\ r9iph/n, 674 u9p\o r9iph=|si, cf. 962
u9pai\ r9iph/n; 1057 e0ni\ mega/roisin. Before Dionysius, preposition + r9o/on is almost
invariably in the fourth foot (except Simias fr. 1.5 P./Frnkel); preposition + r9iph/ in second
foot in Homer, but in fourth in Ap. Rhod. 3.970, Call. Hymn 4.25; e0ni\ mega/roisin in Homer
about twice as often in fourth foot as in second, and four times each in Ap. Rhod.; e0ni<\ me/sstwice in second foot in Ap. Rhod., once in fourth. Where there is a choice, then, Dionysius
generally opts for the fourth foot.
63

Figures from B. A. van Groningen, La Posie verbale grecque (Amsterdam, 1953), 34/202,
who gives separate figures for both Homeric poems.
64

From Mineur, 36. I have not calculated figures from Brioso Snchez (n. below), who gives
an overall figure, rather than one for the specifically hexametrical works. For the Hecale, see
Hollis 1990, 17.
64

DDDDD

20.56

19.1/18.6

SDDDD

15.4

13.9/12

DSDDD

14.13

SSDDD

20.7

22,0

18.04 19.92

8.7

11.06 11.8

11.24

14.5/14.9

32.5

19.74 13.1

23.82

9.81

8.1/8.1

6.8

7.7

8.07

7.66

DDDSD

6.6

8.5/8.4

8.1

6.42

5.2

9.32

DSDSD

5.41

6.1/6.8

9.3

5.49

4.34

9.39

SDDSD

4.06

6/6.5

4.0

2.98

3.9

5.3

DDSDD

3.3

4.2/4.2

1.2

5.86

6.33

3.26

DDDDS

2.8

1.1/0.8

1.6

2.54

3.73

0.89

SSDSD

2.8

3.7/3.7

2.5

1.09

2.86

3.13

SDDDS

2.54

0.9/0.7

0.6

1.87

3.04

0.7

DSSDD

2.45

2.8/3.6

2.8

4.03

5.03

2.47

DSDDS

2.37

0.8/0.8

0.9

2.28

3.21

0.64

SDSDD

1.86

2.7/2.8

0.3

2.95

3.64

1.4

SSSDD

1.61

1.2/1.4

0.7

1.3

0.06

SSDDS

1.27

not given

1.06

1.47

0.19

DDSSD

0.93

1.3/1.4

0.29

0.87

0.26

DDSDS

0.68

not given

0.69

0.69

DSSDS

0.51

0.2/0.2

0.38

0.69

DSSSD

0.42

0.7/0.9

0.07

0.26

0.13

SDSSD

0.25

0.8/0.7

0.07

0.69

0.13

SDDSS

0.085

not given

0.03

0.17

SDSDS

0.085

0.1/0.1

0.34

0.43

0.13

SSDSS

0.085

not given

0.09

In other words, the Periegesis contains 24 patterns, compared to Homers 32 (i.e. all possible
combinations, including DDDSS, DDSSS, DSDSS, DSSSS, SDSSS, SSSDS, SSSSD,
65

The figures in these final three columns are calculated from the table in M. Brioso
Snchez, Nicandro y los esquemas del hexmetro, Habis, 5 (1974), 923, on 14. Ludwich,
3212, provides invaluable data for the Homeric poems (separately and combined), Hesiod,
Empedocles, Apollonius, Nicanders Theriaca, Dionysius, the first book of Oppian, psOppian, Gregory of Nazianus, Quintus, Nonnus Paraphrasis, and Paul the Silentiary. Briefer
remarks in Ilyushechkina 2010, 128.
65

SSSSS, which Dionysius does not employ), Aratus 28, Apollonius 26, Callimachus 21,
Nicanders 20. The patterns Dionysius admits and Callimachus does not are SDSSD (three
instances, 269, 361, 912), SDDSS (one instance, 571), and SSDSS (one instance, 725).
Apollonius also lacks SSDSS, while he admits, and Dionysius does not, SSSSD (3 instances),
SSSDS (four instances), DDDSS (one instance). In the Periegesis we find a tendency well
established elsewhere, for consecutive lines (in this case as many as four, 5025, 82730, cf.
479 + spondeiazon; three at 557, 1368, 2956 + spondeiazon, 3946, 6735, 6857, 790
(spondeiazon) + 7912, 7957, 8246, 8568, 91921, 9679) to repeat the same pattern,
without its being clear whether a particular effect is intended. Sometimes a pattern reinforces
a parallelism (1901, 2334, 7956, 81718), and holodactylic lines are often found in
connection with the onrush of a river (e.g. 246, 296, 301, 311, 352, 416, 4334, 644, 665,
91920, 11378, 1146)but are, in any case, the poems single most favoured pattern.

(ii) Dactylicity
The tendency, over time, is for the hexameter to become more dactylic; this section asks how
Dionysius compares with his models.
The following table presents the number of dactyls in each verse as a percentage of
the total number of lines in the poem:66

Hom.

Hes.

Call. H. Ap. Rh. Arat.

5 dactyls

20.56

18.9

17.3

22.3

22.0

18

4 dactyls + 1 spondee

42.22

41.7

40.6

50.0

45.6

40.3

3 dactyls + 2 spondees

30.12

30.6

32.0

24.1

27.7

33.1

2 dactyls + 3 spondees

7.02

8.1

9.1

3.5

4.5

8.1

1 dactyl + 4 spondees

0.08

0.6

0.9

0.1

0.5

In other words, Dionysius is slightly fonder than Homer, but slightly less fond than
Apollonius and Callimachus, of holodactylic lines; his figures for lines with four, three, and
two dactyls are significantly closer to Homers and Hesiods than to the Hellenistic poets;
but his reluctance to admit tetraspondaic lines (a single example in 725) is on a par with his
Hellenistic models. As a percentage of the countable feet, the poem contains 24.77%
spondees; this falls between writers most enamoured of spondees (Homer 26%, Hesiod 27%,
Aratus 26.5%, Theocritus 27.7%) and those with a more dactylic tendency (Apollonius 23%,
66

Figures for comparison are taken from Mineur, 35 (for Homer and Hesiod) and Magnelli
2002, 63 (for the Hellenistic poets); the column for Callimachus gives the figures for his
hexameter Hymns, but Magnelli also provides details for his elegiac poems, for Theocritus,
Alexander of Aetolia, and Euphorion. Further material in Ludwich, 30812 (expressed as raw
numbers rather than percentages), and in Brioso Snchez (art. cit.), 19.
66

Callimachus 21.8%).67 The average number of dactyls per verse3.76compares with 3.7
in Homer, 3.63 in Hesiod, 3.67 in Aratus, 3.85 in Apollonius, 3.9 in Callimachus fourth
Hymn, and 4.1 in the Aitia and Epigrams (Magnelli 2002, 60); here too he shows himself
poised between Homer and the Alexandrians, but closer to Homer.
To refine what has been said so far, the next table gives the percentage of spondees in
each of the first five feet:68
Il./Od.

Hesiod Call. H. Ap. Rh. Aratus

S1

39.76

39.1, 37.9

40.9

26.0

30.2

37.9

S2

40.86

39.8, 42.4

43.2

48.5

43.4

41.0

S3

12.1

14.9, 16.2

17.3

8.4

15.5

20.4

S4

20.64

29.0, 30.2

28.3

19.3

17.3

19.2

S5

10.39

5.1, 4.7

6.5

6.9

8.7

14.3

In general, then, we see a line which is more dactylic than Homers, but not dramatically so,
and less dactylic than that of Callimachus and Apollonius. As in all hexameter poetry,
spondees tend to concentrate in the first two feet, but Dionysius percentages for both feet are
very close to those of Homer, Hesiod, and Aratus, and at a further remove from Callimachus
and Apollonius; in particular, the big discrepancy between the first and second feet in
Callimachus and Apollonius is not to be found in the Periegesis. For the third foot, the figure
is poised between Homer and Callimachus, while for the fourth he comes much closer to the
Hellenistic poets. If he is less hospitable to spondees in this position than Homer and Hesiod,
it is not on account of fidelity to Naekes law (see below), to which he is in fact indifferent;
rather, it seems that he partakes of a general Hellenistic trend.
We come next to spondeiazontes. The poem contains 123 (= 10.39%), a figure which
is marked enough to be Hellenistic, but much lower than in the extremists (Antimachus, 22%;
Eratosthenes, 24%), and lower also than Aratus (14.3%) and Callimachus in the Hecale
(13%).69 As with other hexameter patterns, this one tends to cluster, most strikingly in 4505,
where five out of six line-endings are spondaic; three occur in a row at 90810. In all, 33 out
of 123, or 26.83%, are in adjacent lines or agglomerations (a minimum of 28.2% in
Euphorion, close to Callimachus figure in the hexameter Hymns of 26.1% and Aratus
24.2%, but markedly more than Apollonius 15.1%). Only two (571, 725) are unaccompanied
67

Figures from E. Magnelli, Alexandri Aetoli: Testimonia et Fragmenta (Florence, 1999), 39;
far more in Ludwich, 3024.
68

I use the figures of Magnelli 2002, 61, which are somewhat different from those of Mineur,
36. He provides further details for Callimachus elegiac poems, Theocritus, Alexander of
Aetolia, Euphorion, while Ludwich, 3279, provides figures for poets across the range of
hexameter verse from Homer to Paul the Silentiary.
69

M. L. West 1982, 154; Hollis 1990, 1719; Kidd, 35; Magnelli 2002, 6470; Ilyushechkina
2010, 1289. I have used Magnellis figure for Aratus, rather than Wests or Kidds (see his
comment on 68).
67

by a fourth-foot dactyl;70 and only twenty do not end with the usual pattern bucolic diaeresis
+ tetrasyllable. Of the exceptions, six have a compound verb of pattern kkqqqq (26, 50, 236,
896, 1071, 1172), and fourteen a trisyllable (66, 100, 196, 215, 285, 322, 327, 450, 455, 499,
774, 816, 905, 940). The resulting proportion of tetrasyllables to trisyllables of 103 : 14, or
7.36 : 1, is markedly higher than in Callimachus (where West cites only two examples) and in
Apollonius, where the ratio is 29 : 1. It is closer to Theocritus 10 : 1, but markedly rarer than
in the Iliad, with 2.4 : 1.71 Of the tetrasyllables, the great majority (about 4/5) have initial
vowels. Although West reports that in Hellenistic poetry in general, tetrasyllabic endings are
often verbs, verbs here (30 + 3 participles) are outnumbered by nouns (66, mostly proper
names, and with 11 instances of 0Amfitri/th alone) by some 2 : 1a special feature of a
poem concerned with the identification of peoples and places. 45 of the 123 spondeiazontes,
or 36.59%, have a masculine caesura; as we shall see, this is very little different from the
poem as a whole.
Mineur notes a tendency for spondeiazontes in Callimachus fourth Hymn to conclude
a passage, or at least to be accompanied by a sense-pause (37). In the Periegesis, a sensepause, however brief, usually accompanies a spondeiazon, even if only following a
prepositional phrase (64, 327, 450, 455, 541, 575, 1023, 1039, 1146), but spondeiazontes
more often precede a phrase containing a new parallel element, subordinate verb, or main
verb. The absence of any sense-pause is rare (481, 571, 681, 881, 1104). Spondeiazontes
perhaps help to demarcate sections of the poem in 26, 134 (the first acrostich), 169, 280, 678
(Scythian tableau), 1079, 1081, 1165, cf. 706, 881, 896, 1054; for miscellaneous short
segments, see also 50 (Caspian), 194 (Nomad priamel), 197 (Carthage), 227 (course of Nile),
338 (Iberian peninsula), 422 (Isthmus), 725 (Caspian gems), 808 (Mysia), 975 (the other
Syria), 1008 (Babylon), 1085 (Carmania).

INNER METRIC

(i) Caesurae
35.3% of the verses (i.e. 418) contain a masculine caesura, 64.53% (764) a feminine, and two
lines have no third-foot caesura (630, 753).72 The preference for feminine caesura is not quite
as marked as in Apollonius (67%), let alone Callimachus Hymns (74%), Theocritus epyllia
(73%), and Euphorion (77.2%), but more comparable to Nicander (63%).73 Dionysius has
70

M. L. West 1982, 154 and n. 47; Hollis 1990, 18; Magnelli 2002, 69.

71

M. L. West 1982, 154 n. 48.

72

On postponement of the third-foot caesura, M. L. West 1982, 153; Hollis 1990, 19;
Magnelli 2002, 701 and n. 47. For Aratus, in whom it is commonest (eight instances), Kidd,
33.
73

M. L. West 1982, 153; Magnelli 2002, 70; Ilyushechkina 2010, 130. Mommsens
researches (81423) on the feminine caesura, in which he noted that Dionysius proportion is
about the Alexandrian average, and far lower than in Marcellus of Side, Oppian, Gregory of
Nazianzus, and the school of Nonnus, led him to propose its use as a dating criterion.
68

little compunction about eliding de/ (28, 478, 651), te (57, 401, 613, 733, 929, 1047), e1nqa
(43), prw=ta (347, 1091), and pot (425) across the main caesura. Lines with a masculine
caesura are mostly, but not invariably, accompanied by a further word-break at the
hephthemimeral or bucolic caesura (exceptions: 9, 266, 361, 407, 413, 563, 593, 610, 623,
672, 906, 914, 937, 1177, with which I include the prepositive elements in 73, 633, and the
continuative in 151, 402, 1074).
There is a bucolic diaeresis in 55.83% of the verses (i.e. 661); since Dionysius is
indifferent to Naekes Law (below), if the 35 spondaic fourth feet followed by a word-break
are included, the figure rises to 58.7%. This compares best with Apollonius 57%, well above
Homers 47%, above Aratus 50%, but short of Callimachus 63%, let alone 74% in
Theocritus bucolic Idylls and 79% in the lament for Bion.74 In 75.84% of cases a masculine
caesura is combined with a bucolic diaeresis: more often, in other words, than the overall
frequency of the bucolic diaeresis, but not so marked a propensity as with Callimachus,
whose figures in the Hecale are over 90% and 78% (Hollis 1990, 19).
There is a strong tendency in Callimachus and in the bucolic poems of Theocritus for
a spondaic third foot to be combined with a bucolic diaeresis, but other poets are significantly
less inclined to this pattern; of 143 instances in the Periegesis of a spondaic third foot, there
are 31 exceptions (21.68%), which is to say that the infringement takes place in 2.62% of
the poems verses.75 Given the narrower formulation of this rulethat spondaic words
should not stand immediately after the masculine caesura unless there is a word-break at the
bucolic diaeresis76Dionysius infringes it with lexical words at 109, 122, 153, 269, 312,
330, 384, 400, 496, 517, 928, 930, 948, 958, 993, 1139, with metrical words at 151, 402, and
with marginal cases at 15 (gai/hj with dia\?) and 904 (toi/per prepositive?).77

(ii) Rules about word-end

(a) Meyers First Lawthat words beginning in the first foot do not end in the second
with the first short of an uncontracted biceps78is violated in 472 h0nemo/essa (in Homer the
epithet occurs at hexameter-end: Dionysius has moved it into a position where it infringes the
law) and 985 to/sson a1neuqen. I exclude 21 Kaspi/hj te and 753 oi3te bo/aj me/n (see Hollis

74

M. L. West 1982, 154; Kidd, 33.

75

M. L. West 1982, 155; Magnelli 2002, 723, with figures for comparison: 18.4% in
Apollonius, 53.6%(!) in Aratus.
76

Wifstrand, 39; Hollis 1990, 19, 20.

77

For Dionysius practice in regard to spondaic words before masculine caesura, see
Wifstrand, 37: despite their differing frequencies of masculine caesurae, a spondaic word
precedes in a similar proportion of lines to that found in Callimachus (20%), higher than in
Apollonius and Homer (10%).
78

M. L. West 1982, 155; Hollis 1990, 1920; Magnelli 2002, 74.

69

on his Hecale fr. 1), but include 5 ou0 me\n pa=sa, 120 ou0 me\n pollo\n, and 835 e1nqa kai\ e1nqa
if me/n and kai/ are continuative.
(b) Gisekes Lawthat words shaped kqy do not end with the second foot79is
infringed by the following lexical words: 52 ei[j me\n a0nw/teroj; 509 klu/zet, e0ph/ratoj;
792 to\n me\n e0de/cato; 916 kai\ Posidh/i+a (again a problem created by Dionysius, since
polemh/i+a e1rga in Homer stands in final position); presumably also with the metrical words
459 h3n r9a/ te Korsi/da, 800 o3j r9a/ te pro\j no/ton (if relatives and pro/j are appositive and
r9a and te continuative), and 828 e1nqa qeh=| pote; and simultaneously with Hilbergs Law in
347, 584, 589, 600, 718, 735, 765, 803, 1081, 1123, 1126, 1128 (all quoted below).
(c) Hilbergs Lawthat there is very seldom word-break after a spondaic second
foot is infringed mostly in lines where a monosyllable ends the second foot (as also in
Callimachus, in whom a second monosyllable is more likely than in Dionysius to precede):
125 e0rxome/nw|: tw/j; 142 steino/tatoj dh/; 347 Turshnoi\ me/n; 584 locote/rh| ga/r; 589
Xrusei/hn toi; 600 dusmene/wn toi; 629 h0pei/roij ei[j; 718 a0ll ei1h toi; 735 a0mfote/rwn
ga/r; 765 Bu/zhre/j toi; 803 Xalkide/ej me/n; 1081 e0ggu/qi ga/r toi; 1123 pantoi=on ga/r;
1126 a1lloqi me\n ga/r; 1128 fra/zeo d w3j toi. There are also two examples with a proper
name: 292 kei=qi de\ Keltw=n; 489 a3j pote Ko/lxwn. Excluding lines with kai/, h2 (61, 1120),
and other appositives, this gives a total of 16, or 1.35% of lines affected: considerably higher
than in Callimachus Hymns (0.43%), comparable to Aratus (1.13%), and lower than
Apollonius (2.52%).81
80

(d) Meyers Second Lawthat iambic words are avoided before a masculine
caesura82is violated by lexical words in 433 a1gwn; 985 e0w/n; 999 nomou/j; 1074 u3dwr;
and by a metrical word in 43 kai\ e1nq, if kai/ is appositive: five violations, affecting 0.42% of
lines. But Wifstrand, 646, adds that Callimachus tolerates them when there is a caesura after
the first biceps; that condition is met by all cases in Dionysius except 985, and so if the
percentage is calculated on the same basis as it is for Callimachus (0.32% in the Hymns,
according to Magnelli), the law is violated in a mere 0.08% of lines.
(e) Hermanns Bridge, forbidding word-break after fourth-foot trochee,83 is not
infringed. The only word-breaks in this position involve enclitics or particles (M. Schneider,
8; Ilyushechkina 2010, 131).
(f) Naekes Lawthat word-break should not follow a spondaic fourth foot84is
infringed 35 times. True, only Callimachus fully observes this rule, but Dionysius figure of

79

M. L. West 1982, 155; Hollis 1990 20; Magnelli 2002, 75.

80

M. L. West 1982, 155; Hollis 1990, 20; Kidd, 33; Magnelli 2002, 756.

81

Magnelli 2002, 75.

82

M. L. West 1982, 155; Hollis 1990, 20; Magnelli 2002, 745.

83

M. L. West 1982, 155; Hollis 1990, 20; Magnelli 2002, 76. Aratus violates the bridge eight
times (so Magnelli), but the discussion in Kidd, 34, takes no account of appositives.
70

2.96% is higher still than Aratus 2.61%, the most relaxed of the Hellenistic poets in this
regard, and very considerably higher than Apollonius 1.16%let alone Nicanders two
solitary infractions in the Theriaca and Alexipharmaca.85 Given that Dionysius percentage
of spondaic fourth feet is quite close to Callimachus, while his admission of a diaeresis after
the fourth foot is actually less, it seems to be a simple case of insensitivity to the restriction: it
conforms to the pattern noted by Magnelli (2002, 78) that the poets seemingly most
predisposed to the violation (Callimachus and bucolic Theocritus) are in fact those who most
strictly avoid it, while those less predisposed are also more tolerant of it.
(g) TiedkeMeyers Lawthat words shaped kkq or qq are avoided after the
hephthemimeral caesura (therefore ending in the fifth princeps)86is violated in 402
ze/furon; 510 mega/lw|; 670 plei=ston; 904 Su/rioi (unless toi/per is appositive): four
violations, affecting 0.34% of lines. In this case, Dionysius lies between Callimachus Hymns
(0.21%) and Apollonius (0.53%), but nowhere near Aratus 3.73% or epic Theocritus
3.89%.
(h) Bullochs lawthat a medial caesura should in Callimachus be accompanied by a
regular caesura in the third foot, by a bucolic diaeresis, and by punctuation at either or both of
the main caesura or bucolic diaeresis87comes into play in 11 lines in the Periegesis
(excluding pre- and post-positives), one of which lacks a bucolic diaeresis (278), and six
more a sense-pause at either of the requisite places (103, 605, 871, 935, 952, 1140); 140, 654,
870, 985 are compliant. Bulloch showed that Callimachus was uniquely fastidious in this
respect, but it is illuminating to measure how far other poets depart from his purism. As his
comparative table shows, Dionysius heedfulness of the bucolic diaeresis in such lines is well
within the range of Hellenistic poets (infringements 012.5%), but the tolerance of lack of
sense-pause goes beyond the upper end of the scale for Hellenistic poets (44.0% in ps.Theocritus, 44.4% Moschus), and is more comparable to certain archaic poems, such as the
pseudo-Hesiodic Scutum (52.6%) and the Homeric Hymns to Aphrodite (50%) and Hermes
(57.1%).
(i) Monosyllables at verse-end. The four examples, at 583, 759, 966, and 1179, all
display the rhythm most usual in this connection (kk | qkkq | q).88 I exclude the enclitic
pronouns at 368, 933, 965 and instances with te (9, 32, 304, 464, 469, 875, 914).

84

M. L. West 1982, 1545; Hollis 1982, 201; Kidd, 334; Magnelli 2002, 767;
Ilyushechkina 2010, 130 (claiming 40 infringements).
85

Magnelli 2002, 77; cf. De Stefani and Magnelli, 551.

86

M. L. West 1982, 155; Hollis 1990, 21; Magnelli 2002, 78.

87

A. W. Bulloch, A Callimachean Refinement to the Greek Hexameter, CQ2 20 (1970),

25868; comparative table on 264; Hollis 1990, 21; Magnelli 2002, 79.
88

M. L. West 1982, 156; Hollis 1990, 21; Magnelli 2002, 7980. On Dionysius, Whitby,
107.
71

OTHER

(i) Tetracola
Dionysius cultivates the art of the four-word line.89 Restricting the category to verses
consisting of strictly lexical words, and excluding metrical ones,90 I count 68 in the poem
(5.66%, or one almost every eighteen lines). This is higher than any Hellenistic poet except
for Euphorion whose 9.4% is exceptional; for Nicander the figure is 4.1%, for Aratus 3.7%
(3.9% by Kidds figures), 3.4% for Apollonius, and only 1.6% in Callimachus. It sorts better
with other imperial poets whose ratios, according to Bassett, are 1 : 15 (Nonnus), 1 : 16
(Colluthus), 1 : 17 (Triphiodorus), and 1 : 18 (Musaeus). Unsurprisingly, a much higher
proportion of tetracola are spondaic (19, or 28.36%) than in the poem overall; the same was
already true in Homer.
The main focus of Bassetts work concerned their syntactical relationship to the
sentence of which they are a part. Bassett concentrated on the Homeric poems, in which the
largest single group of tetracola were parenthetical or epexegetical in character, independent
syntactical units the most typical of which, in turn, were based on noun phrases, especially
proper names. Given the importance of names and the highly informational character of the
Periegesis, one might have expected the same to be the case in Dionysius too. We do, indeed,
find this type of verse often used to introduce and thematise a geographical name (e.g. 89,
218, 289, 361, 369, 430, 451, 955, 974), but in terms of syntax what one finds is a majority of
lines (37, or 55.2%)91 containing a main verb, a category Bassett labels narrative because of
its enjambement with the wider context, and which, as he demonstrates, gains in popularity
over time at the expense of the epexegetical type. Dionysius thus turns out to reflect the
usual post-Homeric trend (57% narrative in Nonnus, and indeed 73% Callimachus, 78%
Apollonius). The second largest group contains a participial clause (13 examples),92 more
rarely an adjective (99, 245, 1150), or an adjective combined with a participle (68, 89, 200).
Noun phrases tend to fall into groups: a common noun is followed by a genitive proper noun
89

S. E. Bassett, Versus tetracolos, CPh 14 (1919), 21633; Kidd, 356; Magnelli 2002, 85
7. On Dionysius, Whitby, 107 and n. 81 (counting 62 instances, or 1 in 19); Ilyushechkina
2010, 132.
90

The issue is noted by Magnelli 2002, 867. One difficulty is that it would expand the field
enormously, well beyond the range of existing comparative studies; indeed, many lines
contain, not just one, but several, appositives, which at some point must compromise the
principle of the tetracolon. Many lines contain more than one preposition and/or conjunction
or conjunctive particle; enclitics, e.g. in 159, 368, 513, 541, 557, 669, 743, 961, 965, further
complicate the picture.
91

40, 59, 132, 203, 206, 209, 218, 259, 291, 293, 361, 397, 430, 451, 456, 475, 551, 576,
590, 655, 665, 689, 722, 755, 842, 853, 873, 955, 974, 1006, 1040, 1042, 1052, 1079, 1110,
1117, 1127.
92

53, 113, 286, 404, 411, 443, 476, 490, 573, 657, 790, 953, 1115. These are epexegetical;
203, where a genitive absolute is connected to the following line by an adverb, is not.
72

in 369, 714, 808, 863; a common noun and a proper noun are in apposition in 462, 571, 880,
and 1022, as also in 593 in combination with a dependent genitive. Closest to the old
Homeric pattern describing a relationship is 1022 Ai0h/tao qugatro/j, a0mu/monoj h9rwi5nhj,
although it does not actually name Medea; 462 Ai0o/lou 9Ippota/dao, filocei/nou basilh=oj,
with patronymic and decription of status, also presents a Homeric pattern (Il. 4.87, 11.372, cf.
Od. 12.267, 15.52). 289, unusually, is a prepositional phrase.
Tetracola are demonstrably used for special effect, for example, for virtuoso
geographical description (200, 201, 203, 404, 590, 665),93 ornamental ethnography (286, 293,
571, 573, 689, 755, 853, 1010, 1040, 1042, 1115, 1117, 1127), paradoxography (411, 593,
1150), mythography (206, 291, 462, 476, 490, 655, 657, 790, 808, 873, 1006, 1022), in
recherch periphrases (113, 259), in virtuoso tableaux (443, 576, 714, 842, 953), and in other
purple passages (e.g. 132, the Sporades at the end of the first acrostich; 209, the Nasamones
and their spectacular punishment; 456, metonomasia of Gadeira). In half a dozen cases a
four-word hexameter gives a sense of dignity and surcease (40, 68, 397, 880, 1052, 1079),
heightening into a closural device the tendency, from Homer onwards, for tetracola to be
bounded, especially at the end, by sense pauses.

(ii) Verse patterns

It comes as no surprise that the Periegesis contains a number of formal verse-patterns; if we
look further afield than the Golden Line and its variants, which in my view is restrictive, it
becomes apparent that Dionysius is using, or very closely approximating to, many schemes
for the distribution of two nouns with their epithets across a single verse. True Golden Lines
(ab x AB) appear in 246, 383, and 963, while 27, 107, 221, 424, 536, 849, 1094, and 1184
present all but the first element. The variant ab x BA occurs in 1067, with a near-miss (again
with all but the first element) in 12.94 Another formal pattern, aA x bB, is found in 285, 1171,
as well as 380 (with the slight complication of anaphora, so that a is strictly enjambed from
the line before); close approximations occur in 268, 488, 662, and 809 (lacking a); its
matching partner, aA x Bb, does not occur, but 41 lacks only a. Aa x Bb occurs (if x can be a
noun) at 911, cf. 631 (lacking B). If we look further afield, many verses arrange two nouns
and their epithets around another element which is not in central position (x aABb: 669; a x
bAB: 371; aAb x B: 264; abB x A: 49, 420; aAB x b: 373; AabB x: 352; aAbB x: 131, 626;
AaBb x: 432), or lack any element x (AaBb: 318, 912; AabB: 13, 458, 462, 521, 537, 819,
880, 1002, cf. 458; AaBab: 353; aAbB: 56, 66, 169, 297, 369, 714, 780, 808, 901, 1121, cf.
494, 816; ABab: 407; AbBa: 503, 585; abBA: 1060; AcBc: 1100; aBaC: 194). For tricola in
the Periegesis, see Lightfoot 2008, 29 n. 49. A noun and its epithet frequently book-end the
line, not because the epithet has any special emphasis, but with the artistic effect of selfcontainment as an end in itself. This pattern is not marked in Hellenistic poetry per se, though
favoured by Euphorion and to some extent by Nicander, but becomes more fashionable in
93

Perhaps also to add impressiveness to descriptions of the sea (59, 475) or a land surrounded
by the sea (99), a moutainous landscape (245), the rising sun (1110).
94

A more distant variant is Ab x aB, from which a is the only element missing in 354, 824.
73

imperial poetry, as well as in Latin from Catullus onwards.95 In Dionysius it is found in 49,
11213, 142, 150, 584 (recalling Arat. 43), 692, 845, 955, 1060, 1067, 1113, 1117, and in
other cases where another epithet intervenes, in asyndeton (54, 144, 326, 476, 755, 791,
1040, 1063) or with connectives (986, 1105).96 Almost always the adjective precedes, except
in 755, 1040, and where the descriptive element is a participle, in 104, 206, 585, 667, 868,
and 503, where the noun is anaphoric.97 Another arrangement is for one element (usually the
adjective) to stand at the main caesura, the other (usually the noun) at verse-end.98 I count
100 such lines (= 8.45% of the poem) in the Periegesis,99 more than double the frequency in
Apollonius, comparable to Callimachus fourth Hymn (8.05%), but significantly fewer than
in Euphorion (12.5%), let alone the neoterics (1820%). Mostly the epithet precedes.100 The
result may rhyme, and does so 40% of the time;101 more resonance is achieved by the double
rhymes in 29, 587, 590, 624, 938, 1023, 1078, 1163 (-oio); 200, 1032, 1072, 1115 (h|si); 40,
637, 665, 888, 1150 (-oisi). Dionysius would seem to be fonder of the effect than
Callimachus, only two of whose sixteen internal rhymes in the hexameter Hymns involve two
syllables (Magnelli 2002, 88 n. 121).

95

Wifstrand, 1339; Magnelli 2002, 889; for Dionysius, cf. Whitby, 105 and n. 65.

96

A strong disjunction in 21; in 921 the intervening epithets are predicative.

97

Wifstrand notes that the commonest shapes for adjectives in this position are qqq and
qkkq, and for nouns at line-end kqq. He is writing of Apollonius, but the patterns seems to
hold good for other authors, including Dionysius (qqq: 21, 49, 326, 692, 845, 955, 986,
1105; qkkq: 113, 142, 144, 476, 584, 1067, 1113, 1117; kqq: 21, 49, 112, 150, 326, 476,
845, 986, 1060, 1113, 1117). Colour-terms in 144, 1060, 1105, 1117.
98

Magnelli 2002, 88.

99

Related, but not included, are 132, 462, 536, 852, 880, 1000, 1022, 1137. Vv. 718, 862 are
excluded because of the intervening epithet: there is no hyperbaton.
100

The noun first only in 135, 170, 323, 329, 407, 953, 1039, 1122.

101

Plus -h|si and -aij (v.l. -h|si) at 99, -h|si and -aij (v.l. -h|j) at 824; -h and -me/nh, -oj and
-menoj, at 146, 201, 775, -enta and -a in 806?
74

SUMMARY

Dionysius produces a refined effect. He shares trends (restrictions on elision; overall drift to
greater dactylicity;102 increased use of feminine103 and bucolic caesurae) and certain
mannerisms (the spondeiazon; the tetracolon, especially in its narrative form) with
Hellenistic poetry, but eschewing specifically Callimachean mannerisms (Naekes Law;
spondaic third foot combined with bucolic diaeresis; Bullochs law), and in some respects is
poised closer to Homer than some of his Hellenistic models (the number of dactyls and
spondees per line closer to Homer than the most dactyl-prone Alexandrians; similarly for
overall numbers of spondees in first, second, and to some extent third feet). Self-created
violations of Meyers First Law and Gisekes Law are interesting. Where Dionysius invests
his art is less in metrical refinementthough he is of course a highly competent versifier
and more in formal verbal arrangements and patterns within the line. This is clearly related to
his use of the catalogue form, which naturally invites pleasing arrangements of two, three,
and even four elements across a single verse. Perhaps more self-consciously than any of his
Hellenistic models, he displays several hexameter schemes, approximates to more, and uses
nounepithet combinations, not only to bisect lines at caesura and line-end, but also to frame
them, drawing attention to each verse as a unit of virtuoso artistry.

5. A LANGUAGE FOR GEOGRAPHY?

In principle it must be important to ask whether Dionysius uses or creates a technical or
pseudo-technical vocabulary. This entails, but is not limited to, the question of Dionysius

102

A trend which accelerates in later imperial poets, which Ludwichs figures permit us to
study in detail (and in brief, in M. L. West 1982, 178). Dionysius 25% of spondees per line
is still comparable with Oppians and ps.-Oppians 24%, but in Quintus the figure falls to 14
18%, and in Nonnus to 1516%. The numbers of spondees per line are not dramatically
different from those of either Oppian or ps.-Oppian (Dionysius has marginally fewer lines
with four dactyls than either poet), and in fact rise in ps.-Manetho (the range for holodactylic
lines is only 919%, while the range for lines with three spondees rises to 814%); but in
Quintus, and of course Nonnus and his school, the number of holodactylic lines rises, to 36%
in Nonnus Paraphrasis, and to as much as 50% in Musaeus (who has fewer than half as
many lines with three dactyls as Dionysius, or 14%). Further comparative figures for lines
with three and four spondees in imperial poets (Quintus, Coluthus, Triphiodorus, Oppian, ps.Manetho, as well as Nicander) in J. la Roche, Zur Prosodie und Metrik der spteren Epiker,
WS 22 (1900), 3555, at 3943: Dionysius 7% is well above all of them except ps.-Manetho,
for whom la Roche gives an overall figure of 9%.
103

Other imperial poets in M. L. West 1982, 177: the proportion reaches 81% in Quintus,
82% in Nonnus, 99% in Agathias.
75

use of the language of prose.104 If the poem offers soft didaxis, how far does it at least try to
conjure the impression of a technical style? To what extent is the poet trying to avoid
obfuscation? Does he show any sign of wishing to avoid circumlocution and approximation?
Does poetic vocabulary serve his purposes, or does he have recourse to the language of prose,
either in the interests of clarity or to give the impression of a technical manual? And what
precedents does he follow?
Dionysius prefers a poetic register for his geographical terms. For example, whereas
prose uses qa/lassa or pe/lagoj, Dionysius (who uses the latter only in 59, and not to name
a specific sea) also has a3lmh, a9lo/j (etc.), and po/ntoj.105 Forms which are prosaic, or
neutral, are indeed used, but often there is an attempt to naturalise them by poeticisation, or
through the substitution of poetic synonyms. For example, muxo/j is neutral in register, and
very common, but Dionysius adds a little spice with the heteroclite plural muxa/, and with the
irregular superlative mu/xatoj, both with a pedigree in Hellenistic poetry (above, p. 52).
Again, besides the standard porqmo/j (142) Dionysius uses porqmi/j (80, 344), slightly
defamiliarised with a new suffix. As for substitution, the denizens of Arabia Felix, normally
eu0dai/monej, are o1lbistoi (927), with an irregular superlative first found in Callimachus.
The lesser of the two Syrtes (normally just mikra/) and Little Phrygia (normally mikra/ or
minor) are both likewise rendered with poetic comparatives, baiote/rh (199, 810). A happy
choice of inflectional form can bring poetic and prosaic, or neutral, forms into harmony. One
of Dionysius favourite verbs of extent (of which more later) is the perfect of tei/nein (18
u9perte/tatai; 20 te/tatai; 40, 308, 332, 468, 759, 1037 e0kte/tatai). Herodotus uses it in
geographical contexts; so too Aristophanes, of Euboea stretched out on a map.106 At the same
time, te/tatai is already Homeric and Hesiodicusually in contexts suggesting tension,
though occasionally used of spreading or extent.107
Despite the default poetic registerwhich also permits a good deal of neutral
words, such as a0gkw/n, au0lw/n, i0sqmo/j, loco/j, muxo/jsome words seem to have a prosaic
character, especially in cases of overlap with Strabo.108 The case of katagra/yaimi in 707 is
104

Not widely discussed apropos of other didactic poets: cf. Jacques, ii, p. xcviii and n. 205:
Je laisse ici de ct ses emprunts la prose mdicale, notamment Hippocrate . . . pour ne
moccuper que du langage potique; Crugnola, 13644.
105

In Homer, there was a tendency for a3la and a9lo/j to be used of offshore waters, or the
sea seen outwards from the land, and especially with prepositions; and for po/ntoj to be used
of the high seas (D. Gray, Homeric Epithets for Things, CQ 41 (1947), 10921, at 10913).
Something of this (loose) distinction remains in the Periegesis, with a3la (12 out of 16
occurrences) and a9lo/j (6 out of 13 occurrences) used especially with prepositions (a1gxi,
e0ggu/j, e0ggu/qi, u9pei/r, a0pai/) which place it in relation to the land.
106

parate/tatai: Hdt. 2.8.1, 4.38.2, 4.39.1; Ar. Nub. 212.

107

Od. 11.19, Hes. Op. 549. It is used of a spatial extent (though on a much smaller scale) in
Posidipp. 8.4 A.B. e0kte/tatai; land stretches out with this verb in ps.-Opp. Cyn. 4.337.
108

pp. 30-1; e.g. 89 parauga/zousa; (perhaps) 214 proneneuko/tej; 404 muouri/zonti.

76

particularly interesting because the narrator seems to reflect on his work as if it were a
technical work (perhaps a map drawn up in a scientific spirit). We must distinguish between
different kinds of prose form (e.g. Herodotean epic-Ionic? koinh/?) and reasons for their
presence in Dionysius. Slips, or inadvertent reflections of the contemporary language, are few
and far between; Mommsen made much ado about the prose use of e3wj with genitive
(890 n.), but by Dionysius standards this is unusual. There is a smattering of geographical
terminology with parallels in Herodotus, Strabo, and other writers: 230, 354, 661, 1094
a0pote/mnetai (cf. 1133 a0potmh/gei), of rivers;109 747e0kde/xetai; 14, 636 o9ri/zei, 920 (dia\)
o9ri/zwn; 253, 729 parrali/hn (with epic spelling).110 The threefold use of a0gke/xutai of
inland waterways (70, 86, 164) cleverly tricks out the common enough prosaic a0naxei=sqai
with an Apollonian verb form. But the nounepithet combination sialw&dea xulo&n in 791 is
medical language, used very precisely. The phrase could reproduce words from lost scientific
didatic poetry, and/or could be an attempt to sound like Nicander (for stylistic pastiche, see p.
99).
The examples in the previous paragraph are reasonably clear. But it is difficult to stay
content with simple labels for very long, for a words register often changes over time, or it
may have already crossed over between prose and poetry before it reaches a given author.
Nicander drew on the Hippocratic writers, who themselves had drawn on Homer, and the
Hellenistic poets are omnivorous in their lexical sources. A couple of simple examples: the
pro/xusij of the Assyrian land (772) comes straight from Apollonius (2.964), but Apollonius
himself has this sense of pro/xusij from Herodotus, who uses it of the alluvial soil of the
Nile Delta (2.5.2, 2.12.2). The influence of Callimachus is to be suspected on Dionysius use
of the verb kate/rxesqai of the Nile, but Callimachus himself looks to have been influenced
by Herodotus, and in general the verb is equally at home in prose and poetry (221 n.).
grammh/ is basically a technical term with various applications, astronomical and
geographical. Dionysius uses it for both a line of latitude (11) and a meridian (313), both of
which can be paralleled from Strabos excerpts from Eratosthenes. Elsewhere, however, he
conjures its astronomical sense (236) where, in connection with Egyptian astronomy, it can
hardly be independent of the opening lines of Callimachus Coma Berenices. A final example
is pleura//pleuro/n. Dionysius uses this frequently as the mathematical term for the sides of
a geometrical figure, whether an exact or an approximate one, of the sides of a country, and
even of a coastline (where the sea seems to be regarded as a shaped entity in its own right, as
opposed to something which merely throws the land into relief).111 It is basically a prose use.
109

e.g. Hdt. 1.72.3 (active); Polyb. 2.16.7, Arr. An. 5.6.3, Dio 39.49.2 (middle).

110

Adjectival para/lioj (with epic spelling in 380, 799, 827), however, is also in the
tragedians (LSJ I, adding Soph. fr. 502.3 Radt).
111

Geometrical figure: 277, 1130; approximate figure: 242, 468, 887; sides of a country: 346,
727, 8912; coastline: 72, 324, 958 (compare Strab. 2.5.19 o9ri/zetai (sc. the Mediterranean)
d e0k me\n tou= deciou= pleurou=, ibid. to\ d e9w=|on tou= pela/gouj pleuro/n, 2.5.20 tou/tou
(sc. the Adriatic) de\ th\n me\n e0n decia=| pleura\n h9 0Illuri\j poiei=). Also for the sides of a
mountain in 815 (cf. Strab. 2.1.14 th=| borei/w| pleura=| tou= Tau/rou), accepting M. L. Wests
77

The LSJ entry is poor, but the word is used copiously by Strabo, both on his own account,
and in his discussions of Eratosthenes and of Hipparchus critiques of Eratosthenes.112 It
passes from prose geography into ps.-Scymn. 267 (of the triangular shape of Sicily). But is
also used by Aratus, once, in a geometrical sense (235, of the constellation Deltoton in the
form of an isosceles triangle). Aratus form is pleurh=|si(n), and so are ten out of sixteen of
Dionysius uses of the word (a further two each of pleuroi=si, pleuro/n, pleurh=j). Should
we therefore say that Dionysius has the word directly from geographical writing? Or that
Aratus is the bottleneck through which it has reached him? Likelier is that he has deliberately
chosen a word which is polytonalhere and elsewhere.
To turn to questions of clarity and precision, let us next consider the adequacy and
adaptability of the poetic lexicon as a medium for scientific didaxis.
A strength of traditional poetic language is that it is good at certain types of
specificity. Already in Homer and Hesiod, landscape features are readily identified by the use
of toponyms and ethnic epithets, and Hellenistic poets go further, turning many nouns which
in early Greek hexameter poetry had usually referred to typical landscape features from
generic into specific items by combining them with proper nouns and epithets. This
heightened specificity vis--vis Homer and Hesiod can be seen with a1krh, a3la and a9lo/j,
pe/don, prh/wn, and proxoh/, for all of which Dionysius had precedent in earlier poetry, as
well as with a3lmh and ou]daj, where the development seems to be his own. In both cases,
what was a common noun in earlier authors is now given precision by the addition of an
ethnic adjective or genitive plural proper noun.113
Nor is traditional poetic language necessarily taxed by more technical matters. The
cardinal points are of great importance to Dionysius: he often reviews seas or lands
surrounding a given landscape feature to the north, south, east, and west, and in the case of
Sicily prefers to orient the three corners of the triangle by compass point instead of the land
opposite them, as other sources do (4702 n.).114 Such four-square orientations of landscape
features exactly match the practice of prose geographers such as Polybius, Strabo, Mela, and
Ptolemy,115 but traditional poetic hexameter language gave Dionysius all he needed. It was at
e0xou/shj (1992, 569); if not, another example of a geographical area. It remains only to
account for its use of the banks of a river: 833, 1075.
112

Eratosthenes (via Strab. 2.1.229, 31, 35), Hipparchus (via Strab. 2.1.27, 2.1.29, 2.1.34)
and Polybius (via Strab. 2.4.2) all apply the word to the sides of a geometrical figure.
113

a3lmh with geographical epithet in 76, 92, 380, 608, 729. In general, Dionysius words for
sea are far oftener qualified with geographical or otherwise identifying epithets than with
ornamental ones. a3lmh has an ornamental epithet only in 122 ~ 384; a3la/a9lo/j has
identifying epithets thirteen times, ornamental only in 716, 719 (along with an identifying
one), and 879 (Homeric). ou]daj in 180 = 963, 423, 804.
114

Cf. the fourfold partitions of the ocean (2940); the situs of Italy (99102), Greece (400
3), and Arabia (92830).
115

Examples are legion, e.g. Polyb. 2.14.46; Roman examples in Thomas 1982a, 3.
78

least arguable that Homer already referred to the four cardinal points,116 and he and his
Hellenistic imitators underlie several of Dionysius expressions for compass directions.117
Naturally he very often needs to say to the north, to the south, and while some of these
simple expressions are taken from earlier poetry,118 others are created and recycled using the
techniques of formula-creation discussed above.119 When he needs to, he can inflect due
north (etc.) by composite expressions (north and west) (437, 684, 695; cf. 924 n.). There
may be local difficulties about what Dionysius (or any other author) means, and there are
certainly problems with schematism,120 but the expressions for compass points themselves
are clear enough. On a couple of occasions he uses e0p or pro\j h0w= to mean, not to the
east, but to the south (243, 332). In this case, he is apparently following the interpretation
of the Homeric formula pro\j h0w= t h0e/lio/n te by Crates of Mallos, who used it in support
of his view that Homer had known the four cardinal points, and therefore that h0w= was not
simply a synonym of h0e/lion.121 So once again it is not simply a matter of borrowing or
116

Od. 5.2956 (see S E 295), 9.256, 10.1902, Il. 12.23940; Strab. 1.2.20, 28, 10.2.12; n.
121 below (Crates).
117

84, 487, 970 pro\j au0ga\j h0eli/oio ~ Od. 2.181, al.; 113 ~ ps.-Theocr. Id. 25.901; 129
sh=ma d e1xei zefu/rou ~ Arat. 247; 429 poti\ r9iph\n zefu/roio, 470 e0pi\ r9. z., 962 u9pai\ r9. z.,
6456 r9iph\n | eu1rou kai\ zefu/roio, 674 u9po\ r9iph=|si ~ Ap. Rhod. 2.1229 u9pai\ (3.970 v.l.
u9po\) r9iph=j a0ne/moio, cf. Il. 15.171 = Il. 19.358 u9po\ r9iph=j ai0qrhgene/oj bore/ao, Call.
Hymn 4.25 u9po\ (codd. u9pai\) r9iph=j . . . Strumoni/ou bore/ao; 532 kraipnoi=o . . . bore/ao ~
Od. 5.385; 1014 e0pi\ pnoih\n bore/ao ~ Il. 5.697, Ap. Rhod. 1.652, al.
118

48, 346, 666, 727 e0k bore/ao = Arat. 25, cf. 887. 421, 500 poti\ zo/fon = Il. 12.240, Od.
13.241, ps.-Theocr. Id. 25.85. 332, 421 pro\j h0w=, 243 e0p h0w= ~ Il. 12.239, Od. 9.26, 13.240,
HHom. Ap. 436 pro\j h0w= t h0e/lio/n te. 299, 926, 1034 e0j/e0p a0ntoli/hn tetramme/noj (-oi)
a1xri(j) < Arat. 632 (implicitly west).
119

North: 471, 721 e0p a1rktouj, 271 met a1., 1066 u9p a1., 130 e0p a1rktoij. 137
suro/menoj bore/hnde, 438 e9lkome/nh b., 609 o9rmhqei\j b., 785 e9lko/menai b. Unica: 519 e0p
a0rktw/|oio . . . bore/ao; 582, 1134 e0j po/lon (1134 v.l. du/sin) a1rktwn. South: 321, al. pro\j
de\ no/ton; 243, 332 e0p/pro\j h0w= (see below). West: 254, 409 th=j pro\j me\n zefu/roio; 662,
762, 879 e0j du/sin; 231, 634 e0j li/ba. Unica: 29 par e0sxatih\n zefu/roio, 122 e0pi\
ze/furon. East: 299, 419 e0j a0ntoli/hn, 698, 888 e0p a0ntoli/hn; 222 e0p a0. polu\j e3rpwn,
272 e0p a0. pa/lin e3rpei; 812, 830 e0p a0. teta/nustai; 147 e0p a0ntoli/hj muxo/n, 622 e0p a0.
muxa/; 110 makro\n e0p a0ntoli/hn, 865 makro\j e0p a0., 926 tutqo\n e0p a0., 1034 to/sson e0p
a0.; 260, 506, 739 met a0ntoli/hnde; 295, 919, 976 th=j de\ pro\j a0ntoli/hn, 695 tou= de\ p. a0.
bore/hn t, 856, 1086 tw=n de\ p. a0. Unica: 278 a0ntoli/hn e1pi me/sshn; 931 tetramme/nh
a0ntoli/hnde.
120

Jacob 1981, 401.

121

Crates fr. 21 Mette = 52 Broggiato; Mette, 210. Dionysius does not, however, seem to
use the correlate of this interpretation, that zo/foj meant north: for the difficulties
surrounding poti\ zo/fon in 500, see ad loc.
79

adapting words and phrases from earlier hexameter poetry, but also of awareness of the
interpretative tradition which intervenesand for the reader it is essential to appreciate this
because the learned reading entirely cuts across the nave or face-value one.
Places are connected paratactically. The poem is full of adverbs of place, prepositions,
and other phrases that mean near, in front of, opposite, and so on. They lead us to
consider not only the sources of Dionysius vocabulary, but also how far he was aiming to
convey accurate or precise meaning, and whether the languages of prose or poetry in this
respect are a help or a hindrance.122
In practice, the great majority come from Homer and Hellenistic poetry, 123 and
several seem to have been influenced specifically by Apollonius (571 a0ntipe/rhqen; e9cei/hj, a
poetic equivalent for e9ch=j, common in prose itineraries;124 114, 313, 957, 1089
katenanti/a/-on). A couple also show the influence of Aratus (176, 806, 917 h[xi/ per; 493
peraio/qen); his celestial geography is no less important than Apollonius terrestrial poem as
a model for spatial description. Several are strongly associated with hexameter poetry, but
occur in prose as well (e1ndoqen, e1nerqe(n), pro/sqe(n), u3perqen); 421 a0ntikru/ seems to
transfer a basically prose usage into something compatible with the epic register.
Although a sense of place is essential to almost all these words, their specifically
geographical application does not always go back to Homer. Sometimes it does,125 but in
many cases it seems to have been Apollonius itineraries which apply Homeric adverbs and
prepositions of place to geographical proper names. Dionysius, going one stage further still,
turns many of them into formulae, or semi-formulae, by using repeatedly something
Apollonius himself had used only once, or very sparingly: the prime example is e0pi/ (both in
anastrophic combinations, such as tw=| d e0pi/, th=| d e0pi/, toi=j/toi=si d e0pi/, and in nonanastrophic combinations, such as e0pi\ toi=si, e0pi\ th=|si).126 meta/ is an interesting case.
122

Herodotus own use of spatial prepositions is ultimately hard to follow: Purves, 129.

123

With a Homeric background: a1gxi, a0gxou=, a0gxo/qi; a1nta; a0ntipe/raian (962 n.);
e0ggu/qi; e1ktoqen; e1ndoqi; e9cei/hj; e0fu/perqe; h[xi; katenanti/a/-on (114 n.); pa/roj in a
spatial sense (220 n.); peraio/qen; propa/roiqe; prote/rw and prote/rwse; u9pe/nerqe (as
preposition). From Hellenistic poetry: 804 (e0j) a0ntipe/rhn; 258 h[xi/ te; 580 prote/rwse.
124

e9cei/hj of place in Od. 5.70 and Hes. Th. 738; with a geographical setting in Ap. Rhod.
2.380, 395, 4.564, 1231, but in many other passages involving juxtapositions, visual order
(Clare, 2812; Klooster, 63).
125

e.g. Il. 2.626 1Hlidoj a1nta, Il. 24.5445 Le/sboj a1nw, Frugi/h kaqu/perqe, Od. 3.170,
172 kaqu/perqe Xi/oio, u9pe/nerqe Xi/oio, Od. 4.355 Ai0gu/ptou pro/paroiqe.
126

Homer has tw=| d e0pi/ (426, 437, 784) , th=| d e0pi/ (82, 140, 357, 495, 822), toi=si d e0pi/,
oi[j e1pi (746, 956), and (d) e0pi\ toi=s(i) (76, 211, 216, 375, 37 8, 787, 805; t 427, 731), e0pi\
th=|si (467, 491, 830), e0pi\ de/ sfisi (347, 733), e0pi\ d au0tw=| (730 e0pi\ d au0toi=j). In Homer,
these phrases usually mean upon this (these) or in addition to this (these). In Apollonius,
they are applied to geographical itineraries (4.572 th=| d e0pi/; 2.396 d e0pi\ toi=sin); extending
the Homeric patterns, he also has 2.379 toi=j d e0pi/ (195, 288, 686, 746, 768, 858, 1140);
80

Although it is a standard connective in itineraries, the majority of its appearances in

Dionysius are in the anastrophic formula to\n de\ met (74, 83, 294, 983, cf. 749 to\n met),
th\n de\ met (260, 461, 506, 820), tou\j de\ met (368, 739, 772) whose background is in
hexameter catalogues and lists which are not in fact geographical: it is Apollonius, once
again, who applies it to geographical subject-matter, and Dionysius who massively expands
it.127 Finally, a few of the words in question imply something more than just placing one
thing with respect to another: they imply participation by a traveller. prote/rw (Homeric)
and prote/rwse imply forward motion along a trajectory, and on three or four out of five
occasions there is either a second-person verb or mention of a ship.128
Poetical prepositions and adverbs of location need not be vague. On the contrary,
some are notably precise, and Dionysius exploits that precision: 804 (e0j) a0ntipe/rhn, of the
opposite side of a strait of water, and 571 a0ntipe/rhqen, from the mainland (opposite an
island); 606 e1ktoqen, of something without, and 507 e1ndoqen, of something lying within, a
headland or a promontory.
But there are also problems. Some words are not very precise, or are multiinterpretable. u9pe/r and its compounds u3perqe and e0fu/perqe basically mean beyond, which
in Dionysius in practice very often means looking south.129 But u9pe/r can also refer to other
directions; u3perqen can mean north (30), while on occasion u9pe/r seems to resist the meaning
beyond altogether.130 Words meaning opposite (114 n., 1089) and in front of also have
some potential for vagueness. An island may lie in front of a point on the coastline (with the

1.932, 2.357 d e0pi\ th=| (cf. 467, 491, 830 d e0pi\ th=|si). Dionysius extends the patterns further
(186, 350, 706 toi=j e1pi; 533 tai=j d e0pi/; 428, 877 th=|j d e0pi/), 81, 198, 216, 378, 491
e9cei/hj d e0pi/), and uses them a great deal more often.
127

Il. 8.261, 17.258, 23.377; Od. 11.260, 266, 305, 572, 601; Hes. Th. 137, 381, fr. 26.31,
35.13 M.W. In enumerations in Hellenistic poetry: Nic. Ther. 372, 588; Arat. 549; Ap.
Rhod. 2.896, 1009 (an itinerary).
128

With 2nd persons: 580, 588 (plus ship), 923, cf. 606; without: 112 (also Ap. Rhod. 1.391,
592, 964, al.; ps.-Theocr. Id. 25.90; Nicaenetus fr. 1.1P).
129

Eustathius notes this, on 103, 138, 467 (sunh/qwj au0tw=|), 506, 507; cf. Jacob 1981, 41. It
is true that u9pe/r is often used in the course of the itinerary, and that since Dionysius likes
beginning itineraries in the north-west in practice he is very often moving southbut it is by
no means always so (103, 152, 467, 821). Of the use of u9pe/r for south, Strenburg, 26,
remarks that Immerhin ist sie gegenber der fr den Norden so vereinzelt, da sie die
Gedankenverbindung von nordlich und oben nicht erheblich stren konnte; but in
principle, when u9pe/r (and compounds) signify beyond, on the far side of (Radt on Strab.
II p. 129,20f.; Bolton, 11617), this may, in practice, mean south (Hdt. 4.174 tou/twn de\
katu/perqe pro\j no/ton a1nemon).
130

North: 30 (u3perqen: see above), 308, (?)731, 1014; east: 970. Other meanings: 325
(along?).
81

implication that that is where one sets out for it),131 but 423 and 220 put some strain on the
notion of behind and before.132 Of course, misconceptions and errors by Dionysius
himself may be to blame, but that is a matter of human error rather than of the fallibility of
the language he is using; a third source of difficulty is when lines or metrical shapes are
copied which fit their new context less well or less clearly than the old one (98791 n., cf.
5067, 6067 nn.).133
I turn, finally, to some characteristics of poetic language and its possible effects in a
didactic or technical poem.
One of the ways in which Hellenistic poets fascination with the meanings of words
expresses itself is in their exploration of the possible range of a words meanings. We find
this with a few of Dionysius geographical terms. h1peiroj means basically land, as opposed
to sea, but Dionysius uses it across the range of meanings: continent (8, 59, 211, 218, 280,
621, 629, 1081), specific land or country (77, 95, 287, 407), land in contrast to water (land as
opposed to sea: 170, 1174, 1185; inland, as opposed to on the coast: 266, 736, 876, 904, 973,
1068, 1085; cf. 19, continental division by isthmus as opposed to water), and plain as
opposed to mountain (430, 717(?), 736), this latter recalling the similar use by Ap. Rhod.
2.734, 976.134 The uses of proxoh/ also show the Hellenistic characteristic of pushing a
words etymology to extend its senses. In Homer on at least a couple of occasions this word
certainly means the outflow or mouth of a river, but basically means simply flowing
forward, and so may also refer to the outpourings from its source, and hence flow or
current more generally.135 Dionysius not only exploits the meanings he found in his sources,
but also enriches them as far as etymology will allow: seas now have their own proxoai/ in
the form of tides and indentations in the coastline, and the ocean has proxoai/ in the form of
inlets and gulfs.136 This lexically exploratory approach is that of a Hellenistic poet, not a

131

591 propa/roiqe, 479 and 511 pro/sqe; for this usage see Janni 1984, 10820.

132

As Counillon 1983, 189, notes, in 312 and 1016 (and according to him also 591)
propa/roiqe means beyond.
133

Perhaps 85 au0ta\r e1nerqen (below) also belongs here, if it is regarded as an unhappy

variation of 30 au0ta\r u3perqen, in the same sedes, and contextually clear.
134

Greaves, 134; Ilyushechkina 2010, 169.

135

Bhler on Mosch. Eur. 31, pp. 7981; Livrea on Ap. Rhod. 4.132 (who registers all
occurrences in Dionysius in the sense flowing waters); Livrea on Colluthus 104; Braswell
on Pind. P. 20 (d); West on Hes. Op. 757.
136

Inpourings of the sea: 1278 (curvature of coastline), 200 (tides), 614 (Libyan sea: vague).
Inpourings of ocean: 722 (in Od. 20.65 e0n proxoh=|j . . . a0yorro/ou 0Wkeanoi=o, the sense is
strange, cf. Rutherford ad loc.; Dionysius means the inlet of the northern ocean into the land).
Note Ap. Rhod. 4.599, where even a lake or swamp has proxoai/. The applications to rivers
are more conventional. Outlet of river: 301 (cf. Ap. Rhod. 4.312, also of Danube Delta),
316(?), 367, 370, 807 (cf. Ap. Rhod. 1.1178, also of Kios); flow, current of a river: 290, 749
82

writer of a scientific treatise. It does not, however, obfuscate: each meaning is contextually
entirely appropriate, provided we remember the etymology.
Metaphor is another aspect of poetic language on which clarity might run aground if
the metaphor is unfamiliar enough to cause puzzlement. Some are already familiar (763
xei=loj, 1036 klhi=dej) or at any rate cause no problems (184 glwxi=ni); others, less familiar,
seem to have caused ancient readers more difficulty (332 krhpi=da). Dionysius uses a group
of foot metaphors: pou/j, pe/za, sfu/ron, i1xnoj. Of these, pou/j for the foot of a mountain
(168, 338, 814, cf. 1039) appears to be the oldest (Il. 2.824 and 20.59), and, while still
apparently perceived as metaphorical in Greek (unlike English),137 it poses no problems of
comprehension.138 pe/za can be used in the same way (61, 535, 1162), and there was an
ancient belief that this word was a dialectal form of pou/j;139 but the application to mountains
could also be an aspect of its widespread meaning fringe, border, edge.140 i1xnoj is
applied to mountains (641), but also to the side of a country conceived of a shape with a
bottom edge, or ba/sij, as Eustathius glosses it (on 274, 406). This metaphor seems new
though Callimachus applies i1xnoj to the course of a river, in fr. 646 Pf. Most remarkable is
the metaphorical use of sfuro/n (literally ankle), of the direction from which a wind blows
(557). This word had indeed been used metaphorically in earlier poets, and presumably what
underlies Dionysius is, as in the other poets, the basic sense of furthest part, far reaches,
fringes, or edges (see Gow on Theocr. Id. 16.77). Still, when applied to a wind the metaphor
does, as Eustathius says, seem daring and fitting for a poet.
In sum, Dionysius resources for describing the parts of his world are basically
Homeric ones, as refined by the Hellenistic poets. Poetry always handled specificity well, and
can be made to handle it better still. Relational terms, however, are another matter. Although
Apollonius managed to accommodate them to the purposes of a linear voyage, they are more
severely taxedeven considering the precedent of Aratuswhen applied to the surface area
(see Mller ad loc., recognising that the reference is not to the rivers mouth), 848, 1072.
Source of a river: 316(?), 411.
137

e.g. ps.-Plut. De Hom. 2.20 (with Kindstrand ad loc., pp. 1334); b Il. 2.824 b, and
Erbses app. crit. ad loc.; S Genev. Il. 2.824; Dexippus, In Aristot. Cat. Comment. 14, CAG
4.2, p. 12.21 (ed. Busse).
For the use of pro/podej as a metaphor for foothills in Polybius and Strabo, see Dueck
2005, 39. Callimachus uses pou/j of a river (fr. 384.489 Pf.). Other body metaphors applied
to mountains include flanks, shins, and brows (Call. Hec. fr. 169 Brilhssou= lago/nessin,
with Hollis ad loc., noting knhmo/j and o0fru=j). Strabo 5.1.11 uses r9i/za.
138

139

Zenodotus ap. Galen, 19.129 Khn, et al.

140

It is also applied to mountains by App. Lib. 490; Dr L. A. Holford-Strevens compares

Xen. Hell. 4. 6. 8 ta_ kra&speda tw=n o0rw~n. In a further three passages (504, 931, 1081),
pe/za is used of the coastline; cf. Ap. Rhod. 4.1258 and Hermesianax fr. 7.17 P. (3 L.)
(Greaves, 133). For the basic meaning edge (also in 894), see S b Il. 24.272 a.2 pa=n to\
a1kron pe/za kalei=tai.
83

of a huge and complex whole. Demands are placed on the readers intelligence to select and
apply the most appropriate of a words possible meanings. That same intelligence is flattered
when it appreciates the skill with which poetic idiom has been dovetailed with prose to give
at least an impression of technical writingwith none of its longueurs, and all of the pleasure
and prestige of reading the old (and later) hexameter masters.

84

IV. DIONYSIUS AND DIDACTIC POETRY

Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail

Against her beauty? May she mix
With men and prosper! Who shall fix
Her pillars? Let her work prevail.
(Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, cxiv).

T H ER E are two complementary ways of investigating Dionysius relationship to didactic

poetry. The first, which might be called bottom-up, begins with the internal evidence of the
poem. It would presumably register and describe allusions, stylistic devices, and other signals
of genre in the text itself. Dionysius has left very obvious tracks: he identifies his main poetic
models clearly; we are fortunate that they are extant, and can make direct comparisons
between the two. The other, or top-down, method, would consider Dionysius place in the
didactic genre as a whole. It might begin with the imposition of an external taxonomy
(ancient or modern), and then see how the reality corresponded or failed to correspond to the
ideal form. It complements the first approach, but presupposes a framework in which
questions can be asked and comparisons made, and it is no easy task to impose a workable
taxonomy on the mass of material which has survived from antiquity. Any way we choose,
we shall presumably end up with a mishmash,1 but we shall probably get there sooner by
starting from the tangled reality rather than from the abstractions of ancient or modern
classifications. For that very reason, and for the sake of clear orientation, I shall begin with
some top-down considerations.
First, ancient. It took time for theorists in antiquity to reflect on didactic.2 Platos
foundational scheme, with its three poetic modes, ignored it, and on Aristotles view, didactic
poetry simply fell out of the picture because it was non-mimetic. This lack of critical
attention had long ceased to be the case by the time Dionysius was writing, but what is not
clear is whether he, or any other ancient didactic poet for that matter, took any notice of the
theorists.3 What Volk calls the commonsense school saw it is a marginal variety of epic
(what Phlmann called ein Grenzfall des Epos) because it happened to be written in the
same metre. Alternatively, both Platos and Aristotles schemes could be reoriented so as to
1

We all know that genres are always already mixed in practice, but it is often convenient to
use a sort of langue/parole distinction, in which individual texts will be mixed, but standing
behind them will be Platonic forms of unmixed genres that structure the generic play within
the texts (Fowler, 217).
2

Phlmann, 81535; A. Dalzell, The Criticism of Didactic Poetry: Essays on Lucretius,

Virgil, and Ovid (Toronto, 1996), 1921; Volk, 2634.
3

Volk, 334. Separate from this is the question whether didactic poets had their own notion
of a didactic genre, with conventions of its own; see Volk, 35, 607.
85

take account of it. Thus, non-mimetic poetry could be allowed its own, separate category, in
which didactic formed part of a subgroup (so the Tractatus Coislinianus); or (in an inflection
of Platos scheme, new for us with Diomedes in the fifth/sixth century AD, but certainly much
earlier), didactic poetry was one representative of that mode in which the poet himself
speaks without any inset speeches by characters.4 For some theorists, especially Latin, but
also the scholiast on the Works and Days, the subject-matter of didactic poetry was not
intrinsically literary, so that only the use of metre and other embellishments could be held to
raise it into the rank of poetry at all.5
All this is of limited help in the criticism of Dionysius. He can hardly have held with
those, like Lucretius, for whom poetry was a sugar coating, an appetiser for a doctrine the
less palatable without it. We can only assume that, for him, poetry was intrinsic to a project
whose models include the Homeric catalogue, the Argonautica, and Hellenistic didactic. The
theoretical kinship of didactic with epic is conceivably of interest for one whose borrowings
from epic are so diversethe special case of the Homeric catalogue; the geographical epic of
Apollonius; the use of Odyssean geography, the scholarly tradition which had built up around
it, and a mythological subtext concerning the wanderings of epic travellers such as Odysseus
and Jason. All this could be seen, not as the appropriation of foreign material, but as gentle
adoption from something naturally akin. On the other hand, the alignment of didactic poetry
with other types of verse in which the poet speaks in his own person is also a possible, though
by no means necessary, approach to Dionysius fondness for sententiae.6 Diomedes, who lays
out this taxonomy at some length, explains that exegetical poetry includes works of various
speciesdeclarative (angeltice, illustrated by Theognis), historical (e.g. the Hesiodic
Catalogue of Women), as well as didactic (with examples on philosophical, astrological, and
agricultural themes).7 This could be a possible context for the prim little gnomai which are
4

Phlmann, 82532; Tractatus Coislinianus, CGF 503; Diomedes, GL i. 482.1725 Keil, cf.
S Hes. ap. Paris. 2763 and 2833, Probus, comm. in Ecl., praef. 329.1016 Hagen.
5

Phlmann, 8325; S Hes. Op., Prolegomena, A b; see also Eustathius appreciation, quoted
below, p. 100.
6

548, 6045, 9689, 1169 (although the background of the last pair is epic, not gnomic
verse). See J. Keim, Sprichwrter und paroemiographische berlieferung bei Strabo
(Tbingen, 1909); D. Dueck, Birds Milk in Samos: Strabos use of geographical proverbs
and proverbial expressions, SCI 23 (2004), 4156, is specifically on proverbs and tags
containing local lore.
7

Diomedes, GL i. 482.203 Keil . . . exegeticon est vel enarrativum in quo poeta ipse
loquitur sine ullius personae interlocutione, ut se habent tres georgici et prima pars quarti,
item Lucreti carmina et cetera his similia . . . 482.31483.3 Keil exegetici vel enarrativi
species sunt tres, angeltice, historice, didascalice. angeltice est qua sententiae scribuntur, ut
est Theognidos liber, item chriae. historice est qua narrationes et genealogiae conponutur, ut
est Hesiodu gunaikw=n kata/logoj et similia. didascalice est qua conprehenditur
philosophia Empedoclis et Lucreti, item astrologia, ut phaenomena Aratu et Ciceronis, et
georgica Vergili et his similia.
86

one of the many ways in which Dionysius varies his poem. They have no obvious precedent
in the Homeric Catalogue, Apollonius, or Aratus and Co., but they do represent a kindred
form of non-mimetic poetry. But of course, other factors could explain the sententiousness
for example, if Dionysius aimed at those in a general course of humanistic education, or if he
based his poem on a work like Aratus which was concerned to inculcate a correct outlook
on life.
Ancient theory on genre, then, if it helps at all, bears on formal aspects of the poem
and on didactic voice. It might address the receptivity of the Periegesis to epic and gnomic
verse, but has nothing to say about so important an influence as hymn. In contrast, the
modern approach of Bernd Effe, in his book published in 1977, was less formal, but
attempted to hierarchise different aspects of the poem in a way which was also, ultimately,
unsatisfactory, but did allow greater sensitivity to its methods and aims.
Effe discerned three ideal types of didactic poem: the factual (or sachbezogen),
where the poet intends his subject-matter to be genuinely instructive; the formal, where
poetics are more important (the virtuoso conquest of intractable material, or the imitation of a
predecessor); and the transparent, where the subject-matter is a window through which
teaching about something else is discerned. We cannot get by without considering matters of
instruction and poetics, though many reviewers were rightly worried by the claim to be able
to rank one element above another; some were also worried about concentrating on authorial
intention rather than the more readily analysable narrator. Better, then, to scrutinise each text
against these (and other) criteria rather than to assign it to an overall category, or to attempt
to assign precedence and priority to a given element of a poem, which can only be arbitrary
and subjective.8
Effe himself places Dionysius overall in the factual category, though he recognises
that his poem also leans to the formal.9 It seems better to reformulate this, without trying to
assign priority to the one class or the other; the different aspects of the poem need not be
forced into competition with one another, but simply occupy different axes or dimensions.
The factual dimension is easily identified (despite the problems which the conflative and
cavalier approach might, in practice, pose for pedagogy): in this respect the Periegesis invites
comparison, not only with Aratus (since geography and astronomy were closely related), but
with other didactic poems on plausibly pedagogical subjects, such as Terentianus Maurus
three works on grammatical and metrical topics. It is, moreover, both intended to instruct and
meant to be seen as instructive,10 indeed is more emphatic about the teacherpupil
8

Effe 1977; see in particular the criticisms by P. H. Schrijvers, Mnemosyne4, 35 (1982), 400
2.
9

Effe 1977, 18794; 2005, 38; Jacob 1981, 57 (il est indniable que la Prigse appartient
au type le plus pur de la posie didactique).
10

That is, in Malcolm Heaths terms it is both finally and formally didactic (2535).
Although it is hard to reconstruct the Erwartungshorizont of the original Hadrianic
readership, the Byzantines certainly understood the Periegesis as finally didactic, since it was
a popular school text.
87

relationship than Aratus himself, as we shall see. But the poems formal axis can hardly be
ranked behind this in importance; it is occupied with the refurbishment of catalogue poetry,
the conquest of dry and barren mnemonic lists through cultivated poikili/a, and with the
imitation of the Hellenistic poets, all of which are central to the Periegesis aims. As for
Effes third category, that of transparent didactic, this too is represented by the various
asides about gods and by the theological and moral sententiae which inculcate a world-view
(or a series of world-views). In practice it is undesirable, not only to try to impose a hierarchy
of importance on these dimensions, but even to attempt to separate them, since the poems
contents and its literary texture, the message and the medium, are so inextricably woven. Let
us now see what the poem itself can teach us about its genre.

1. OF CATALOGUES AND LISTS

But what doe I their names seeke to reherse,
Which all the world haue with their issue fild?
How can they all in this so narrow verse
Contayned be, and in small compasse hild?
Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene,
Book IV, canto xi, st. 17, ll. 14

In itself, a single-book poem cues us to think of Hesiod, Aratus, and Nicander, which also
happen to be major sources of echoes in the Periegesis. In terms of crude line-count, the 1154
lines of Phaenomena come closest to the 1184 genuine lines of the Periegesis, although
Dionysius has made no attempt to imitate the two-part structure of the Phaenomena (or the
Works and Days, its model), with a shorter section appended to the main one. The
geographical subject-matter obviously makes Dionysius into a terrestrial counterpart of
Aratus, while Nicanders influence has sometimes been downplayed;11 but both figure with
equal prominence in Dionysius didactic lineagefollowing on from Nicander himself, who
seems already to have constructed a special place for Aratus in the Theriaca.12 The single11

Aratus: Effe 1977, 1924; Schindler, 17980; Hunter 2004a, 226; Khan. Nicander: e.g.
Effe 2005, 38 . . . nur da dieser Dichter [sc. Dionysius] . . . nicht an Nikander, sondern
dezidiert an die beiden Gattungsarchegeten Hesiod und Arat anknpft.
12

He places one of his rare extended myths, compounded from elements of Hesiod and
Aratus, straight after the proem of the Theriaca, and concludes it with a brief Aratean
pastiche. On the myth of the scorpion (Ther. 1320), see Jacques, ii. 7980; on the language
of 1920, Hollis (n. 54 below). On Nicanders debts to Aratus in general, see Gow
Scholfield, 7 n. 1; Jacques 1969; Hinds, 139 n. 39; Jacques, ii, pp. cxii f. and n. 240; J. J.
Clauss, Theriaca: Nicanders Poem of the Earth, SIFC 4: 2 (2006), 16082, esp. 1612,
1746; Magnelli 2006b, 1967.
88

book poem steers us away from Empedocles (whose work, however it was divided up, was
several times longer13), and from a trend for multi-book works which begins in the late
Hellenistic period (SH 735, Sostratus Kunhghtika/, in at least two books), and continues
with the multi-book Latin poems, Oppian, and ps.-Oppian. Despite the very different scale of
Empedocles work, and the obviously different character of the philosophical poems by him
and by Parmenides,14 there are nevertheless a handful of apparent echoes in Dionysius.15
Does that suggest that in some sense he allowed them into his didactic pantheon? Or do they
no more indicate generic affiliation than, say, the apparent echoes of Empedocles in
Apollonius?16
One set of clues about the poems affiliations comes from the proem and envoi, which
we might expect to be packed with significant allusions and tone-setting material. This is
indeed the case. Dionysius begins by showcasing his favourite technique of combining
allusions to archaic and Hellenistic authors, and the matted correspondences with Apollonius,
Hesiod, and Homer are balanced by interwoven allusion to Hesiod and Callimachus fourth
Hymn at the end (1181 n.). It must be significant that Dionysius begins with allusions to the
openings of the Theogony and the Argonautica, and ends with a similar double allusion to the
end of both works (11816 n.). Through these references to structurally significant moments
in both poems, he also evokes awareness of their genre: the one, an archaic catalogue poem
which has an important spatial dimension as well as a temporal one, the other an epic which,
like his own work, describes a linear voyage, one which is a good deal concerned with
mythological travellers. Moreover, the allusions to the beginning and end of the Argonautica
summon up the ghost of the genre of hymn through the use of the hymnic markers
a0rxo/menoj and xai/rete ~ i9la=te.17 Although Dionysius proem and envoi are both godless,
with landscape in the place where other didactic poems might feature a deity, 18 the allusions
13

For a review of opinion, see Obbink, 53 n. 7.

14

We have no indications of the length of Parmenides poem, of which some 150 lines
survive. A. H. Coxon, The Fragments of Parmenides (Assen, 1986), 9, suggests that this may
be perhaps less than a quarter of the total.
15

Parmenides: 2 a1krita fu=la; 84, 487, 970 pro_j au)ga_j h)eli/oio (but with a Homeric
background: cf. p. 79 and n. 117). Empedocles: 233 bio/toio . . . keleu/qouj; 290 e0rhmai/hn
a0na\ nu/kta; 1004 eu] dedaw=tej.
16

Boesch, 4; Hunter on Ap. Rhod. 3.135, with references, and 101516.

17

Schindler, 179; below, 13 and 11816 nn.

18

The godless proem seems to be a distinctively Nicandrian choice, although Nicander (like
Oppians Halieutica) also has a named addressee, whereas the Periegesis has not. Serv. on V.
Aen. 1.8 observes the lack of any necessity for a deity to be invoked when it is not a question
of anything ultra humanam possibilitatem. On other didactic proems, see Stenzel passim
(epic and didactic proems with a hymnic character); Koster, 1525; Greaves, 1067; Fakas,
566. Empedocles might offer another example of godlessness: although David Sedley has
argued that On Nature began with a hymn to Aphrodite (The proems of Empedocles and
89

to hymn set up, as it were, a series of harmonics beside, above, and below the main, i.e.
didactic, note of the poem. It is in the proem and envoi that these harmonics are most
pronounced, but they are detectable elsewhere too: certainly for Pythian Apollo (447 n.),
possibly also for Dionysus (949 n.), for the ocean (28 n.), and for the Nile (228 n.).
However, insofar as the Periegesis uses formal markers of genre, these are above all
to catalogue poetry, especially to the Homeric Catalogue of Ships.19 These have already been
examined in a separate article.20 Dionysius uses an array of stylistic devices to indicate his
allegiance to the catalogic manner. He imitates, indeed fetishises, the distinctive type of
anaphora that Homer had used for the handsome Nireus in the Catalogue of Ships, and he
uses other types of repetition which, if they do not call up the Catalogue specifically, are
nevertheless at home there and in contexts which supply information about people and
places. Some are Homeric, but more fixated than in Homer on geographical subject-matter;21
others find their best parallels in Hellenistic and even Latin poetry22from which it is clear
Lucretius, GRBS 30 (1989), 26996), the Katharmoiif indeed this qualified as a didactic
poem, which on Sedleys reconstruction is doubtfulapparently began with an address to the
citizens of Acragas (31 B. 112 D.K.); see Obbink, 58, 60 n. 22.
19

For a bibliography on catalogues in ancient literature, see J. F. Gaertner, The Homeric

Catalogues and their Function in Epic Narrative, Hermes, 129 (2001), 298305, 298 n. 1.
20

Lightfoot 2008; to the stylistic devices mentioned there, add the construction of the
superlative with tw=n a1llwn in 1423, and on structuring principles in Dionysius
catalogues, add Ilyushechkina 2010, 96105, 11718 (interesting remarks on the pyramid
principle), and 13742 on repetitional devices.
21

Dionysius epanalepses (other than those discussed in the next note) are as follows: 1745,
37980, 4612, 60910, 8689. There are three precedents in the Catalogue (2.8378, 849
50, 8701), with a further two examples in the narrators voice elsewhere (Il. 6.3967, 12.95
6, Od. 1.223), but another seven in the voice of a character. Three of Dionysius five
examples involve place-names, one a direction; 4612, a personal name, imitates Ap. Rhod.
4.7645. The proportion in Homer is dissimilar, where, of a total of thirteen, only three (Il.
2.84950, 6.3967, 21.1578) involve geographical names. The Odyssean example, which
was famous, concerns the geographical location of the Ethiopians; the rest concern
individuals, especially their genealogy. A place-name figures in approximations of the form
in Call. Hymn 5.401, Ap. Rhod. 4.3234, 4.5668, 4.175962, but not in 1.878, 1912,
3.8612, 4.2634, 4.7645, 4.8279 (cf. 1.2023).
22

Finalinitial epanalepsis (where the repeated word is carried over from line-end to the
beginning of the next in identical form) has no exact match in Homer, where the repeated
word is either in a different case, scansion, or not in final position (Il. 6.3956 0Heti/wnoj |
0Heti/wn; Il. 21.856 1Altao ge/rontoj | 1Altew; 12.957 1Asioj h3rwj | 1Asioj). So too in
Apollonius (1.878 Eu0ru/tou ui[ej | Eu0ru/tou; 1.1912 Laoko/wn te | Laoko/wn). Exact
matches occur in Theocr. Id. 1.2930 kisso/j, Call. Hymn 4.834 Nu/mfai and 11819
mei=non (see Lapp, 62), and above all in Roman poetry (Wills, 13073, passim). In fact, two
(possibly three) instances in Dionysius are with geographical names (2989, v.l.; 3545; 502
90

(a point to emphasise) that Dionysius is not simply inertly reproducing Homeric patterns, but
bolstering them with later forms and fashions. The poem is not only packed with informative
content, but also with devices that convey information, emphasise it, and present it in a
colourful or even emotive wayand whether they are strictly Homeric or only approximately
so, they are all appropriate to catalogue style as Dionysius (re)conceives it.
Catalogues, and parallel entities more generally, are of course extremely fashionable
in Hellenistic poetry, and retain their influence in the poetry of the early empire; and there is
no limit to the number of ways they can be realised.23 The Hellenistic period, in particular,
saw a series of spin-offs from the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, variously tricked out with
imitations of the Hesiodic formula h2 oi3h, as well as other catalogues of women (or boys, or
poets, or whatever) related to Hesiod, and to each other, in ways now hard to assess.24 As for
the Catalogue of Ships, it is of course imitated, but seems not to have given rise to formal setpieces in the way the Catalogue of Women did.25 Hellenistic poets certainly do pick up on
anaphora and epanalepsis as devices to convey information, especially geographical and
prosopographical, but do not seem to associate them with catalogues (Callimachus does not,
and Apollonius uses them considerably more often outside his own catalogue of heroes than
within it; one wonders how Alexander of Ephesus used the device).26 On the other hand, this
3), but a further four with common nouns (3901, 4423, 6956, 10923); one last example,
with a whole phrase (6334) is also a popular pattern in Roman poetry, but already paralleled
by Il. 20.3712, 22.1278, 23.6412. In Dionysius all examples but one of repeated parts of
speech other than proper nouns belong to this type (the exception is 105961 xru/sea |
xru/sea | xrusw=|, which imitates Call. Hymn 4.2603 xru/sea | xrusw=| | xru/seion | xrusw=|).
23

Hutchinson, 747 (parallel entities comes from him).

24

Possibly Antimachus Lyde and Philitas (putative) Bittis; Nicaenetus Catalogue of

Women (fr. 2 P.); Hermesianaxs Leontion (frr. 18 P., 15 L.); Phanocles 1Erwtej h2 Kaloi/
(frr. 16 P.); Alexander of Aetolias 0Apo/llwn (fr. 3 Magnelli); Sosicrates/Sostratus 0Hoi=oi
(SH 732); A. Cameron, Callimachus and his Critics (Princeton, 1995), 3814; H. Asquith,
From Genealogy to Catalogue: The Hellenistic Adaptation of the Hesiodic Catalogue
Form, in R. L. Hunter (ed.), The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Cambridge, 2005), 26686.
25

On Apollonius imitation of the Catalogue of Ships, see Delage, 3849; Carspecken, 38

58; Vian, i. 410; Hunter 1993, 1267; A. Hurst, Gographes et potes: le cas dApollonios
de Rhodes, in G. Argoud and J.-Y. Guillaumin (eds.), Sciences exactes et sciences
appliques Alexandrie (Sainte-tienne, 1998), 27988, at 282. Most importantly, although
it does not follow Homers itinerary exactly, it does follow an itinerary, unlike Pindars
catalogue in P. 4.1247, 17183, 18991. Homers catalogue already contained a few
references to the heroes ancestry (Il. 2.51215, 65760, 7402), but Apollonius lays more
emphasis on genealogy (546, 1424, 14650, 1801, 203, and especially 1348, where no
fewer than eight generations are reviewed) as well as on other items of characterisation.
26

For Hellenistic poets, see Lapp, 5470, esp. 623 (Callimachus); Wills, 12730; Hunter
2003, 3546 (Apollonius and Callimachus); for Virgil and his Greek predecessors, especially
Theocritus, R. Gimm, De Vergilii stilo bucolico (Leipzig, 1910), 7999. Hunter stresses the
91

very effortthe interest in markers of genre, the sense of precision and formal nicetyaligns
Dionysius with Phanocles, Hermesianax, and the other Hesiodic resurrectionists, rather than
with the different (looser, less formalist) sorts of parallel structure found in Callimachus,
Apollonius, Aratus, or Nicander.
The poem has other debts to catalogue poetry which my 2008 article did not discuss.
One is the four appearances of the Muses. The first three occasions call upon them to direct
the poet in itineraries round the Mediterranean (623), the islands (4478), and Asia (651).
Only the Muses last appearance diverges from the pattern, when their inspiration bears him
up in his account of the Caspian, which he has never visited (71517). They are not drawn
from Hellenistic didactic: altogether absent from Nicander, they appear only once at the end
of Aratus proem (and in SH 83, one of the alternative proems). Rather, they are clear
descendants of Homeric and Hesiodic Muses, and what they dosupply the impulse to linear
order, and inspire the poetis an adapted, heightened form of what they do in early Greek
hexameter poetry. On one account, it is the provision of information in orderly form that is at
the very heart of their role; later on, in Homer, they were adapted to narrative, but catalogue
is where they really belong.27 But whatever Dionysius view of the matter, his Muses are
closest to those at the beginning of the Catalogue of Ships and at transitional moments in
Hesiodic catalogue poetry,28 and although many of the paraphernalia of addresses to the
Muse are absent (p. 107), Dionysius retains what he needs. First, they have a structural role
(p. 107, n. 87); second, they are connected with sequence and order (the first two preceding
large-scale catalogues, the third an entire continent); third, they tell him what he would not
otherwise know. The verb forms e0ne/poite (62) and e1nnepe (447) lightly evoke archaic
conventions of Muse-address.29
Much of the poem consists of lists of names, embellished to a greater or lesser degree.
Lists are the format adopted by a vast amount of ancient geography, from the school
exercises featuring geographical names, through to periploi which list places in itinerary
possibly emotive effect of such repetitions, which in Callimachus (only line-initial anaphora,
not epanalepsis) always and in Apollonius sometimes occur in character-text. Neither do the
repetitions in Theocr. Id. 1.2930, 1.1201, 7.579, 13.434, belong to a catalogue or list.
27

W. W. Minton, Homers Invocations of the Muses: Traditional Patterns, TAPA 91 (1960),

292309, at 293 and n. 3; id. Invocation and Catalogue in Hesiod and Homer, TAPA 93
(1962), 188212. For Minton, the Muses characteristically supply[ing] the information in the
form of a catalogue or ordered enumeration (1962, 188; his italics), and this is recalled by
the frequent motif of the first (person, thing, or occasion) in the question and answer
between poet and Muse, even when the context is not a catalogue but a narrative. See also
Jacob 1981, 479, 1985, 945; Minchin, 901, 171; Purves, 367.
28

Il. 2.48493; Hes. Th. 966, 1022 = fr. 1.2 M.W.

29

In Homer and Hesiod, this verb may be used to pose a question to the Muse which leads
directly into the following narrative (e.g. Hes. Th. 11415, fr. 1.1415 M.W.). Dionysius
uses the verb, though not to pose questions. He also drops the post-Homeric use of cletic
address (Empedocles, 31 B. 3.35, 131 D.K.; Simonides fr. 11.205 W.; Obbink, 5870).
92

order, and to virtuosic geographical lists in Hellenistic poetry.30 The concerns of the present
discussion are not formal; the Periegesis remodelling of verse-patterns from the Catalogue
of Ships can readily be followed up in my Ramus article. Rather, the focus is on the character
of Dionysius lists and how, where, and to what effect he uses them. The scope is also wider.
In order to avoid prescriptiveness, no definition of a list is offered here. There is a
continuum along which plain sequences of names, via little embellishments and illustrative
details, merge into more discursive structures; Dionysius offers examples of all these kinds of
writing. Like Aratus, who also adapts the basic catalogue genre to his own purposes,
Dionysius seeks variety: lists of names fashioned on formal principles (like the line
consisting of paired nounepithet formulae, or the expanded tricolon) are only one stylistic
choice among looser structures in which bare lists of names are adorned with other kinds of
information (mythical, ethnographical, geographical) or expanded into ecphrases. Aratus
himself is notably sparing in his lists of names.31
A lexicon like that of Stephanus of Byzantium uses alphabetical order; in the many
school exercises which offer potted, memorisable lists of celebrated instances of x, loose
principles of order may discerned, or at other times none at all.32 A periplous or periegesis
adopts itinerary order. While a map would represent places in some semblance of their spatial
relationship to one another, the textual equivalent must list them one after the other. In
practice there are various ways in which Dionysius catalogue is pulled out of sequence: by
the existence of peoples who have no fixed position;33 by the artistic decision to deviate (e.g.
reversed direction in 91020); and by the equally deliberate decision to use the catalogue, not
to string items together according to their actual geographical order, nor even to hierarchise,
but to sampleas will become clear in the following discussion.
Claims to comprehensiveness or otherwise in didactic texts, both poetry and prose,
have been put on the agenda recently by Richard Hunter.34 Speaking primarily of Hesiod and
Aratus, he suggests that didactic poetry does not have to be comprehensive to be
didactic, that it gives us examples, exemplary signs, from which we will be able to take
our starting-point. This is in contrast to the prose handbook, which seeks to offer us a
complete tchne, and often uses segmentation and a rhetoric of completeness to give at least
30

Jacob 1991a, 389; for more on geographical lists reflecting various levels of literary
attainment, pp. 184-5.
31

Of Pleiades (2623) and zodiacal signs (5459); a catalogue of birds in 10217: Fakas, 78,
834. The bird catalogue exemplifies the virtuosic list, non-comprehensive, but rich enough
to show off the narrators expertise (cf. also fish in Opp. Hal. 1.97101, 1036, 10810, 111
13, etc.; Marcellus of Side, LXIII.840 Heitsch). Dionysius does not use this type of list.
32

Jacob 1981, 4250 (esp. 426); for school texts, see Legras; for lists of Mediterranean
islands, see Prontera 1984a, 2289 n. 84.
33

cf. S 186 to\n de\ kata/logon pepoi/htai ou0 kata\ th\n ta/cin th=j grafh=j: noma/dej ga/r
ei0si.
34

Hunter 1995, 3; Fantuzzi and Hunter, 234.

93

an impression of comprehensive coverage. But while it is perfectly reasonable to argue that

for Aratus a detailed description of the stars themselves is of secondary importance to the
principle behind them (that Zeus gave them to us as signs), it is unclear that for the
Hellenistic poets in general the pars pro toto approachthe use of examples from which the
whole can be inferredis any more characteristic than claims to completeness. Certainly the
geographical iambic poems of ps.-Scymnus and Dionysius son of Calliphon both have
completist pretensions (ps.-Scymn. 734; Dionysius 17), though perhaps that is because their
character is more akin to prose in the first place (the humbler metre, the use of an epistolary
preface). It is rather that completeness and countervailing strategies (pars pro toto, and what
might be called a pose of deliberate sketchiness) are both available for exploitation. Nicander,
in particular, begins a number of sections with claims to completeness, and ends others with a
sketchy list which is in no way an exhaustive treatment of the topic in question.35 The
question addressed here is how Dionysius deals with the issue: whether he flirts with
completeness or flaunts incompleteness, how he relates to sources and models that take either
stance, and how lists and catalogues figure in this connection.
A series of items may be finite or infinite. If the former, and the items are listed
exhaustively, the list is closed. Otherwise, the list is open. Geography lends itself mostly to
open lists (there is no limit on mountains, rivers, or cities), though there are also a few closed
series (the four divisions of the ocean arranged by cardinal point, 2940; the four inlets of the
ocean, 4357), and this is particularly conducive to the style of compendia, of memoryliterature which reels off easily recalled lists of winds, continents, or regions of the earth.36
Dionysius has both kinds of list, and may use the same listing-devices for both purposes.
There are many of x (the pollo/j motif) introduces methodical reviews as well as
selections and samples.37 Tricola are equally flexible. On the one hand there are closed lists,
35

The section on snakes ends with a sketchy list of non-venomous creatures (48892); the
next, on herbs and simples, begins with a completeness claim (493 qro/na pa/nta . . . 495
pa/nta diampere/wj kai\ a0phlege/j). A section on sea-creatures, opening with a
completeness claim, in fact sketches in only three items (82236)all the more striking
because throughout this part of the poem the narrator is insisting on his extensive knowledge
(805, 811, 822). The section on remedies for other venomous animals also begins with a
completeness claim (837 oi[sin e0gw\ ta\ e3kasta diei/somai a1rkia nou/swn).
36

Jacob 1981, 43; e.g. Hyginus, Fab. 276.5 Cyclades insulae sunt novem; Ampelius, Lib.
Mem. 5.1 [De ventis] . . . sunt autem generales quattuor; 6.1 Orbis terrarum qui sub caelo est
quattuor regionibus incolitur; 6.2 Orbis terrarum quem nos colimus in tres partes dividitur,
totidemque nomina; 7.1 Mare quo cingimur universum vocatur Oceanum. Hoc quattuor
regionibus inrumpit in terras.
37

Methodical: 28; 247 = 902, 345. Samples: 723, 866, 874, 1071; cf. ps.-Scymn. 6246
(many cities in Macedonia, but the e0pifane/statai as follows), F7a sub fin. (many islands in
the Ister, including Peuce). In Hes. Th. 363, a select list of Oceanid nymphs is followed by
the admission that there are many more (three thousand, to be precise); in Ap. Rhod. 1.1039
40, the pollo/j motif opens a list of those slain along with Cyzicus.
94

very much in mnemonic style, of the three seas surrounding Italy (100), or the three capes of
Sicily (469), or the three oceanic gulfs in Asia (632). On the other, the poet can also use the
list to give a pars pro toto impression of a place far too complicated and detailed to represent
in any but the most extensive specialist tract. This is his approach for Asia Minor, where he
follows the coastline region-by-region, evoking each by a few choice details: usually a river
or two (or three), perhaps a city or two (or three). These passages often use tricolon style,
sometimes dyads or tetrads (Pamphylian cities, 855; Pisidian cities, 85960; Cilician rivers,
8678; Cilician cities, 875). It does not matter whether these dashings-in of detail are in
itinerary-order or not; if they are, it is probably accidental, for the most important thing is to
give an impression. It is interesting in this connection to note Strabos verdict on the Homeric
Catalogue, that Homer does not mention cities in order, for that was not necessary, but does
deal systematically with peoples and regions.38 So while Dionysius uses closed, mnemonic
lists, he may equally well adopt a pars pro toto approachitself perhaps influenced by a
reading of Homer as unsystematic at the level of detail within larger structures.
In general, we can spot two countervailing tendencies in Dionysius. The first is to
give an impression of careful system.39 The orderly itineraries themselves contribute greatly
to this. So does the care paid to the construction of the work itself, the pains taken over the
length of the various sections, and the parallels of structure across them.40 Another aspect of
this control is the careful segmentation of the work. The poem is thickly punctuated with

38

1.2.20; Danek, 67, noting that linear order prevails for regions, but not usually for
individual places within a region.
39

Yet he does not take what might have seemed an obvious opportunity in a geographical
poem to pun on kosmos as both order and world (Hunter 1995, 2); the word occurs only
as a v.l. in 1160, of Dionysus dances.
40

Effe 1977, 1902; Jacob 1981, 367; Selter 2011, 166 (on Avienius). Effe (followed by
Ilyushechkina 2010, 11617) notes that sections of the poem are approximately matched in
length (the Mediterranean 112 lines ~ Libya plus Egypt 96 lines; Europe 177 lines ~ the
islands 173 lines). Asia (6201165) takes up more or less the second half of the poem.
Prontera 1984a, 2267 and 2301 (Tav. 2) illustrates a tendency in geographical writers to
make the relative sizes of continents correspond to the relative length of text used to describe
them, whether by equating Europe with Libya and Asia combined, or Asia with Europe and
Libya combined. (In practice a precise word-count does not necessarily emerge from a crude
tally of book numbers, and the argument becomes circular if the relative size of continents is
presumed from the number of books devoted to them.) In any case, this works only
approximately for Dionysius, whose Asia (545 lines) is considerably larger than Libya and
Europe taken together (273 lines), whereas in reality, according to Dionysius, it is smaller
(627). Jacob argues that a place is expanded or contracted according to its human geography
and the number and importance of its human settlements. But it remains surprising that the
description of Europe should be only a third as long as the description of Asia.
95

sequences of two, three, and four items, all duly inventoried.41 Dionysius is particularly fond
of the catalogic use of prw=ton (etc.) to introduce a new sequence.42 This is already
foreshadowed in the Theogony; very close to the beginning of his poem Dionysius echoes
Hesiods formula to introduce Chaos, the very first item in the catalogue proper (45 h1toi me\n
prw/tiston ~ Th. 116 h1toi me\n prw/tista).43 The Theogony even has a couple of series of
ordinals: Dionysius does not go as far as this, though he does enumerate the first and second
gulfs of the ocean (457) and calls the Cophes third of the Indian rivers (1140).44 This
concern for the imposition of order emerges more strikingly in comparison with Aratus and
Nicander, who have only a single instance each of firstness to order a sequence.45 A better
comparison is with Lucretius constant use of primum and principio along with other markers
of sequence (deinde, praeterea, postremo), although that can hardly be a direct influence.
Does it reflect, or is it intended to suggest, the growing concern for markers of sequence in
prose writing?46

41

doio/j: 11219; 4202. disso/j: 958, 4003, 92830. trisso/j: 89, 99102, 2425, 331
3, 6303. trixqa/: 10668. pi/surej: 4455, 88793, 11304. Compare ps.-Scymn. 490500
(three seas to which Boeotia has access), F 15b (three races of the Sakai); Dionysius son of
Calliphon, 11417 (three Greek tribes of Crete). Reviews of borders by cardinal point
naturally lend themselves to this kind of enumeration.
42

45 (first of four oceanic gulfs), 69 (first of the seas within the Mediterranean), 347 (first of
the peoples within Italy), 525 (first of the islands on the Asiatic side of the Aegean), 728 (first
of the peoples round the Caspian), 765 (first of the peoples on the south coast of the Black
Sea), 803 (first of the peoples of Asia Minor starting at the Hellespont), 954 (first of the
Arabian tribes), 1069 (first of the Persian peoples); compare Dionysius son of Calliphon, 135
(Ceos the first island in the Cyclades).
43

W. H. Race, How Greek Poems Begin YClS 29 (1992), 1338, at 23. Race points out that
Hesiod reserves the superlative prw/tistoj for the most momentous beginnings. Dionysius
uses it again in 69 and 176, both of the entry-point of the Mediterranean at the Pillars of
Heracles, where his itineraries (pp. 19-20) have their starting-point.
44

Th. 30913 prw=ton . . . deu/teron au]tij . . . to\ tri/ton; 886921 prw/thn . . . deu/teron
. . . e0cau=tij . . . loisqota/ thn. By the time of Ovids Ars Amatoria, D. P. Fowler, From
Epos to Cosmos: Lucretius, Ovid, and the Poetics of Segmentation, in D. Innes, H. Hine, and
C. B. R. Pelling (eds.), Ethics and Rhetoric: Classical Essays for Donald Russell on his
Seventy-fifth birthday (Oxford, 1995), 318, at 8, regards principio and proximus as
generically normal, but tertius as parodically hyperdidactic.
45

Arat. 778 ske/pteo de prw=ton; Nic. Ther. 500 prw/thn me/n (substantiating the claim to
comprehensiveness in 4935, on which see p. 94, n. 35), cf. also Al. 256 prw=ton . . .
mete/peita.
46

E. Rawson, The introduction of logical organisation in Roman prose literature, PBSR 46

(1978), 1234 = Roman Culture and Society (Oxford, 1991), 32451.
96

This impression of orderly control pulls against the other tendency, which is to drift
off into sketchiness.47 Indeed, there is a rather Nicandrian moment when Dionysius, matching
his predecessors anticlimactic treatment of sea-creatures, promises in his Persian syllabus to
treat rivers (1055, 1071) and then delivers only two (1073). Sometimes a section will be
apparently closed, only to be reopened with the admission that there is more, and there is a
particular tendency to end with an impressionistic gesture, or an admission of descriptive
defeat; there are simply too many to name.48 It might be called the a0peire/sioj topos. The
closed sequence of four oceanic gulfs once concluded, Dionysius opens it again: there are
countless others (57 a1lloi de/ t a0peire/sioi gega/asin). Libya and its peoples having been
surveyed in an orderly progress, we learn that many others inhabit this country (265 a1lloi
de\ plei=stoi th/nde xqo/na naieta/ousin), and after Dionysius has completed the circuit of
the ocean with its islands he again admits that there are countless others (613 e3terai de/ t
a0peire/siai gega/asin).49 Having taken the tribes of Arabia (95460) in an orderly itinerary
we learn that there are many more as well, for it is extremely large (961 a1lla de/ toi kai\
plei=sta: peripro\ ga/r e0sti megi/sth), and the poem as a whole concludes with the
admission that there are countless more peoples whom it is beyond mortal power to name
(11669). In four out of these five passages (Libya being the exception) the topos
immediately follows, and undercuts the conclusiveness of, the sign-off formula so many are
. . ...50 A stronger form of this same tendency is when the narrator himself breaks off using
the plea of aporia, again generally at the end of sections.51
47

For Nicander, see p. 94. Compare also Manil. 4.63041, beginning with the claim that a
thousand islands lie in the Mediterranean; the largest are then named, the smaller ones
sampled, and the passage ends with a reference to the innumeri . . . scopuli which rise from
the sea. Eustathius on 265, cf. 554, 612, 638 (Hunter 2004a, 225), notes Dionysius frequent
employment of a broad-brush style (o3ti paxumerw=j o9 Dionu/sioj perihgei=sqai
o9mologei=); he suggests, bizarrely, that it contributes to safh/neia.
48

For Dionysius habitual use of the hyperbole of vastness and innumerability, see Jacob
1981, 41, 4950 and n. 182 (on 89). He notes that the paraphrases and translations of
Dionysius all retain this feature or even, in the case of Avienius, heighten it. A different
effect in Marcellus of Side, LXIII.6 Heitsch, where a0pei/ritoj at the beginning of a
catalogue displays the narrators impressive mastery of his subject.
49

The effect in these last two cases is complex. The extensive catalogue which has preceded
is followed by a miniature one, a threefold enumeration of where these many or countless
others are to be found (2668, 61415). These enumerations are in themselves closed lists
(oceanic coast, interior, and Mediterranean coast; the three continents), and the second is
followed by the polar pair inhabiteduninhabited. Open-endedness is thus played off
against closure.
50

to/ssoj and related forms are conclusive at 320, 330, 383, 679, 761, 797, but followed by
the a0peire/sioj topos at 56, 612, 960, 1166.
51

pp. 109-10; cf. Plin. NH 6.50 multitudo populorum innumera (Scythians), 6.58 gentes ei
urbesque innumerae, si quis omnes persequi velit (India). A different kind of aporia which
97

Dionysius thus plays off the comprehensiveness that is expected of a manual with the
non-comprehensiveness that is all that can be expected from a 1200-line poem, from a mere
mortal, and from a catalogue which derives from the very partial effort in the Catalogue of
Ships. Catalogues are in principle no less multiform than lists. All three of Aratus, Nicander,
and Dionysius have elements of catalogue-as-list, and catalogue as a looser, more discursive
kind of structure. On the one hand, all use the listing-device to\n (th\n) de\ met, Homeric in
origin (p. 81): it is a simple way of saying that one thing comes after something else. On the
other, they all use the combination of particles nai\ mh\n kai/ which signals the introduction of
a new item to a themed discussion, particularly to make an additional point at the end.52
Aratus has it once, Nicander repeatedly, and Dionysius three times (91, 1011, 1125), with a
particularly strong sense of closure in the last two cases. Catalogues in this sense not only list
but also review, and by arranging items under thematic headings (these are the remarkable
things in Arabia) they avoid the tedium of having no end in sight.
Of Dionysius many lists, some may reproduce the effect of a similar list in a source
(e.g. 30415, tribes north of the Danube); others are the result of manipulation. The tricolon
of Persian tribes (1069) condenses Strab. 15.3.3; the imposed segmentation seems to make
them match the territories just discussed. The Arabian tribes of 9559 correspond to Strab.
16.4.2; the first three apparently reproduce an unembellished list (Nabatai/wn te kai\
Xaulotai/wn kai\ 0Agrai/wn), while the tricolon of proper names in 959 is the result of
compressing the four tribal names at the end of that paragraph, restricting information on the
extent of their territories, and omitting the names of their capitals. The account of the Black
Sea (76198) condenses a source which is already compressed. Phineus speech to the
Argonauts (Ap. Rhod. 2.311407) begins with a disclaimer of completeness which is borne
out by the greater plenitude of the succeeding narrative, but the 23 lines which it takes to get
causes other geographers to curtail their exposition is the difficulty of rendering some tribal
names into Greek and Latin (see Silberman on Mela 3.15; Radt on Strab. III p. 155,2830;
Desanges, 789, on Plin. NH 5.1 populorum . . . linguis; Doody, 6974). It may be, then, that
Dionysius sources had already excluded some awkward names, and he does further violence
to others intractable to the hexameter (p. 188); but what we find is a willingness to sample the
exotic rather than an embarrassed silence about it. (Contra Doodys politicised reading, Pliny
more than matches Dionysius for the detail he offers on African and Asian tribal names, and
there is an explosion of peoples in book 6, which in some cases even overwhelm the power
to catalogue: Evans 2005a, 52.)
52

At the end of a discussion in Arat. 450; Nic. Ther. 51, 76, 520, and 145, if the Seps is
taken, as the scholia on l. 156a advocate, as the last item in the opening generalities (8156),
rather than the opening item in the discussion of serpents (157 ff.). Introductory nai\ mh\n kai/
in Ther. 921; Opp. Hal. 3.482, 5.392; in the middle of a discussion at Ther. 896, AP 4.1.47,
Opp. Hal. 1.404 (strictly, penultimate item), 1.686; for the second of two examples in AP
12.63.3. nai\ mh/n alone introduces a new item in a catalogue in ps.-Hes. fr. 372.5 M.W. =
Euthydemus, SH 455.5, five times in the Theriaca and four times in the Halieutica. Its first
extant occurrence is in Empedocles, 31 B. 76.2 D.K.: see MartinPrimavesi on their fr. b4
(Fusikw=n a /, 328), p. 259.
98

from the Chalybes to the Byzeres (37496) are compressed by Dionysius into just four (765
8, omitting only the Saspeires and island of Ares), with two names in the first, a quasitricolon in the third, and one each in the third and fourth. But the catalogue is also diversified
and expanded by the epyllion of Sinope (7759) and the mineralogy of the Thermodon (780
2), and expansion and embellishment can also be seen in the review of Libyan tribes vis--vis
Strab. 2.5.33 (174219 n.) and in the Mediterranean islands vis--vis Strab. 2.5.1921 (447
619 n.).
In sum, Dionysius has behaved as a perfectly trained pupil of the Hellenistic masters,
from whom he has learned to recreate the effect of a genre by formal means, but to avoid the
impression of formalism through variation and poikili/a. The list becomes just one of a
range of styles at the poets disposal.
But no catalogue was ever a mere matter of listing. Many little asides and flourishes
diversify the Catalogue of Ships, such as the myths of Erechtheus, 54751, Thamyris, 594
600, Tlepolemus, 65767, Protesilaus, 698702, and Philoctetes, 7215; the paradoxon of the
rivers Titaresios and Peneios, whose waters meet but do not mingle, 7515; the coiffure and
equipment of the Abantes, 5424; the origin of silver in Alybe, 857.53 In Apollonius hands,
these digressions and diversions become a means of characterising his Argonauts. In
Dionysius, they meet and mingle with the diversity which geographical writing naturally
invites (p. 7), so that coastal itineraries are interspersed with chorography, ethnography,
mythography (set-pieces on Sinope and Medea; colonisation myths; explicit and implicit
allusions to Odysseus, the Argonauts, and other mythological travellers), gemmography,
hymn, and, as we have seen, occasional moments of sententiousness which recall gnomic
poetry. In other words, while the Catalogue provides Dionysius with an overall genre, or
perhaps organisational scheme, with a distinctive set of formal markers, one of its
characteristics is to invite diversity of subject-matter, and genre and texture within it.
Not only does Dionysius cultivate poikili/a of subject-matter. Style combines with
variation in texture, so that there are moments when Dionysius seems to want to sound like
another poet.54 He uses Homer, obviously, for Troy (above), Callimachus for the rivers of
Arcadia (41517), not to mention outdoing the master at 8279, with perhaps a Nicandrian
moment at 791 (n. ad loc.). Throughout, he cultivates purple patches on gods and festivals,
and has a particular interest in choral song and dance.55 While all these passages are
conspicuous for their dense allusiveness, especially the paired springtime tableaux in Delos

53

Carspecken, 501.

54

Hollis 1998, 181 n. 32 Hellenistic and Roman poets sometimes write brief passages in the
style of their colleagues, citing Nic. Ther. 1920 (Aratus), Ap. Rhod. 3.10024 (Aratus),
1.10656 (bucolic), 150531 (Nicander?).
55

Apollo at Delphi (4416) and his Delian spring festivals (5279); choral dances for
Dionysus in the Caucasus (7005), Lydia (83945), and beside the Ganges (115360); cf.
Counillon 2001b, 109 n. 1.
99

and Lydia, the choice of subject must be influenced by Callimachus liking for the same
theme.56
In all this, Dionysius may well have been aware of the value which ancient rhetorical
theory assigned to the pare/kbasij, or digression,57 but he is unlikely to have agreed with
any appraisal of didactic poetry according to which it was only the embellishments and
purple patches which raised it into the category of poetry.58 He had ample warrant in his
poetic models for the treatment of geography itself, and for amplification and embellishment,
not as something tacked on, but as integral. Nevertheless, the poikili/a of the work was
certainly seen as a virtue by later criticsas in the following appreciation by Eustathius:

. . . 1Esti de\ ou{ kai\ e0ndia&qeta lalei=, o4 dh_ poiei=n dusxere\j e0n perihgh&sei. Parenspei/rei
de/ pou kai\ basilika_ eu)fuw~j e0gkw&mia. Kai\ gnwmologikh|~ de\ filosofi/a| spani/wj me\n,
dia_ th_n th~j perihgh&sewj a)na&gkhn, eu(ri/sketai d' ou}n o3mwj xrw&menoj, kai\ o3lwj dia_
pa&ntwn h3kei kalw~n, pro_j me/tron te a|1dwn kai\ diale/ktoij poikillo&menoj, kai\ mu&qw|
xrh~sqai summe/trwj ou) katoknw~n, kai\ plasma&twn xrw&menoj piqano&thti, o3ph te
parei/kei e0mplatuno&menoj kai\ e0kfra&sesin, e0piple/kwn de/ ge kai\ i9stori/aj . . .59

He sometimes delivers himself of ideas which are difficult to include in a periegesis. He

intersperses royal encomia in a graceful way, and can be found using philosophical
sentimentsinfrequently, because of the constraints of the periegesis, but use them he
nonetheless does; and in general he runs through the whole gamut of graces, fitting his
material to metre and varying it with dialect forms, not hesitating to use myth in an
appropriate way, availing himself of plausible fictions, even broadening out into ecphrases
where appropriate, also interweaving historical references . . .

One way of describing the genre of the Periegesis, then, is as an outwardly expanded
catalogue, packed both with facts and with diversions, informative and entertaining in equal
measure.

56

Reinsch-Werner 1976, 360; Acosta-Hughes and Stephens, 11216; circular dances in

Hymn 3.17082, 2417, 4.3001, 31213.
57

Lausberg, 3402; esp. Quint. 4.3.12, according to whom digressions may contain praise
of men and places, the description of regions, and the record of historical or even
mythological happenings, and 10.1.49, where Homer is regarded as a master of the
digressus.
58

p. 86, n. 5; a view which continues to be applied to Nicander (Jacques, ii, pp. lxviiilxix).

59

GGM ii. 213.35214.8 (quoted by Phlmann, 833). See also Eustathius on 1039 (GGM ii.
394.1214) suxna_ paraple/kwn th|~ perihgh&sei ta_ e0c i9storiw~n, plh_n e0n e0pitomh|~ kai\
e0pitroxa&dhn . . .
100

2. DIDACTIC
For what says Lokman, If the child would walk, the nurse must lead him; if the ignorant
would understand, the wise must instruct.
(Sir Walter Scott, The Talisman, ch. 23.)

Katharina Volk laid down four positive characteristics of didactic poetrythat is, poetry
which is didactic in the most essential sense, as opposed to more loosely in the didactic
mode.60 Two are concerned with the didactic thrust of the work: it should have an explicit
didactic intent,61 and there should be a teacherstudent constellation, according to which the
didaxis is directed in a little intra-textual drama to a student or students by the authoritative
narrative voice.62 The other two are concerned with poetics and poetic consciousness: the
narrator should be self-consciously a poet, reflecting on his poetic activity and on his works
status as poetry,63 and he should observe a convention which is also more widely found in
ancient poetry, the fiction that the work is in the very process of composition (having sung
of x, I shall now tell you y). She calls this poetic simultaneity.64

60

Volk, 3443. Ilyushechkina proposes a different, and only partially overlapping, set of
characteristics (2010, 1067): (1) the presentation of scientific data and theory in epic form;
(2) fictive dialogue with addressee and/or Muses; (3) brevity and connectedness; (4) the
presence of excursuses; (5) didactic as well as poetic motives on the part of the author, i.e.
both to instruct and to entertain.
61

This blurs Heaths distinction between final and formal didactic (p. 88, n. 10; a work
could be intended to instruct without explicitly saying so, and its didactic claims could be
disingenuous), though the formal rather than final sense seems to be implied (36: a didactic
poem either states clearly, or gives other strong indications, that it is first and foremost
supposed to reach whatever subject or skill it happens to be treating).
62

Effectively noted already by Serv. Prooem. in V. Georg. (p. 129.912 Thilo) et hi libri
didascalici sunt, unde necesse est, ut ad aliquem scribantur; nam praeceptum et doctoris et
discipuli personam requirit: unde ad Maecenatem scribit, sicut Hesiodus ad Persen,
Lucretius ad Memmium.
63

Though Phlmann, 8478, regards the falling-away of the Muse in Nicander as indicative
of a trend in later didactic poetry.
64

Cf. what Christopher Carey, A Commentary on Five Odes of Pindar (New York, 1981), 5,
calls the oral subterfuge in lyric, by which the poet deliberately creates and sustains the
impression of informal, extempore composition in order to manipulate his material
according to his own requirements.
101

The response has varied from the enthusiastic to the lukewarm. For some, it clears the
ground and focuses on the essentials.65 For others, it throws the baby out with the
bathwater.66 Those sympathetic to Kenneys feeling that poetry in the didactic mode is a
more helpful concept than didactic defined by these four restrictive criteria (which exclude
works like Parmenides On Nature, Ovids Fasti, and Horaces Ars Poetica) could shift the
emphasis so that the texts so isolated became a subset of a larger class more interesting in
virtue of its richness. Or they could emphasise the absence of a theory of the genre in
antiquity as a possible factor in the very different accents and inflections within different
works. ps.-Oppian, for example, in the Cynegetica (a work which falls out of Volks remit)
has a very high poetic consciousness and much poetic simultaneityin other words, he
amply meets Volks criteria (iii) and (iv)and uses so many epic locutions when he
discusses poetics that it is reasonable to infer that he thought of himself as writing a species
of epic poetry. On the other hand, both he and Oppian, poet of the Halieutica, have little if
any concern for explicit didaxis; in both cases the dedicatees are Roman emperors, so that the
poets comport themselves, not as teachers towards a pupil, but as courtiers pointing out to
their royal masters the natural wealth their empire contains. The obviously informative
content of both poems is not presented in the little intra-textual drama of instruction which
Volks scheme requires. And yet intuitively it seems odd to relegate Oppian and ps-Oppian to
the penumbra of works that are in the didactic mode rather than truly didactic.
Nonetheless, Volks four-point approach remains stimulating for the study of
Dionysius because it helps to bring into focus the chief points of similarity and difference
with his precedessors.
Volk is rightly surprised by Aratus backwardness about some of the elements
intrinsic to didacticnot only her view of didactic (whose criteria he meets, but only just)
but also elements essential on any definition.67 Above all, she argues, both narrator and
addressee are undercharacterised,68 one consequence of which is that the didactic intent of the
Phaenomena is not spelled out; the narrator says very little about the process and progress of
his instruction (little poetic simultaneity), and after the reference to the Muses at the end of
the proem69 exhibits no poetic self-consciousness, no awareness that he conceives of the
work as poetry. Hunter, too, notes that Aratus does not emulate the Hesiodic importance
attached to the autobiography of the poet as an authorising mode, suggesting that this would
ill suit the Stoicising stress on the centrality of the fixed order of nature in which no
individual is particularly important.70 Nicander redresses the balance in some respects, with
65

J. OHara, CJ 99 (2004), 456, finds the four central features the attractive central
argument of the book; see also G. Campbell, JRS 94 (2004), 20910.
66

E. J. Kenney, BMCR 2003.01.26.

67

Volk, 567.

68

On Aratus narrator see Fakas, 914; Semanoff.

69

Fakas, 5864.

70

Hunter 1995, 3 Authority and Truth.

102

named addressees in both poems and more overt didacticism, yet similarly low selfconsciousness as a poet.71 (This general picture must be right, though Volk may have
undervalued the degree of poetic self-consciousness in both Aratus and Nicander by failing to
take into account the presence of acrostichswhich ipso facto depend on the use of poetry,
and constitute a very self-conscious manipulation of its possibilities.)
Save that he reverts to an anonymous Aratean addresseeperhaps because he wants
to avoid any sense of specificity of occasion72Dionysius reinstates the elements so
underrepresented in these models. Didacticism is now very explicit, and both participants in
the didactic drama are more prominent. The narrators personality is far more developed
than in Aratus, with biographical or pseudo-biographical details derived from Hesiod (his
inexperience of distant countries), and a buoyant tone influenced by Nicanders rhetoric of
poetic ease (cf. pp. 108-9) and vision of the prestige which will accrue to his pupil (171
3 n.). Even a selection of particles which in Homer were confined to direct speech, and which
now spill over into the live voice of the narrator (sometimes with Apollonian precedent),
heighten the effect of liveliness and engagement.73 The addressee, meanwhile, is both a pupil
who is pursuing the didaxis on a theoretical level and also projected into the text as an
armchair traveller. The narrator is extremely aware of himself as a poet, with three substantial
acrostichs (and a number of more controversial ones) and four references to the Muses,
climaxing in a passage where their no/oj altogether rescues him from Hesiodic inexperience
and instead bears him aloft in a visionary rapture.74 And the last of Volks criteria is fulfilled
by extensive use of poetic simultaneity, which has the great advantage of imposing structure
on his poem, itinerary, and universe all at once (170 nu=n de/ toi h0pei/rou muqh/somai ei]doj
a9pa/shj; 556, 799 e0cene/poimi; 881 r9hi+di/wj d a1n toi loipo\n po/ron au0dh/saimi; 894
i3comai h1dh, | a0rca/menoj Suri/hqen, o3qen li/pon; 933 kai\ th=j toi qe/siaj muqh/somai).75
It is striking that all these items, underplayed or all but ignored in the Hellenistic
poets, are simultaneously restored to prominence. One could simply explain it in piecemeal
fashion. Didacticism might simply follow from the decision to write a poem on a subject
71

Volk, 57. Poetic self-consciousness comes to light principally in the envois of both poems:
he calls himself Homeric at the end of the Theriaca (957) and u9mnopo/loio at the end of the
Alexipharmaca (629).
72

Cf. Counillon 1983, 1819 (well noting also that the sense of shared experience in the
Phaenomena is missing in the Periegesis when the addressee goes on a round-the-world
voyage but the narrator stays at home).
73

de/ toi (159 n.); h] ga/r (182 n.); h] ken (276 n.); h] ta/xa (885 n.); perhaps also nu=n ge me/n
(6501 n.).
74

The two features are related. The two showpiece acrostichs (11234, 51732) occur at
corresponding points in major catalogue sequencesreviews of the Mediterranean (62169)
and its islands (447554)which have been introduced by the first two of the poems four
Muse-invocations (623, 4479).
75

See also Jacob 1981, 38; id. 1982, 227.

103

which the Romans considered to be of practical utility: after all, other geographical writers,
both poetic and prose, aspire to be instructive. Re-emphasis on the personality of the narrator
emphasises the claims of instructiveness, heightens authority (the narrator advertises his good
sense (1054), veracity (8956), and the transmissibility of knowledge (1713, 8846)), and
casts the teaching in a personable, obliging tone (270). The presence of the Muses is born of
the heightened importance attached to Hesiod and catalogue poetry, and poetic simultaneity
not only follows from the narrators desire to present himself as an oral bard, but is also
helpful in ordering a poem that calls out for clear structure. But if it were felt that piecemeal
explanations failed to explain why all these elements should come together all at once, one
might wonder whether Dionysius is consciously or unconsciously reverting to a classical
norm, especially given that such reversion was fashionable at the time he was writing; or
(though the lack of clear correlation between Volks criteria and subject-matter renders it
problematic) whether there was a tendency for geographical poems to adhere to them. As we
shall see, the iambic didactic poems dothough in some places only just.

The Narrator
What might we expect of a geographical narrator anyway? Sometimes the association
between a narrators character and the requirements of a given body of subject-matter are
plain enough. In works of philosophy and natural science like the De Rerum Natura and the
Aetna he needs to establish and defend theoretical positions against potentially hostile
criticism; he is adamant, insistent, even hectoring, and his addressee a worthwhile convert,
but in danger of backsliding. The medical narrator is often more of a technocrat. Nicander is
confident of the ease with which he can furnish cures and the prestige he can transmit to his
addressee; the other extant medical writers would benefit from closer attention, but in several
we find a comparably upbeat tone and pride in their ability to convey helpful technology to
the non-expert.76 The philosophico-theological vision of the Phaenomena summons up a
persona of calm authority and impersonality, remote from the contingency of biographical
detail. But the loss of comparanda like the hexameter poems of Alexander of Ephesus has
frustrated the comparison of Dionysius with his closest relatives in terms of genre. We do
have Apollonius rendition of a periplous in the mouth of the seer Phineus, as well as the
extant iambic geographical poems, both of which are equipped with epistolary prefaces full
of illuminating detail about the aspirations of the author/narrator (even if they cannot be
assumed to stand four-square with the conventions of hexameter poetry), as well as the whole
range of extant prose geography.
If we compare Dionysius with the extant iambic poems and with Mela (as a work of
comparable length and compass, a handy digest of the whole oi0koume/nh), while each narrator
and addressee has a character of his own, two main axes of difference appear.

76

e.g. Eudemus, SH 412A 1516 (confident promise to the addressee); Aglaias of

Byzantium, SH 18.12, 4, 78 (both pride and helpfulness); Andromachus the Elder, LXII 29,
cf. 756, Heitsch, promising ease to his addressee (the emperor Nero).
104

First, the narrator in all three of the comparanda pays far more explicit attention to
sources and recorded tradition; Dionysius acknowledges no authority other than the Muses.
ps.-Scymnus lists at length the writers he has used, expressly to bolster the academic
credibility of his work (11011), and continues to cite sources in the course of his exposition,
as, much more sparingly, does Mela.77 Not only do they make more extensive use than
Dionysius of the relata refero device (as they say, as the story goes), but they also use it
to different effect. Where in Dionysius it suggests a non-committal attitude to the myths
which continue to resonate in the real, visitable landscape (p. 173), ps.-Scymnus uses it above
all for traditions about early settlement and colonisation,78 and on a couple of occasions,
where it is combined with a specific source-citation (5438, 55965), it becomes clear that
the device is a pointer to dependence on an authority, whether specified or not. Writers who
cite sources are also prepared to assess them. Differences of opinion are noted, the quality of
sources evaluated, and critical positions taken.79 Where no one view is preferable to another,
or where the causes of a phenomenon remain hidden, Mela will sometimes offer up multiple
explanations in the style of natural philosophy.80 This technique is found in didactic writers
such as Lucretius and Manilius, but is wholly absent from Dionysius. Natural science is not
his interest; where controversy is concerned, he prefers to amalgamate and harmonise.
Second, once the geographical itinerary begins in the three comparanda, a secondperson remains almost completely out of sight. After the epistolary prefaces of the iambic
poets, he drops completely from view. In Mela, though there is no addressee in the
prefaratory material, there are just three references to a second person, including a single
instance of the you might think topos, so important in Dionysius (p. 113). But most of the
time all three writers, when they envisage a destination for their information at all, conjure up
third-person travellers in the fashion of a periplous (especially datives of interest, e.g.
ka/myanti th\n a1kran); they do not, as does Dionysius, segue this notional traveller into the
works addressee.81
77

Ps.-Scymnus: Marcotte 2002, 1920; Hunter 2004a, 229, and 2006, 1323. According to
Berthelot, 1920, it is in imitation of ps.-Scymnus that Avienius prefaces his Ora Maritima
(3350) with his own list of sources; a different view in G. F. Unger, Der Periplus des
Avienus (Philologus Suppl. IV,2) (Gttingen, 1884), 2006. Mela: Brodersen 1994b, 56;
Batty 2000, 712. Dionysius son of Calliphon presented his work as a distillation of longer
works u9po\ tw=n palaiw=n suggrafe/wn ei0rhme/na (9).
78

1578, 229, 2345, 249, 31112, 317, 325, 3289, 38990, 436, 4567, 4623, 52634,
5717, 584, 61617, 6389, 660, 6767, 68192, 712.
79

Differences of opinion: Dionysius son of Calliphon, 358; ps.-Scymn. 4623; Mela 1.83,
1.92, 2.100, 3.70, 3.89; remarks on the quality of sources: Mela, 3.49, 3.56; critical comment:
ps.-Scymn. F 25.1113; Mela 2.31, 3.66.
80

1.21, 1.53, 3.2, 3.22 (though here the explanations are not in competition).

81

Mela has just one instance of the second-person traveller (2.89 si litora legas), though 2.78
credas, 3.40 quamquam intuearis, also imply the presence of a viewer. As Dr L. A. HolfordStrevens notes, the subjunctives indicate the ideal, rather than the real, second person.
105

All this helps to bring Dionysius didactic drama into closer focus. The bard is a
convention of hexameter poetry, and Dionysius needs only his Muses to inspire and to guide
him; the iambic poets, with their allegiance to, and criticism of, written authorities,
correspond more to the practice of prose writers. ps.-Scymnus (certainly) and Dionysius son
of Calliphon (possibly) speak of i9stori/a, and ps.-Scymnus carefully discriminates the
regions where he himself has travelled;82 Dionysius positively advertises his inexperience.
Above all, though, is the simple fact that the hexameter tradition makes extensive use of a
second-person addressee, with whom the narrator interacts, to remind, to encourage, and to
stimulate. This is indeed a little drama of education, involving the exploration and
communication of knowledge.
The didactic drama, which is Katharina Volks phrase, can also be couched in terms
of Dons Fowlers idea of a didactic plot.83 It is akin to narrative in that it has a sense of
progress and forward momentum, as the speaker and addressee pursue a path through through
the text, and as the learner proceeds from ignorance to knowledge. Dionysius has reworked
the old conceit of poem-as-journey.84 Precisely where the metaphor might be literalised, it is
made clear that this is armchair voyaging, the untravelled leading the untravelled. Yet the
progress of the poem is assimilated to the progress of a journey,85 one that lends itself to an
82

i9stori/a: ps.-Scymn. 434, 111 to\n i9storiko\n lo/gon, 132 i3stwr te gegonw/j;
Dionysius son of Calliphon, 4 nuni\ pepo/rhka [nu=n i9sto/rhka conj. Meineke] th\n a3pasan
9Ella/da. Condemning Meinekes emendation as outrancier, Marcotte prefers Scaliger and
Casaubons pepo/rika. Travel: ps.-Scymn. 12836.
83

Fowler; cf. Selter 2011, 1567. The idea of the movement from ignorance to knowledge,
the most basic form of the didactic plot, is central to Emily Kneebones analysis of Oppians
Halieutica, where reader, addressee, and fishy subject-matter are all involved in the process
of learning (E. Kneebone, To&ss e0da&hn: The Poetics of Knowledge in Oppians
Halieutica , Ramus 37/12 (2008), 3259).
84

Fowler, 20811; Volk, 203, 40; Vox, 1678 and n. 68; Selter 2011, 160. For more
instances in didactic poetry, see Volk, 50, on Parmenides chariot metaphor; 52, on
Empedocles eu0h/nion a3rma, 31 B. 3.5 D.K.; 66, on Pythagoras in Ov. Met. 15.1767 (with
Bmer ad loc. on the metaphor of sailing), 4534 (a team of horses).
85

As is that of the Argonautica (Thalmann, 30). For the assimilation of the trajectory of the
poem to the trajectory of the journey, see 894 i3comai; 895 o3qen li/pon, 1184 e0pe/dramon
(discussed above). The subject-matter invites the frequent use of the nouns ke/leuqoj, o9do/j,
po/roj, oi]moj, all of which are capable of being drawn into the path of song metaphor (O.
Becker, 739; Nnlist, 22876), and which may appear in that association here, especially
ke/leuqoj in 62, 884; po/roj in 448 (object of e1nnepe, Mou=sa), 1185 (object of e0pe/dramon).
For ways in which the Odysseus myth may be implied by a didactic plot, see Fowler, 21617,
and it is as an Odyssean figure that Eustathius interprets Dionysius (GGM ii. 205.246 kai\
pollw=n a0nqrw/pwn i0dw\n a1stea, kai\ no/on gnou\j o0fqalmw=| kai\ didaskali/a| Mousw=n;
cf. Jacob 1985, 94). Faring onwards on a journey that equips him with wisdom, he is a
traveller in the spiritlike Maximus of Tyres reinterpretation of the Odysseus figure (Dial.
106

obvious but satisfying teleology, for it ends with a multi-layered allusion to the closure of a
poem, a journey, and perhaps also the completion of a narrative summary (1184 n.). For the
narrator not only concludes his journey, alluding to Apollonius use of the same conceit to
conclude both the Argos voyage and his own poetic account of it, but also, by his choice of
verb, possibly signifies that he has treated the main headings of it, in summary form.
The travel theme is enhanced by the use of the Muses, who are worked into the
didactic plot in the sense that their role is accommodated to geography,86 and their
appearances carefully sequenced.87 They seem to represent the impetus for linear progress,88
so their first appearance coincides with the inception of the itinerary when they are asked to
tell the narrator of the skolia\j . . . keleu/qouj of the Mediterranean, and to proceed
stoixhdo/n from the Pillars of Heracles (623). Next (447), the Muse of Zeus is invoked to
tell of the i9ero\n po/ron of the islands. Their third appearance is at the beginning of the
periegesis of northern Asia, where they are asked to direct the poets step straight (651
i0qu/ntaton i1xnoj a1goien), and finally (715), the only time where they are not asked to lead
off an itinerary (though, like their first and second appearances, in connection with water)
their inspiration bears up the narrator in account of the Caspian, though he has never been
there.
Certain characteristics expected from narrative Muses are absent here. They do not
supply information in reply to questions, and are not associated with the familiar themes of
XXVI. 1a; Jacob 1985, 1023). In a further similarity with Maximus, Dionysius Muses
represent Greek paideia (p. 108), just as Maximus interprets Calliope as Homers name for
philosophy (Dial. I. 2a). All in all, the dialogue with the Argonautica seems more sustained
than with the Odyssey, for all that the narrator threads his way past some Odyssean sights.
There is no literal homecoming in a poem that comes to an end in India, and the didactic
narrative (as opposed to journey) is concluded with an allusion to the Argonautica;
nevertheless, 716 seems to represent a pointed engagement with the wandering theme in the
Odyssey, and see also 70910 n. on travelling in black ships.
86

Parallels for the assimilation of Muses to the subject-matter of a didactic poem are not
obvious. The Muses of Apollonius geographical epic are still story-telling Muses, however
unconventional (1.22, 3.1, 4.2, cf. 4.9845, 4.1381). Closest is Arat. 1618, where they are
asked tekmh/rate pa=san a0oidh/n, which Kidd (n. on 18) renders show by a sign: the verb is
common in the rest of the poem (though in the middle rather than the active), of men
observing and interpreting signs. Muses are assimilated to Dionysian subject-matter in
Philodamus of Scarpheia, Paean in Dionysum, v. 5862, Nonn. D. 13.46, 25.1.
87

Structural Muses in Dionysius: Coccaro Andreou, 131; for the Muses as a structural device
in both lyric (Bacchylides) and didactic (Empedocles), Trpanier, 58. Lucretius mentions
Muses often, and uses them in the proems of the first and fourth books, but not in internal
divisions within books. A Muse or Muses in Opp. Hal. 4.6 (proem) and ps.-Opp. Cyn. 3.461
(an internal division). For Empedocles Muse mid-poem, see Obbink, 64.
88

Jacob 1981, 47, 48; id. 1982, 2334; id. 1985, 935.
107

memory and fame (Il. 2.486, 492). They are geographical figures, and are sequenced in such
a way that their relationship with the narrator becomes more intense: on the first two
occasions they tell him something (e0n(n)e/pein), on the third they guide him, and in the end
they bear him aloft and enable him to survey whole landscapes. In their fourth and last
appearance, two separate Hesiodic themes are brought together: their inspiration overrides
the narrators lack of practical experience.89 But Hesiod had not made the Muses supply the
want of practical knowledge about ships; much less did they transport him on a spiritual
journey (71517 n.) which recalls the experience of visionaries such as Aristeas of
Proconnesus,90 or, more distantly, the various philosophical and/or eschatological traditions
of the flight of the soul. The visionary moment comes at the climax of the didactic plot
involving the Muses, and it is precisely here that, as Eustathius (and Richard Hunter) were
right to see, they reveal themselves as metaphors, not for inspiration, but for human
knowledge.91 So, one strand of the plot or drama consists in an increasingly alluring
presentation of the power of learning. There are other strands.
89

It is unclear whether Dionysius knew the tradition that Aratus and Nicander were both
amateurs in their chosen subjects (Cic. de Or. 1.69; see also Vit. Arat. I, pp. 8.259.1 Martin,
and Vit. IV, p. 20.1315 Martin). See Jacques 2006, 201 (for whom this tradition eventually
gave rise to a pernicious modern myth). The Aratean narrator admits incapacity in the
particular matter of the planets (Semanoff, 31214).
90

Jacob 1981, 289, 1985, 1012, 107, and 1990, 26; Hunter 2004a, 228. Note in particular
the similarity between the content of Dionysius poem and that of the visions of Aristeas, as
described by Maximus of Tyre, Dial. X. 2f3c and XXXVIII. 3cg. For the idea of journeys
in the spirit (geographical, philosophical, and eschatological), see also Bolton, 14665;
Burkert, 14750; on shamans, Meuli, esp. 15364; E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the
Irrational (Berkeley, 1951), 1402; on Hermotimus, A. Scobie, Some Folktales in GraecoRoman and Far Eastern Sources, Philologus, 121 (1977), 123, at 1213. Curiously, in the
6th c., Cassiodorus promised his pupils in the Italian monastery of Vivarium that the reading
of Ptolemy would have the same effect on them (Inst. Divin. Litt. 1 xxv.2 eoque fiat ut uno
loco positi, sicut monachos decet, animo percurratis quod aliquorum peregrinatio plurimo
labore collegit).
91

Eustathius on 707 a0lla/ me, fhsi\, Mousw=n fe/rei no/oj, toute/stin ai9 e0k tw=n
maqh/sewn gnw/seij; he has been aided in this realisation by the appearance in 707 of the
prose verb katagra/yaimi, whose force is still felt when the narrator resumes the sxh=ma of
the Caspian in 71825. In other words, the assimilation of the poem to a work of prose
geography or technical cartography reveals the grandiose claim for the power of the Muses
for the metaphor it really is. See Coccaro Andreou, 1301; Hunter 2004a, 228; Amato 2002,
1115 = 2005a, 94101; Ilyushechkina 2010, 114; for the Muses as figures of speech in
Aratus, Fakas, 634; for the Muses development into deities of erudition and
personifications of paideia, P. Murray, The Muses and their Arts, in P. Murray and P.
Wilson (eds.), Music and the Muses: The Culture of Mousike in the Classical Athenian City
(Oxford, 2004), 36589; A. Morrison, Callimachus Muses, in B. Acosta-Hughes, L.
Lehnus, and S. Stephens (eds.), Brills Companion to Callimachus (Leiden, 2011), 32948, at
108

The confidence of the travel narrative is buoyed up the narrators rhetoric of ease,
which is generally at home in hymns, prayers, and discourses about the gods, but comes
immediately from Nicander.92 Nicander flaunts the ease with which he can communicate
his message at the beginning of both the Theriaca and Alexipharmaca, which lack hymnal
proems or any sign of deference to a deitywhose place is now filled by the narrator.93
Dionysius, too, has a godless proem, but the ease motif is reserved for later on. Like the
appeal to the Muses, with which it partly overlaps (the third ease motif links with the final
appearance of the Muses), it has a structural function.94 Twice it occurs with verbs of speech
(345 a0goreu/sw, 881 au0dh/saimi), as in Nicander; once with a verb whose overt textuality
brings out the scholarly nature of the enterprise (707 katagra/yaimi); on the remaining
occasion (280 kixh/seai) it communicates itself to the addressee. This, too, originates with
Nicander.95 In the proem of the Theriaca the narrators ease leads straight into a promise of
the regard in which the aspiring healer will be held (17). This is now split across two
manifestos containing pledges to his pupil, (i) promising prestige from the transmission of his
knowledge (1713), and (ii) running together narratorial ease into his pupils ability to
remember and transmit knowledge to others (8816).
Of course there are differences. Those who regard Nicanders didactic as purely
formal and artificial might contrast his hopelessly arcane, and partly defective, information,
with Dionysius didactically friendly tract. On the other hand, Nicander finds a place in a
circle of specialists whose other members share certain mannerisms without prejudice to how
practical or impractical their therapies were intended to be. He was paraphrased and

3423. Education (Hunter) is a better gloss for what the Muses represent than lintelligence
humaine (Jacob 1990, 25, cf. 1985, 106: il noos delle Muse una metafora e sottolinea il
ruolo preeminente dellintelletto umano che nella vulgata filosofica dellepoca guida
lanima nelle sue peregrinazioni estatiche, nella sua ricerca del divino e dellintelligibile).
They stand for learning, replacing the authorities so assiduously listed by Mela and the
iambic poets. In Opp. Hal. 1.680, mousopo/lwn e1rgwn are school lessons.
92

See Janko on Il. 13.90 and 16.68890; Od. 10.3056; Hes. Op. 57, Th. 90 (with West ad
loc.), 438, 4423; Empedocles, 31 B. 129.5 D.K. (in praise of Pythagoras); Call. Hymn 2.50;
Nic. Ther. 1, Al. 45 (see Fakas, 63 n. 190; Hunter 2004a, 224; Magnelli 2006b, 1967;
Jacques, iii. lxxv); V. Georg. 1.40, 1212; Jacob 1982, 2278.
93

Phlmann, 8478; Koster, 153; Fakas, 63 n. 190.

94

280, resuming what has just been said about the shape of Europe, and immediately before
the detailed itinerary; 345, introducing the review of Italy; 707, introducing the Caspian; 881,
introducing southern Asia. 280 and 345 use the future indicative, which allows not a shadow
of doubt about the narrators ability: not even Nicander goes as far as this.
95

Ther. 234, 842, Al. 91, 272, 333, 386; offset by the easy actions of grim animals or poisons:
Ther. 454, 768, Al. 315. For Semanoff, 30912, ease is also implied in the Phaenomena, by
the narrators confidence in his pupils abilities; but the motif is not used explicitly.
109

excerpted, and knowledge of his remedies shows up in later medical compilations96in

contrast to the Periegesis, which promises prestige for theoretical rather than practical
knowledge, won from a narrator who self-confessedly has no first-hand expertise either. Be
that as it may, Dionysius treatment of the ease motif is more sophisticated than Nicanders
because he plays it off against the topoi of inexpressibility and aporia (too many to name).
We have noted his penchant for concluding catalogues and lists in a minor key, with an
acknowledgement of all that he has not managed to include. The aporia topos simply makes
this more explicit: at the end of the islands, it is not easy for me to give the names of all of
them (619); at the end of the physical geography of Asia, who could name all [the rivers
that pour from the Taurus range]? (6469); and at the end of the poem itself, in what Hunter
describes as an extraordinary poetic move, the speaker admits that there are countless
other peoples he has not named, and that only the gods can do everything with ease (1168
9).
A literary history can be traced for all this. The plea of incapacity goes back to early
Greek hexameter poetry,97 where it may function as a focusing device (I cannot talk about x
or y or z, but I am going to talk about a)98 ormore akin to Dionysius usageas an
Abbruchsformel (but why continue? I could never express it all).99 All three instances in
Dionysius have a background in Homer or Hesiod, and the last one, with its contrast between
human capacity and divine, also finds a parallel in Ibycus, who, following the Iliadic model,
96

On Nicander and iological literature, Jacques, ii, pp. xlixlxv, and 2006; on his influence,
Jacques ii, pp. lxilxv, 2006, 2830.
97

E. J. Bakker, Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse (Ithaca, 1997), 545; E. R.
Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. W. R. Trask (Princeton, 1973),
15960; A. Ford, Homer: The Poetry of the Past (Ithaca, 1992), 737; I. de Jong, A
Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey (Cambridge, 2001), 1023 (cf. 227: by the
aporia motif she means the who first, who last motif); W. Khlmann, Katalog und
Erzhlung: Studien zu Konstanz und Wandel einer literarischen Form in der antiken Epik
(diss. Freiburg, 1973), 11213 with 178 n. 63; W. Race, The Classical Priamel from Homer
to Boethius (Leiden, 1982), 335.
98

Il. 2.48493; Od. 4.2401, 7.2412, 11.51718; Ap. Rhod. 2.31116 (related; cf. Hunter
1995, 3); Arat. 460; Ennius 469 Skutsch (perhaps); V. Georg. 2.42, Aen. 3.37780; Sil. Ital.
4.5256; Val. Flacc. 6.3641.
99

An important model was clearly the catalogue of rivers and nymphs in Hes. Th. 33770:
after eight lines of river-names and a dozen lines for nymphs, the poet states that in all there
are three thousand of each, and that it is hard for a mortal man to name them all. West on 369
cites other examples of the difficulty motif, to which add Od. 11.32830; V. Aen. 6.6257;
Ov. AA 1.4356 (Ap. Rhod. 2.3901 is related); a geographical example in the poem of
Dionysius son of Calliphon, 1245 a1llai t ei0si\n e0n | Krh/th| po/leij, a3j e0stin e0rgw=dej
fra/sai. Virgils statement of aporia at the end of a catalogue of vines (Georg. 2.89108) is
borrowed by Avienius, who intercalates a major statement of incapacity after the section on
islands (80316), while he fails to render the climactic one in 11689 (Selter 2011, 1667).
110

uses it precisely in connection with a catalogue.100 Sketchy conclusions to lists are, as we

have seen, Nicandrian. What is distinctive about Dionysius is the strength of the opposition
between completeness and incompleteness, between confidence and collapse; and the art and
system with which the two stances are bound together. The opposition is absent from Aratus,
who is also describing a natural whole, but claims neither comprehensiveness nor its opposite
(a single gesture at incompleteness occurs in 10367, towards the end of a list of signs of
stormy weather); and absent, too, from Nicander, who does pose at sketchiness from time to
time, but is not describing a natural whole. In Dionysius, ease typically begins sections,
aporia ends them, and ends the whole. Don Fowler had spoken of the path from ignorance to
knowledge (the addressees), but Dionysius creates a drama of knowledge (the narrators).
By playing off ease against difficulty and ultimately hopelessness, his version is more
satisfyingly complex.

Addressees and Spectators

The pupil is anonymous, but certain characteristics are implied for him by his willingness to
receive instruction and, at least negatively, by the cheerful and encouraging tone in which he
is addressed (he is not in danger of backsliding or recalcitrant). He is a stay-at home; nor is
any specific occasion envisaged for his instruction.101
There are two kinds of addressee, the notional pupil and the traveller. They perform
different functions. The notional pupil is conjured up at transitional moments, at stress-points
in the poems structure.102 The traveller has no structural purpose. He turns up here and there,
especially when the poet needs to give the poem some forward momentum: if he has to cover
a lot of ground between a and b, he may envisage the addressee, or an unidentified thirdperson traveller, speeding over the intervening distance in a boat.103 Verisimilitude is not a
100

In Il. 2.48493 the contrast is more complicated: the poet learns the names of the Greek
leaders from the Muses, and would not be able to tell of the plhqu/j who came to Troy
without their help (but in practice does not attempt the latter anyway).
101

Erren, 12634, demonstrated the incorrectness of the assumption that Aratus narrator and
addressee are together contemplating the night sky at the moment the instruction is delivered.
Laying especial stress on the tense of the imperatives (only one of which, addressing the
Muses in 18, is aorist), he showed that the narrator speaks to the addressee in general terms,
of any occasion the latter was able to view the night sky. The same is true of the Periegesis,
where no journey is underway, nor any fictionalised journey envisaged, nor even a lesson in a
classroom where teacher and pupil together pore over a map. The poems single imperative
form is present (fra/zeo, cf. p. 112).
102

The two main manifestos (1713; 8816, 889); the two if-clauses (270, 1053); all
instances of fra/zeo (p. 112).
103

(i) By boat. Second persons: 4812 (from the Libyan coast into the Adriatic); 581 (from
the island off the Loire estuary to Thule); 588 (from Thule to the Golden Island); 71920
(you could not cross the Caspian in a boat in three months). Other references to ships: 155
111

concern, because the traveller shows up at least as often, if not more often, in remote, even
semi-mythical, climes, precisely because this is where the narrator needs to cover most
ground. For two kinds of addressee, we can again compare Nicanders Theriaca, which
addresses both a theoretician (a doctor) and someone embroiled in the subject-matter (a
country-dweller at immediate risk of snake-bite). The difference is that Nicander conflates
the two kinds of person to whom his discourse is directed, so that there is no formal
distinction between the man who prepares the remedy and the one who consumes it.104 In
Dionysius, the theoretical and practical aspects of the communication are kept distinct.
Communications from the narrator to addressee fall into several broad classes which
can to some extent be generalised to other didactic authors.
Instruction is the most obvious, using imperatives, imperatival infinitives, or, more
politely, the optative; this type of address consists of requests and orders. This kind of
address in Dionysius is scarcer than in Hesiods practical and ethical didaxis, the technical
instruction of Nicander and other medical writers, or even Empedocles constant exhortations
to pay attention and keep up with his teaching;105 for the only command issued by Dionysius
is fra/zeo (to conceive or form a mental image).106 In other words, the only activity
positively required of the addressee is intellectual. Ultimately, the importance of this word in
didaxis comes from Hesiods instructions to Perses to ponder wise and practice advice,107 but
the immediate model is Nicander, from whom Dionysius derives the structural function of the
command to consider or pay heed.108 The half dozen instances of fra/zeo in the
(three days to cross the Black Sea in a o9lka/j); 492 (from the Liburnides past the Ceraunian
mountains to the Ambracian islands, nhi\ qeou/sh|), cf. 603 (ships frequently swallowed up in
the Erythraean Sea). (ii) On foot. Second persons: 923 (travelling southwards from Syria into
Nabataea); 1016 (from Armenia eastwards into Media). Third persons: 9856 (between the
Euphrates and Tigris).
104

The proem addresses Hermesianax the doctor (17), but beginning in 2134 the advice is
addressed to someone who will be sleeping outdoors. A doctor is obviously the object of
instructions to prepare and administer ingredients (e.g. Ther. 573, 877 e0mpi/saio, from
e0mpipi/skw, give to drink), but in the sections on remedies physician and victim are
sometimes conflated (e.g. 53440, 68999, 70013, 91213) or addressed one after the other
in successive remedies (91520 + 92133). In the Alexipharmaca there is a clearer formal
distinction between doctor and victim (Jacques, iii, pp. lxxvi f.).
105

31 B. 3.9 a0ll a1g a1qrei pa/sh| pala/mh|; 17.14 a0ll a1ge mu/qwn klu=qi; 21.1 a0ll a1ge
. . . de/rkeu; 62.1 nu=n d a1g . . . tw=nde klu/.
106

Jacob 1981, 57 (noting that these orders become more insistent in Blemmydes
paraphrase); id. 1982, 229.
107

Op. 367, 4034, 6878 fra/zesqai; cf. also Op. 248 katafra/zesqe, to the kings, and fr.
310.12 M.W., where the Muses make a man polufrade/onta.
108

In whom it introduces new species of snake, herbs, and preparations (Ther. 157, 438, 541,
589, 656, 759 fra/zeo, Al. 376 fra/zoio; 541 perifra/zeo, 715 perifra/zoio; Al. 74
112

Periegesis all open a fresh paragraph of the discussion (130, 331, 762, 894, 1080, 1128),
while the verb and its derivatives are also developed into further patterns, when the narrator
pledges clarity (1054 eu0frade/wj . . . au0dh/saimi), intelligibility (171 eu1fraston o0pwph/n),
and prestige that will follow from the correct understanding of his lessons (884 ei0 ga/r moi
sa/fa th/nde katafra/ssaio ke/leuqon).109 The recurrences of the verb are not coincidental;
on the contrary, they participate in the didactic drama, for the peroration of the poem denies
clarity of understanding to humans (1168 ou0k a1n tij a0rifrade/wj a0goreu=sai) and reserves
it for Zeus (1179 tw\j ga\r me/gaj e0fra/sato Zeu/j).
A second category is exhortation and encouragement. This is concentrated in two
manifestos to the addressee, in the first of which he is promised respect and esteem from the
non-expert (1713), and in the second knowledgeability if he does not neglect the teaching
(8846). From the vision Hesiod gives Perses of the rewards of hard work, via Aratus
assurances of the practical utility of his subject, and Nicanders (hardly ingenuous) promises
to Hermesianax of the esteem in which he will be held by rustics for his specialist knowledge,
the approved behaviour has now slid along a scale from practical to the purely academic.110
The last category could simply be described as neutral involvement (if you do x,
when you do x, more remotely if you were to do/go to x, you would see/find, etc.). This
especially the potential optative you might seeproves to be Dionysius speciality, and it is
worth reflecting on how this form burgeons in comparison with Nicander (who barely uses
it), let alone Hesiod (who uses it not at all). Five are verbs of motion (you might reach),
again without correlation to the plausibility of the journey;111 fifteen are verbs of vision
(thirteen positive, two negative),112 with one further example of you might hear (8334);
and four others are with miscellaneous verbs.113 Their distribution is certainly significant.
For, by drawing an addressee into the landscape, the second person potential is a powerful
means of evoking its associations for a reader. Dionysius geography works through the
evocation of literary and cultural associations, and it is no coincidence that the second person
potentials cluster round the places rich in cultural memory and literary history. Consider: they
are associated with temples and cults (257, temple of Sarapis; 371, temple of Lacinian Hera;
e0pifra/zeu). Aratus uses many words from the same group, for his world depends on the
intelligibility of the heavens and recognisability of signs (stars: 40, 76, 374, 608; seasonal and
weather-signs: 745, 10612, 1149). Counillon 1983, 19, compares Aratus ske/pteo.
109

There is a miniature dualism of knowledge and ignorance: the Phoenicians e0fra/ssanto

navigational astronomy (909), and the enemies of Dionysus defied him a0fradi/h|si (1158).
110

Hes. Op. 30610, cf. 8267; Arat. 4634, 7614; Nic. Ther. 47.

111

581 perh/saij; 592 i3koio; 6089 pera/seiaj, ei0safi/koio; 71920 perh/seiaj.

112

156 a2n . . . i1doij; 209 a0qrh/seiaj; 2567 ou0k a2n . . . i1doio; 319 a0qrh/seaij; 371 i1doio;
390 i1doij; 478 a2n i1doij; 6667 a2n . . . a0qrh/seiaj; 6701 ken . . . i1doio; 813 a2n i1doio; 826
e0si/doio; 851 a2n a0qrh/seiaj; 923 a2n i1doij; 9901 ou0k a2n . . . i1doio; 1075 a2n . . . i1doij. For
6667 and other instances, see Ilyushechkina 2010, 2234.
113

280 kixh/seai; 7801 a2n . . . te/mnoij; 839 o0no/sseai.

113

608, journey to Icarus with altars of Tauropolos; 826, Ephesus, with Artemis temple; 839,
Bacchants of Lydia; 851, Aphrodites cult at Aspendos), and settings of historical and
mythical events (209, Nasamones; 390, tomb of Cadmus and Harmonia; and 813, where the
mention of the more westerly of the two Phrygias leads directly into the flourish for Troy).
They are also associated with notable features of the landscape (592, the island of Taprobane,
with its elephants and location under Cancer; 991, the Tigris with its unparalleled swiftness).
Precious stones in their natural state fleck the landscape with brilliant dashes of colour (319,
7801, 1075; p. 153). Other examples occur with tropes of travel writing: there will be no
literal witness to the semi-legendary Thule (581), or to the Scythians around the Tanais (667,
671), but every cultured Graeco-Roman knew of Pytheas travelogue and Herodotus
ethnography, and perhaps there is a similar explanation for the presence of the motif at the
beginning of the description of Arabia Felix (923), by now another staple of literary
evocations of the fascinating east. And the tableau of singing swans on the Pactolus (834)
evokes the earlier descriptions of Callimachus and Apollonius of that same landscape.114
These optatives draw the addressee into appreciation of the spectacle which the poem
offers. The device goes back to Homer, who uses it to encourage the audience to visualise a
scene the more clearly by projecting an anonymous second- (sometimes third-) person viewer
into it.115 The Homeric narrator manipulates this participant in precisely the same ways as
Dionysius, by making him listen, see for himself and even . . . visit the actual battlefield
(de Jong 1987, 60), but also uses him to project reactions such as fear, pity, and awe onto the
audience, whereas Dionysius addressee just looks on in (presumable) delight at the
spectacle. Aratus is also much given to the use of the second person optative (which he would
appear to have added to Eudoxus prose text),116 with which he invites the addressee to
identify stars and constellations and to make inferences from weather-signs. Like Dionysius
114

Of those that remain, 156 invites the addressee to consider an analogy rather than
contemplate the actual Pontus, and 27980 concludes a geometrical description of Europe;
478 evokes the western Syrtis, and 71920 tries and fails to convert the unimaginable
vastness of the Caspian into measurable place, by failing to specify how long it would take a
ship to sail across it.
115

See de Jong 1987, 548, 60, 98: she gives five instances in narrative, two in direct speech.
The second person optative is positive only in Il. 3.220 (the only instance not set on the
battlefield) and 15.697.
116

Arat. 745 kefalh=| ge me\n a1krh| | ske/pteo pa\r kefalh\n 0Ofiou/xeon ~ Eudoxus ap.
Hipparchus 1.2.7 (F 19 Lasserre) plhsi/on d e0sti\ th=j tou/tou kefalh=j h9 tou = 0Ofiou/xou
kefalh/; Arat. 96 a0mfote/roisi de\ possi\n u3po ske/ptoio Bow/tew ~ Eudoxus ap.
Hipparchus 1.2.5 (F 25 Lasserre) u9po\ de\ tou\j po/daj h9 Parqe/noj e0sti/n. See Kidd, 16: As
far as we can judge from the fragments, Eudoxus gives a purely objective description of what
is there, whereas A. describes the stars and their movement entirely from the point of view of
the observer. Of course, if Martin is correct (p. 28 n. 3) that Eudoxus as quoted by
Hipparchus is secondary to the Phaenomena, then this is evidence only of what the
paraphrast left out.
114

he specialises in verbs of seeing, though in many cases they also have a structural function,
which does not seem to be the case in the Periegesis.117
The high profile of the internal spectator advertises what is already quite obvious, the
intensely visual character of the Periegesis. Rhetorical theory reflected at length on enargeia,
vividness, that quality which brings a scene before the minds eye as if the eyes themselves
could see it.118 One word that dominates these discussions is o1yij.119 Ancient theorists of
memory also made the point that sight was the most penetrating of the senses; if we wish to
remember something, we must enhance its visual qualities, or convert it into something that
can be seen.120 Links between the rhetorical discussions of the production of enargeia and the
Periegesis techniques are possible but remain speculativethe very frequent use of
comparisons,121 the almost ecphrastic quality of some of the tableau descriptions, perhaps the
use of repetitional devices,122 and above all the use of the anonymous second-person
117

Recognition of stars and constellations: 142 ou0k a2n . . . e1ti tekmh/raio (Voss: codd.
e0pitekmh/raio, e0pi\ tekmh/raio); 229 a1n . . . e0pitekmh/raio; observing their rising and
settings: 573, 710 ken i1doio; making inferences from signs: 802 ke . . . tekmh/raio. In an
emotive account of a storm: 2889 ou1te ken . . . peirh/neiaj. Rounding off the description
of the northern and southern constellations: 451 ke qhh/saio; and to open the description of
the five planets: 456 ou0k a2n . . . e0pitekmh/raio. The section on signs from the moon is ringed
off by 782 and 818 ke pu/qoio, and 1154 ken . . . tekmh/raio brings the whole poem to an end.
Other optatives which lack a1n/ken (76, 96, 1038, 1129) could be construed as cupitive (polite
requests) or potential (Erren, 130 n. 1, and for potentials 131), just as some of Dionysius
potentials lack a particle (209, 319; manuscripts are divided at 371, 390, 826). Nicander, in
contrast, makes little use of the device; see only Ther. 234 (with the ease motif).
118

Lausberg, 81019; H. Homeyer, Lukian: Wie man Geschichte schreiben soll (Munich,
1965), 2689; G. Zanker, Enargeia in the Ancient Criticism of Poetry, RhM2 124 (1981),
297311; C. Calame, Quand dire cest faire voir: lvidence dans la rhtorique antique,
tudes de lettres, sr. 4, 14/4 (1991), 322; H.-F. Mueller, Images of Excellence: Visual
Rhetoric and Political Behavior, in I. Gallo and B. Scardigli (eds.), Teoria e prassi politica
nelle opere di Plutarco (Naples, 1995) 287300, at 2889; M. Leigh, Lucan: Spectacle and
Engagement (Oxford, 1997), 1015, with bibliography in 10 n. 5; Webb 1997a, 11720;
Fantuzzi and Hunter, 443; Selter 2010, 118. On the closely related notion of phantasia, see J.
Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer (Cambridge, 1995), 268; Webb 2009, 10730.
119

Examples in Zanker (n. above), 298: Hermogenes, ii. 16.1112 Sp., Anon. Seguerian. i.
369.1415, 371.1012 Sp.; cf. also Dion. Hal. Lys. 7 (o9ra=n), S bT Il. 6.467, S bT 16.294a.
120

Cic. de Or. 2.357; see LeemanPinksterWisse ad loc.; see also Purves, 21718, for
Aristotle on fanta/smata or mental images.
121

The Homeric scholia find e0na/rgeia in similes, whether in individual details or in the
simile as a whole (S T Il. 12.27886b, S T Il. 13.475; S bT 15.3814; S bT Il. 16.710; S
bT Il. 23.6924; S Genev. Il. 2.144).
122

Ps.-Demetr. Peri\ e9rmhnei/aj, 21112 (iii. p. 308.716 Sp.): h9 dilogi/a e0na/rgeian poiei=.
115

spectator,123 for precisely this is recognised by ps.-Longinus in a chapter reflecting on the

conversion of a0koh/ into o1yij. Citing, first, a Homeric battlefield-description (Il. 15.6978),
next Aratus evocation of a winter storm at sea (287), and then a passage from Herodotus
which, although it contains future indicatives rather than optatives, is nevertheless a good
example of the use of the motif in geography (2.29.26), he asks:

o(ra|~j, w} e9tai=re, w(j paralabw&n sou th_n yuxh_n dia_ tw~n to&pwn a1gei th_n a)koh_n o1yin
poiw~n; pa&nta de\ ta_ toiau~ta pro_j au)ta_ a)pereido&mena ta_ pro&swpa e0p' au)tw~n
i3sthsi to_n a)kroath_n tw~n e0nergoume/nwn . . . e0mpaqe/stero&n te au)to_n a3ma kai\
prosektikw&teron kai\ a)gw~noj e1mplewn a)potele/seij, tai=j ei0j e9auto_n prosfwnh&sesin
e0cegeiro&menon (de Subl. 26.23).124
Do you observe, my friend, how he leads you in imagination through the region and makes
you see what you hear? All such cases of direct personal address place the hearer on the very
scene of action . . . You will make your hearer more excited and more attentive, and full of
active participation, if you keep him on the alert by words addressed to himself (transl. Rhys
Roberts).

Ancient theory recognised the very close link between enargeia and ekphrasis,125 and their
frequent use of the you might think topos contributes to both the Periegesis and
Phaenomena,126 although neither is a formal ekphrasis, an ecphrastic quality.
But insofar as a periplous or periegesis describes a journey with forward momentum
through time as well as space, it also bears some similarity to narrativea narrative which is
continually slowed down or paused for description when a lived-in space or a place is
reached.127 As in narrative itself, it is easier in theory than in practice to distinguish between
the forward movement, or geographical narrative, and pauses or descriptions, for the
naming of a place inevitably calls forth evocation of some sort, however brief. Some of these
evocations barely retard the journey (epithets, appositional phrases, syntactically subordinate
asides); quite different are the extensive chorographies and ethnographies which evoke
123

3412 n. Many lines are echoed which, in the original, had an internal focaliser (e.g. 4,
430, 555 and Od. 10.195; 109 and Ap. Rhod. 4.12578; 977 n.).
124

Dubel, 25962. She notes that Herodotus uses the vivid second-person address precisely
for that part of the Niles course which he himself has not seen.
125

Zanker (n. 118), 298; Dubel, 2524. Similar definitions of ekphrasis in terms of enargeia
in Hermogenes, ii. 16.1213 Sp., Aphthonius, ii. 46.1516 Sp. (36.212 Rabe), Theon, ii. p.
118.78 Sp., Nicolaus, iii. 491.267 Sp.
126

M. Semanoff, Astronomical Ecphrasis, in C. Cusset (ed.), Musa docta: recherches sur la

posie scientifique dans lAntiquit (Saint-Etienne, 2006), 15777 (though he does not
discuss Aratus use of the second person).
127

Clarke 1999, 37.

116

permanent physical realities or the settled habits of a population, and the tableaux (such as
the springtime scenes in Delos and Lydia128) which have a non-informative, but decorative,
character. These pauses need not take place in literally lived-in spaces, for the tableau of the
frozen Tanais (66878) is of a place in which beasts die and which humans shun. Rather, it is
lived-in in the sense that the wilds of Scythia have a long history in the imaginations of
classical writers.
In her studies of enargeia, Ruth Webb has explored how ancient rhetors sought to
conjure up mental images in their audienceeither memories of what they had personally
experienced, or mental images that were vivid because they were plausible or typical, and
that were believed to evoke a standard response.129 There is a slippage between mental
images produced by real visual impressions and those produced by words;130 a writer like
Dionysius, whose stock in trade is literary topoi, uses words to evoke impressions created by
earlier words, although theory converts them into the visual medium and deals with them as
things seen. It is a second-order vision, in which the addressee, though a stay-at-home, is
promised clear mental vision of continents and countries which the poet has not seen either
(171, 1053).131 The theorists tend to see vividness as a means of arousing emotion, especially
pity, indignation, or fear, but for Dionysius the desired response is presumably neither pity
nor indignation, but rather calm intellectual pleasure in the contemplation of a varied and
mostly beautiful world. Nonetheless, similar means are applicable, and Dionysius goes about
his task, not by conjuring circumstantial detail, but by evoking cultural expectation in the
form of topoi. In this context the appeal to the Muses is an appeal to literary tradition; it
makes autopsy and first-hand experience irrelevant.
The ancient handbooks called Progymnasmata not only recognised literal descriptions
of place (islands, harbours, cities, meadows, even desert) as a special category of
ecphrasis,132 but also used periegesis as a metaphor in their very definitions of it.133 The
128

5279; 8335. On treatments of the seasons, especially spring, in ancient authors, see M.
Fuhrmann, Die Vier Jahreszeiten bei den Griechen und Rmern, in Die Vier Jahreszeiten
im 18. Jahrhundert (Heidelberg, 1986), 917; as he notes, the authors of the Progymnasmata
(n. 125) recognise descriptions of the seasons as a category of ecphrasis (e0kfra/seij xro/nwn
or kairw=n).
129

Webb 1997a, 1997b, 2009, esp. 87106; cf. Selter 2010, 125.

130

Vasaly, 909.

131

Cf. 513, 1152 qhhto/j; p. 125 n. 163 on verbs of appearance. On vision words in Mela,
see Brodersen 1995, 88.
132

Hermogenes, ii. 16.1819 Sp.; Aphthonius, ii. 46.23 Sp. (37.7 Rabe), with a sample
ecphrasis of the Alexandrian acropolis; Theon, ii. 118.1820 Sp.; Nicolaus, iii. 492.12 Sp.;
Lausberg 819; Vasaly, 1920.
133

Texts cited in n. 125. Theons version begins e1kfrasi/j e0sti lo/goj perihghmatiko/j;
the others follow closely, except that Nicolaus substitutes a0fhghmatiko/j; Dubel, 25464;
Webb 2009, 52, 545, 75.
117

Periegesis is a literal leading-around which also employs the rhetorical means to achieve
enargeia envisaged by the theorists of description. It does so by little glimpses of loci
amoeni, and bijou evocations of topics recognised by rhetorical theory (springtime, meadows,
cities); by the formal device of an anonymous second person who looks on with emotional
and/or intellectual engagement; and even by the ecphrastic opener e1sti de/ tij, which,
through its sheer familiarity in geographical and other contexts, induces the sense that
narrator is about to linger over a significant and culturally familiar scene.134

Authors and Narrators

Christian Jacob has drawn attention to the concealment of the authors (as opposed to the
narrators) identity.135 At first glanceand in practice, for about the first 1750 years of the
poems existencethe text permits very little inference about the person who actually wrote
it. That changed with the discovery of the acrostichs naming him and Hadrian.136 Eustathius
had already drawn his own conclusions about the somewhat unusual prior placement of Libya
among all the continents,137 but the discovery that the poet was an Alexandrian then
permitted the realisation that that city has been situated precisely on the main lines of latitude
and longitude (1718 n.). At the same time the narrator is somewhat more revealing about
himselfas a roving eye, if not as a traveller; someone whose political allegiance is to Rome
(355 e0mw=n me/gan oi]kon a0na/ktwn). There are two interesting transferences here. First, a line
that Callimachus had applied to the Carneia at Cyrene (Hymn 2.93) has been transferred to
the Serapeum at Alexandria (2567): this borrows both from an Alexandrian poet to make a
point about Alexandria, and from an Alexandrian poets tribute to his homeland in a tribute to
Dionysius own native city. On the other hand, the oi]kon a0na/ktwn in the Callimachean
134

541, 987, 1152; cf. also e1sti de/ toi, 372 and 606. For geographical e1sti de/ tij see Livrea
on Ap. Rhod. 4.282; Latin examples of est locus in Lausberg 819 (p. 366). Homeric
descriptions of places introduced with this motif (Janko on Il. 13.32) eventually connect back
to the narrative with relative pronoun, e1nqa, or o3qi; Dionysius uses the same means to
reconnect with the geographical itinerary in 988 h[j, 1164 e1nqa (where the length of the
digression is paralleled by e.g. Od. 13.96113); in 545, kei=qi connects instead with a myth.
135

Jacob 1981, 301; 1982, 2236.

136

By Leue. For the acrostich in 11234, spelling out DIONUSIOU TWN ENTOS
FAROU, the best overall parallel is with the iambic geographical poem of Dionysius son of
Calliphon (123 DIONUSIOU TOU KALLIFWNTOS). In other cases of self-naming, the
genitive depends syntactically on another noun (Theogn. 223, e1ph; Hdt. 1.1.1, i9stori/h); we
cannot tell what, if anything, governed the genitive acrostich CLE 271 IVLII FAVSTINI M(also Hadrianic). The use of ethnicon instead of patronymic is easily paralleled in
historiography (as well as in Theognis, loc. cit.): Hecataeus, FGrH 1 F 1, Hdt. 1.1.1, Thuc.
1.1.1, App. Praef. 62. On self-naming formulae, see J. Marincola, Authority and Tradition in
Ancient Historiography (Cambridge, 1997), 2715.
137

Eustathius on 7 (GGM ii. 219.17, cf. 215.67).

118

original for l. 355 had referred to the Ptolemies in Alexandria138but Dionysius has
transferred the phrase to Rome. Religious identification has been shifted to Alexandria, but
political affiliation to the imperial capital.
This is not much, though it is more than Aratusone of Dionysius main models
reveals about himself. It did not have to be this way. In theory, the author/narrator could have
identified himself at Alexandria, just as Mela and Strabo both do at the appropriate point in
their itineraries.139 But such a declaration would have fallen foul of his otherwise invariable
practice of never associating descriptions of cities with human individuals (as opposed to
gods); not even a my city escapes him at this point.140 Alternatively, he could have
identified himself in a sphragis at the beginning or end of the poem, like his model Nicander.
From Nicander Dionysius learned the technique of the name-acrostich, but Nicander
combines this with a lively narratorial presence and with self-identification in the sphragis of
the Theriaca (957, cf. Al. 629, without name-acrostich). The result is that the tension between
revelation and concealment has no precedent in the earlier poet. Moreover, Nicander has no
divided loyalties between a place of birth and a political centre: he self-identifies as a Clarian
in both poems (author and narrator come togethera technique not found in Dionysius).
It is curious to pursue the similarities with Strabo for a little way. Strabo, too, reveals
his presence in his work in different ways and on different levels, both overt and implicit.141
On the one hand, he speaks explicitly about his background in Pontus; he also refers overtly
to events of Roman history, while his whole world-picture has been informed by Roman
claims to universalism.142 On the other hand, his cultural roots in intellectual circles in Asia
Minor are betrayed (rather than declared) by the phrase kaq h9ma==j, which he uses especially
for writers, rhetoricians, philosophers, and poets who are his peers.143 This is both similar and
dissimilar to Dionysius. With Dionysius a distinction between author and (fictive) narratorial
persona imposes itself at once; no such distinction imposes itself with Strabo, with whom
more importance attaches to the difference between explicit and implicit self-disclosure.
Dionysius conceals the explicit references to himself and his city; Strabos references to
138

Fr. 112.8 H. (215 M.), cf. also fr. 228.9 Pf. a9mete/ra] basi/leia frou/da, where, if
Pfeiffers supplement is right, Callimachus is among the collectivity who bewail our
sovereign; for Appian, still, the Lagidae are my kings (Praef. 39 toi=j e0moi=j basileu=si).
139

Mela 2.96 . . . atque unde nos sumus Tingentera; Strab. 12.3.15 th=j h9mete/raj patri/doj,
12.3.38 h9 h9mete/ra xw/ra h9 tw=n 0Amase/wn, polu\ pasw=n plei/sth kai\ a0ri/sth, 12.3.39 h9
d h9mete/ra po/lij kei=tai . . ., e0n th=| h9mete/ra| xw/ra|.
140

Call. Hymn 2.65, picked up by ps.-Opp. Cyn. 2.127 (as noted by Hollis 1994, 155).

141

Clarke 1997.

142

Clarke 1999, especially 294336.

143

Clarke 1997, 108: It is striking that over two-thirds of the occurrences of the phrase are
found in Book 1215, dealing with Asia Minor, particularly the Hellenized coast. It is even
more striking that of these, two-thirds are in connection with the intellectual activity of the
area, rather than with political events.
119

homeland, biography, and family connections are overt. However, where they stand
comparison is that local and Roman identities are simultaneously present in both texts. In
Strabo, the author/narrators frankness about his personal history, and his awareness of the
overwhelming fact of Roman power, coexist with his felt affiliation with the intellectuals of
Asia Minor. In the Periegesis, not only does the authors acrostich exist alongside the
narrators enthusiasm for Rome, but the presentation of Rome itselfa catalogic flourish,
with the emphasis on royalty and wealthcontrasts with his presentation of other cultural
centres, and especially with Alexandria itself, with its richness (by Dionysius standards) of
descriptive detail. Rome may have wealth, but it has no temples, no holiness; contrast the
Alexandrian temple of Sinopitan Zeus, furnished with gold and a sense of holiness that
exceeds all other temples; contrast too Romes barrenness of mythology with the way
Alexandrias landmarks are steeped in learned Greek mythological tradition. It is not despite,
but because of, the constraints of the catalogue form and the extreme selectivity imposed on
the narrator that different attitudes are readily implied by the way he chooses to illustrate and
describe his material.

3. B IRD S -E YE V IS ION
Travel is mental travel. I had always suspected this.
(Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King, ch. 12.)

If enargeia is indissociable from o1yij, we must now ask how the world is viewed in the
Periegesis.
The narrator implies the perspective of someone capable of overlooking vast spaces.
He is sufficiently distanced from his subject to be able to sweep from one very large
landscape feature to another, whether we are to imagine him looking down from a height or
contemplating a map. For instance, Dodona is opposite the Thracian mountain Haemus
(429 a1nta) only from a very wide-angled perspective, and, looking eastwards from Persia,
the eastern end of the continent can only be said to be close (1081 e0ggu/qi) from the point of
view of someone standing, say, on the moonor looking at a map. The narrators gaze over
this map is free-ranging. Only very rarely is there a sense that he is looking from the
Mediterranean outwards, that his regard is anchored in familiar classical territory.144 For the
most part his eye seems free to wander, and orientation, where it is implied, is with regard to
the direction of travel rather than from some fixed and stable viewpoint (whether within the
classical world or from some elevated gods-eye view). The scale, and indeed type, of the
map varies. Sometimes it takes in entire continents, but it may also zoom in on details,
whether natural features such as rivers, lakes, and promontories, or man-made artefacts (a
temple on a promontory; a piece of colourful silk). It is by turns synoptic and particularistic.

144

For possible exceptions, see 52, 897 nn.

120

This birds-eye vision is not unique or new in a geographical poem.145 Aristeas flight
in the spirit as far as the Issedones in the far north is described in the same terms;146 it is a
shame that the fragments are not extensive enough to show how the focalisation worked in
practice. Combining geography with cosmology, Eratosthenes in his Hermes, and perhaps
also Varro of Atax in his Chorographia, showed the god Hermes contemplating the earth
from a point at which the whole cosmos was visible; the latter work covered not only zone
theory, but contained a more cartographical description of the known worlds surface
stretched out (exporrecta) between the ocean and Mediterranean.147 There are several
moments in the Argonautica where characters within the poem have visions from a height or
in the imagination, though perhaps the most interesting from Dionysius point of view are
those occasions where the focus is that of the main narrator, or that of an internal narrator
describing a map.148 But nothing compares with the scale of the Periegesis, or with the
variability of its perspective. The latter must be connected with the fact that the poem evokes
a number of traditions of geographical writing, each with its own way of looking at a subject.
At its most austere, the approach is geometrical, deriving ultimately from
Eratosthenes (p. 14). Dionysius only occasionally reflects this approach (references to
meridians and lines of latitude in 11, 18, 313, cf. 5045); when he does, the language is of
145

Ilyushechkina 2010, 556; Eustathius, GGM ii. 210.11, speaks of the poet pterw|~ lo&gou
kou~foj ai0ro&menoj. For the view from a high place as one of five possible imaginative
modes for a Roman seeking to conceptualise the landscape, see N. Purcell, The Creation of
Provincial Landscape: The Roman Impact on Ciasalpine Gaul, in T. Blagg and M. Millett
(eds.), The Early Roman Empire in the West (Oxford, 1990), 729, at 910. Building on this,
T. Murphy, Pliny The Elders Natural History (Oxford, 2004), 1313, suggests that Plinys
Natural History uses the view from on high in triumphalist vein; but it is not characteristic
of his geographical descriptions (except insofar as it is implied by e.g. shape comparisons
such as at 3.43). Passages where the narrator is more emotionally engaged with his material
are perhaps likelier to imply an observers viewpoint (3.60 protenduntur, consurgunt,
sternuntur), though not necessarily from an elevation.
146

Maxim. Tyr. Dial. X. 2f h9 de\ yuxh/, e0kdu=sa tou= sw/matoj, e0plana=to e0n tw=| ai0qe/ri,
o1rniqoj di/khn.
147

Frr. 111, 113 Hollis = frr. 1516 Courtney (exporrecta is fr. 113.2/fr. 16.2). Courtney
takes the subject of vidit in the first fragment to be Apollo, but see Hollis 2007, 1845, for the
suggestion that the subject is Hermes, as in Eratosthenes fr. 16 P. Indeed, Ilyushechkina
2010, 413, suggests that the Hermes referred to in the second acrostich represents the
poets self-identification with the winged god who acts as a guide, and in taking flight looks
down on the earth from on high (cf. Eustathius, GGM ii. 210.1836).
148

Ap. Rhod. 1.111216 (the view from the top of Dindymum), 2.5416 (a travellers
imagination of the landscape), 2.97284 (an overview of the course of the Thermodon),
3.1606 (Eros descent to earth from Olympus), 3.30913 (Aeetes journey to Tyrrhenia on
the chariot of the sun), 4.28293 (Sesostris map); cf. Elliger, 31416 (Dindymum);
Thalmann, 36, Klooster, 656, 6970.
121

straight lines (11 loco\n e0pi\ grammh=|si, 313 o0rqo\n e0pi\ grammh=|) and their extension (18
sh=ma d u9perte/tatai, cf. Strabos use of dih/kei throughout 2.5.36, 389 ~ Eratosthenes III
A, 1821 Berger), and there is no internal spectator. What are we looking at when we are
asked to contemplate a world marked (however approximately) with grid-lines? It is
suggestive that when Strabo expounds his view of the geometry of the sphere, with the great
circles and lines of latitude and longitude marked in, and the place of the oi0koume/nh on the
surface of the world as a whole, he envisages the construction of a large terrestrial globe, like
one produced by Crates, or at least the representation of the world on a plane surface.149 So, if
only very occasionally, Dionysius evokes Hellenistic mathematical geography, for which
globes and large-scale maps were an appropriate form of visualisation.
Such maps were doubtless schematic, examples of the world cartography which
Ptolemy distinguished from regional cartography (p. 18). If we were to give them a
cartographical context, this is also what we should envisage for Dionysius repeated
comparisons of countries and continents to geometrical and non-geometrical figures,150 in
order to give a simple, readily graspable overview. Geometrical schematism is used at the
beginning of continents (p. 25 n. 100), while homely comparisons are used for the world
itself, for continents (Libya), and for the situs of regions below the level of continent (Spain,
the Peloponnese). Both kinds of comparison present a simplified overview before a more
chorographic, detailed, representational approach becomes appropriate. As Strabo explains,
pantaxou~ de\ a)nti\ tou~ gewmetrikw~j to_ a(plw~j kai\ o(losxerw~j i9kano&n. me/geqoj me\n
ou}n i9kano&n e0stin, a2n to_ me/giston ei1ph|j mh~koj kai\ pla&toj . . . sxh~ma d', a2n tw~n
gewmetrikw~n tini\ sxhma&twn ei0ka&sh|j, w(j th_n Sikeli/an trigw&nw|, h2 tw~n a1llwn
gnwri/mwn tini\ sxhma&twn, oi[on th_n 0Ibhri/an bu&rsh|, th_n Pelopo&nnhson plata&nou
fu&llw|: o3sw| d' a2n mei=zon h|} to_ temno&menon, tosw|~de kai\ o(losxereste/raj pre/poi a2n
poiei=sqai ta_j toma&j.151

In every case, in lieu of a geometrical definition, a simple and roughly outlined definition is
sufficient. So, as regards a countrys size, it is sufficient if you state its greatest length and
breadth . . . and as regards shape, if you liken a country to one of the geometrical figures
(Sicily, for example, to a triangle), or to one of the other well-known figures (for instance,

149

Strab. 2.5.10 [= partly Eratosthenes III A, 25 Berger]. For Crates map (fr. 6 Mette = F
134 Broggiato), see Schlachter, 545; Aujac 1981, 67 and 1987, 1634; O. A. W. Dilke,
Greek and Roman Maps (London, 1985), 645, and further bibliography cited by Broggiato;
for terrestrial globes in antiquity, Schlachter, 547; Aujac 1987, 171; B. Zimmermann, BNP
s.v. Cartography, II. Globe; Radt on Strab. II p. 116,23.
150

p. 25 and n. 100; 1813 (Libya as a leopard-skin) is not a shape-comparison, but illustrates

the pattern of the surface as seen from above.
151

2.1.30. On Strabos own liking for diagrammatisation, see van Paassen, 6.

122

Iberia to an oxhide, the Peloponnesus to a leaf of a plane-tree). And the greater the territory
you cut into sections, the more rough may be the sections you make. (Transl. H. L. Jones.)

Strabo and Ptolemy both speak in similar terms, though Ptolemy speaks expressly in terms of
cartography and Strabo does not. For Strabo, simple shape-comparisons are applied to natural
wholes, or to natural parts of a whole, like limbs in an articulated body,152 and the bigger the
area involved the more approximate the comparison; Ptolemy also uses the image of human
anatomy to explain the difference between world cartography (which can be compared to the
image of a head) and regional cartography (like the image of an ear or an eye). In any case,
these comparisons are approximate, which, given the constraints on the ancient ability to
conceptualise wide areas, is all they can be; and they imply a synoptic regard, the ability to
look down on a design and take it all in at once.
The Periegesis uses many verbs of extent. Some are specifically poetic, while others
have a background in both poetry and prose.153 They nevertheless contrast with, say, the
outlook of Strabos hypotyposis, which is more inclined to say that one thing connects with
another, or is bounded by it; Strabo does not imply the perspective of one who overlooks it
from a height or on a scale from which the whole can be taken it at a glance. The perspective
may be influenced by, and certainly lends itself to borrowing from, Aratus, whose narrator
directs the gaze of the addressee to something spread out at large in front of him:154 the verbs
parape/ptatai,155 (e0k)teta/nustai,156 parts of e3lkesqai,157 and a0natre/xei158 imply the full
152

Jacob 1991a, 116.

153

a0nape/ptatai (109, 186), of geographical extent also in Ap. Rhod. 4.1258, but also
found in prose; Livrea ad loc. cites Xen. Oec. 9.4, Plut. Fab. 6.2. te/tatai (20) of spatial
extent in Hes. Op. 549, and in geography in Strab. 2.5.29; e0kte/tatai (40, 308, 332, 468,
759) of spatial extent in Posidipp. 8.4, 11.5, 115.4 A.B. (of a harbour), and in geography in
Strab. 2.4.7, 6.4.1, 7.1.4, 10.5.15, cf. 16.2.42 (parekte/tatai); Ptol. 6.2.6, 6.15.3.
154

Greaves, 138. This feature is not absent from Eudoxus, whether Aratus source or a later
prose redaction (p. 28 n.3): cf. Hipparch. 1.2.3, 1.4.3 parate/tatai.
155

98, 146, 339, 820, 1107; the only earlier occurrence of this form is in Arat. 312
parape/ptatai 1Ornij (with an indication of direction by compass-point, as in 1107); cf.
Greaves, 1389. The simplex pe/ptatai (523, 540) is used of extent (the upper air spread out
over Olympus) in Od. 6.45.
156

75, 91, 772, 812, 830. Arat. 202 uses this form (as well as 284 ta/nutai) of a constellation
spread out in the sky, but cf. already Od. 9.116 (of an island spread out outside a harbour); a
voyage extends in space and time in Ap. Rhod. 4.1583. The perfect participle tetanusme/noj
(174, 225, 302, 311, 379, generally with a compass-point orientation or an indication of
direction) seems to be a specialisation of Dionysius; later recurrences in Triphiod. 143,
Nonnus (passim), AP 16.266.3, lack the geographical setting.
157

Of sea-water: 76, 103, 199 e3lketai; 119, 722 e9lko/menoj; 422 e9lkome/nh. Of the ocean:
1163 e3lketai. Of rivers: 785 e9lko/menai, 988 e3lketai. Of land: 438, 972, 1065 e9lkome/nh,
123

range of perspectives implied by Aratus narrator, describing things simply spread out, or
being subjected to traction, or in an active state of motion. Although this time it is harder to
pinpoint specific influences, Dionysius penchant for describing the courses of rivers from
the mountains to the sea (p. 146), which he indulges to the point of formalism, may be
connected with the same feature in Apolloniusabove all, with the set-piece accounts of the
Thermodon (2.97284, from which Dionysius certainly borrows in 228) and the Ister (4.282
93). The latter is described both ecphrastically (4.282 e1sti de/ tij) and as it purportedly
appears on an ancient, inscribed map:159 the wide-angled view and the mode of visual
presentation both accord with Dionysius tastes.
In his introduction to the poem, Eustathius elaborates on the idea of an aerial
journey.160 Borne aloft on the wings of his poem, the poet takes in the world in a birds-eye
view, like Zeus geodesic eagles, like Daedalus guiding his pupil Icarus (this time with a
happy ending), or like Hermes with his rod. The whole performance gains stature and
momentum until the heavens fall within its compass, like Homers Eris walking with her feet
on the ground but her head in the sky. This reading is obviously influenced by the notion of
rapture by the Muses in 71517; also by Eustathius own wide reading, which would have
acquainted him some of the traditions (philosophical, magical, mystical) in which visions
from high-up vantage points played a role. Dionysius does indeed imply an elevated

1148 e9lkome/nhn; 1086 e3lketai. Also of geometrical figures being drawn in one direction or
another: 244, 622 e9lko/menon. This sense of e3lkesqai appears rare. The verb is used of water
in motion by Lyc. Al. 702, where rivers e3lkontai throughout Italy (M. Schneider, 38), but
one suspects that Dionysius has been equally, if not more, influenced by Aratus frequent use
of e3lkesqai of constellations: passive in 20 e3lkontai; 342, 348, 443, 727 e3lketai; 628
e0fe/lketai; middle in 695 e0fe/lketai, 708 e0fe/lkontai; active in 604 e3lkwn, 708 e3lkei.
Dionysius uses it mostly with expressions of direction, usually cardinal points, whereas
Aratus uses it for movement across the horizon (443, 628, 727), or in variations of the conceit
that the constellations are being drawn across the sky (695, by Night itself; 604, 708, by
another constellation). But occasionally both authors use the verb without implying
directionality or inclination towards (Dionysius 76, 1163, and perhaps Arat. 20, with Kidd ad
loc.).
158

809, v.l. e0pitre/xei; see n.

159

Janni 1984, 35 and n. 43; Williams, 1234; Meyer 2008, 282 n. 84; Clare, 12631;
Thalmann, 67, 43. While it contains routes for travellers (4.2801 o9doi\ . . .
e0pinissome/noisin), it also depicts the course of the river. In other words, it seems to combine
two different modes: the linear list of stopping-places and the two-dimensional representation
of a portion of the earths surface, more in the style of what Meyer calls speculative
scientific geography.
160

GGM ii. 210.9211.3. See Jacob 1981, 2632 (and passim), 1983, 1985; Leo, 1545.
124

perspective.161 But one can go too far. There is no sharp distinction between an aerial and a
terrestrial point of view in the poem;162 rather, Dionysius adopts the point of view that suits
him.
The shape comparisons imply a static point of view. A moving one need not be
implied by verbs of extent: the viewer could be flying over the outspread landscape on the
back of an eagle, but could also be surveying it on a map, and when Aratus narrator uses the
same verbs he is not in motion. But motion begins to be implied by the hodologic principle,
for itineraries where one place succeeds another; and it obviously underlies 76596, which is
taken from Phineus review of what is in store for the Argonauts as they coast along the
southern shore of the Pontus. In that light, it is interesting that Dionysius so systematically
omits headlands and promontories, though a periplous naturally focuses on landmarks which
will be obvious to mariners: the point of view is still in motion, but with the omission of
coastal features, and additional information about the courses of rivers, the perspective is no
longer from the sea looking landwards, but a more general review of the landscape.
Motion is also implied by verbs of appearance, of coming-into-viewwhether from a
terrestrial perspective, as the sailor sweeps round the toe of Italy and Cape Zephyrium comes
into view (364 parafai/netai), or enters the Adriatic and sees Illyria on his right (96
faei/netai); or from an apparently aerial one, as (say) the gaze sweeps northwards from
Thessaly and Macedonia and strikes the snowy peaks of Thracian Haemus (428
fai/nontai).163 The perspective of a terrestrial traveller is implied still more strongly (whence
the untenability of a sharp distinction between aerial and terrestrial viewpoints) by datives of
interest, a fixture of the terrestrial itinerary.164 Yet the care Dionysius has taken to focalise his
161

Note also that 4 and 430 a0pei/ritoj e0stefa/nwtai echo Od. 10.195, where the speaker is
describing the view from a height; as in the Odyssean original, 4 and 555 e0stefa/nwtai
concern an island or islands.
162

Contra Jacob 1981, 27, who claims that the aerial view soppose radicalement au point de
vue terrestre et limit du voyageur ou du navigateur, tel quil est mis en scne dans les
itinraires terrestres et les priples. By combining the view from above with that of the
surface traveller, Dionysius in fact employs perspectives which, in Purvess analysis, are
already implied by both Homeric poems (325, and 6670): in the Iliad the view from above
is associated above all with gods (e.g. Il. 13.36), though only partial and incompletely
realised, while the Odyssey accentuates the concept of the path.
163

fai/nesqai/faei/nesqai: 36, 96, 259, 361, 428, 449, 451, 493, 512, 849, 977.
a0nafai/nesqai: 295, 488, 536. parafai/nesqai: 364, 963. Mountains and islands are
particularly often the subject. Compare Ap. Rhod. 1.11216, where wide prospects
embracing mountains, rivers, coastlines, towns, and plains open up to the Argonauts as they
ascend mount Dindymum (proufai/net i0de/sqai: fai/neto d); V. Aen. 3.275 aperitur, of
the appearance of a temple on a promontory as the Trojans approach by ship. Verbs of extent
might also be included here, especially when accompanied by expressions meaning next to
or after, as if that prospect is newly opening up (e.g. 109, 146, 308, 430, 468, 820, 1107).
164

958, 4923, 53940, 54950.

125

account emerges from comparison with certain prose periploi whose authors, though they pay
much closer attention to what a mariner might actually see, and though they undertake
manageable (as opposed to gappy or fantastic) journeys, nevertheless do not address the
traveller, let alone imagine the listed landmarks presenting themselves to his gaze.165 This
kind of itinerary, and the viewpoints associated with it, are more prevalent in the first half of
the poem and in Greek Asia Minorareas familiar enough to reviewed by periplous; less
familiar territory is more often treated by chorographic survey (Persia, Parthia, Media, India).
Perhaps that is why verbs of coming into view are not absent, but considerably less
prominent, in the second half of the poem.
The narrators periegetical vision where his inspiration bears him aloft (71517) has
its place, a glamorous moment at the climax of the narrative or drama of the poet and the
Muses. But Dionysius designs its proper place in the poem for each mode of visualisation he
employs. He may be a geometer or a visionary, or may shift the focus onto the traveller who
winds in and out of a sinuous coastline. Its eclecticism makes it hard to see how the poem
could really be a rendering into words of a map. Like everything else in this text, it is a
composite, a hybrid not representable on any map that antiquity could have conceived of.166
A text can combine delineation of the part with a sketch of the whole, whereas, if we return
to Ptolemys distinction between world and regional chorography, a world map could not,
and was not intended to, represent shapes, outlines, and tiny details all at the same time.
Perhaps the unmappability of the Periegesis is the more paradoxical because the enargeia
effect is so strong. Indeed, quite apart from practical problems, such as the fact that
Dionysius does not seem to have decided which way his world is oriented,167 the enargeia
which the poet lavishes on his subject takes the place of mere two-dimensional
representation.168

Landscape in Motion

165

For example, ps.-Scylax prefers the third-person dative of interest (e.g. 63, 68.5, 69) to
second-person; he standardly registers sights with e0sti/, ei0si/n, or e1xontai. However, second
persons (e.g. 273, 2801 pleu/seij; imperatives, e.g. 16 et al. kata/gou, 37, 46, 146
para/plee, 117, 281 ple/e) are fairly common in the Stadiasmus Maris Magni, and for verbs
of appearance note 30 parapleu/saj w9j stadi/ouj l/ o1yei paremfai/nousan a1kran
u9yhlh\n kai\ mega/lhn; 117 ei]ta e0kfanh/setai/ soi . . . Nea/polij; 273 o3qen o9ra=tai to\
Sku/llaion.
166

Though maps intended to illustrate it were later produced: Jacob 1981, 612; Aujac 1987,
1713.
167

South is the direction generally indicated by u9pe/r (p. 81), but u9po/ (alternating with u9pe/r)
means south at 398.
168

cf. Hypotyp. Geogr. 5 w9j du/nasqai r9a=|sta/ tina . . . th\n o3lhn oi0koume/nhn mhde\n
ei0ko/noj dehqe/nta tw=| nw=| periaqrh=sai.
126

Dionysius describes an unchanging scene with fixed features. Yet he describes it using a
language appropriate to things in motion, even animate. Water froths, boils, roars, and
seethes; coastlines meander; islands dance. In practice we are reading from a page, but it is as
if we are looking upon a landscape in a heightened state, full of sound and movement. The
strategy justifies itself, but it is helped by various considerations.
First is the traditional hexameter language for running water, which endows it with a
kind of inner force or dynamism. Dionysius will have been quite unaware of the long IndoEuropean history of this idea,169 but he has made full use of its Homeric and later,
Apollonian, legacy. In traditional hexameter poetry, a notional distinction is made between
water in motion and still water (rainwater, drinking water, water for washing and libating);
the former has the potential for personification, the latter has not. It is this force in moving
water (and other natural forces) that is described by the epithet i9ero/j (p. 136 and 2989 n.).
The Iliad, moreover, is drawn to descriptions of water in an unusually heightened state: the
waters of Scamander in a ferment,170 the swollen rivers and streams stirred up by the winds in
battlefield similes. The word u3dwr is reserved for motionless water;171 water in motion is
called by names like r9o/oj, r9e/eqra, potamo/j, and so on. These are often the subject of
words like pour, cast forth, of which u3dwr is the object. But this system, already looking
vulnerable in the Odyssey, has broken down altogether in Apollonius and Dionysius, both of
whom uninhibitedly make u3dwr the subject of verbs, envisaging it as active and in motion.
For them, all water is dynamic.172
Second (perhaps), there is a tradition of lively, dynamic language, used especially for
contact between the sea and land. Desanges speaks of un vocabulaire mouvement et
rhtorique, which is attested in Roman geographers such as Mela, Pliny, and Varro, as they
describe how the sea shapes the coastline of the Mediterranean and the other oceanic gulfs.173
169

M. Durante, Sulla Preistoria della tradizione poetica greca, ii. (Rome, 1976), 1424;
M. L. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford, 2007), 2749, especially 275.
170

Cf. Elliger, 54, 723.

171

See W. Schulze, Kleine Schriften (Gttingen, 1934, 21966), 1945: Indo-European used a
neuter form where water was conceived as purely material, soulless substance. I am grateful
to Dr L. A. Holford-Strevens for this reference.
172

u3dwr the verbal subject in Ap. Rhod. 1.1235, 1.1327, 2.322, 2.791, 3.343, 3.530, 4.6289,
4.955, 4.12656, 4.1446, and in Dionysius at 81, 166, 31112, 796, 838, 866 (besides the
traditional construction, with u3dwr as direct object, at 626, 774, 1074).
173

e.g. Varro ap. Solin. 27,34; Mela, e.g. 1.6 . . . terras aperit et intrat . . .. abigit vaste
cedentia litora (sc. the Mediterranean); 1.7 se artat . . . expandit . . . pressit . . . effudit; 1.10
diu sicut illud (sc. the sea) incedit, ita sua litora porrigit (sc. Asia); dein fit venienti obviam;
and the rhetorical description of the Syrtes in 1.35; Plin. NH 3.3 qua inrumpens oceanus, 3.5
(see Zehnacker ad loc., with further examples of the lutte perptuelle entre la terre et la mer,
and Evans 2005b, 11011, 11214, 117); Rutilius Namatianus, De Reditu Suo 2.234 in
latum variis damnosa anfractibus intrat | Tyrrheni rabies Hadriacique sali, 30 frangit; Mart.
127

It is also found in particularly dramatic form in Manilius short survey of the Mediterranean
coastline: the sea irrupts into the land, drives the shoreline backwards, wages war on the land,
even colonises it.174 This kind of language is not attested in the otherwise comparable reviews
of the Mediterranean by Strabo and ps.-Aristotle, but given the strong possibility that Varro
used Greek sources it is entirely possible that it figured in the Greek geographical tradition
too. This, too, may have had an influence on Dionysius, although the hexametric poetic
tradition has had a greater overall impact. His water lexicon at every point implies volatility
and volubility, but not the conflict and irruption which we find in the Latin sources (and
which would perhaps have been incongruous in a beautiful world not otherwise characterised
by aggression).
Third, last, and indubitable, is the importance of Hellenistic didactic poets. Nicander
is an obvious model, with his animate, serpentine subject-matter; Dionysius acknowledges
his debt in a flamboyant simile embedded in an acrostich of a Nicandrean type, but also in
herpetological imagery throughout the poem. Equally important is the way Aratus conjures
motion out of a vast but static canvas of the natural world: constellations, although fixed in
their relative positions, move and chase one another.
Verbs of motion are ubiquitous. Dionysius uses them for sequence;175 for extent and
reaching in a certain direction; and for the poetic conceit that the landscape itself is in
motion.176 They tend to be extensions of earlier poetic usages. As we have seen, some verbs
of extent show the influence of Aratus, with his tableaux of vast figures fixed on a moving
backdrop, and sometimes in active motion themselves (a0natre/xein; e3lkesqai). Others
derive from river vocabulary: in a couple of instances Dionysius seems to be extending words

Capell. 6.623 hinc defluxere per diversos sinus subsidentesque campos tot maria, tot fragores
et quantum per diversa aequora tumescit undarum (Through the strait poured a deluge of
crashing waters swollen by different seas, engulfing the various bays and subsiding plains,
transl. Stahl, Johnson, and Burge). On one view, such passages bear the hallmark of Varro
(Desanges, 1516); on another, this is a generic feature of Roman rhetorical geography (K.
G. Sallmann, Die Geographie des lteren Plinius in ihrem Verhltnis zu Varro (Berlin,
1971), 1201 and esp. 162: die Kste macht vorspringende oder rckfhrende
Bewegungen, das Meer bricht ein oder weicht zurck usw.). See also Janni 1984, 16
17, with further examples from Ammianus, Avienius, and Orosius; Santini, 953; and Th.
Becker 1900, 1901, for a collection of metaphors (dead and, presumably, still perceptible)
attributing movement to landscape features in German, Latin, and Greek.
174

e.g. 4.600 litoraque in Syrtes revocat sinuata vadosas, 602 laeva freti caedunt Hispanas
aequora gentes, 61516 hinc penitus . . . fretum . . . truditur invitum, 625 ingentique sinu
fugientis aequora terras, 63940 intrantis . . . Oceani, 6423 pontus sibi . . . reclusit |
faucibus abruptis orbem, and extensive examples at 6425, 6503.
175

436 e3spetai (not of literal motion, but of following in a list).

176

See 518 n., where the islands of the Aegean r9w/onq, as if in a (choral) dance.
128

which have been applied to rivers in earlier sources to solid ground (i0e/nai;177 o9deu/ein178).
That leaves e3rpein, of which Dionysius is fond, using it of rivers, seas, and dry land.179
While there are scattered parallels for the application of this verb to inanimate subjects, the
most important influences on Dionysius are, first, Callimachus, who uses this verb of the
river Hipparis, and, second, the verbs obvious association with snakes.180 (In practice,
Dionysius often combines it with a cardinal point, like e3lkesqai: in both cases this seems to
be his own stylisation.) Stars, snakes, and waterways: these are Dionysius three favourite
images, and the major sources of motion in his landscape.
Not only do they inject dynamism and vivacity; they move in sinuous, winding
courses.181 With snakes and rivers this needs no demonstration, and in Aratus account of the
heavens the circuitous wanderings of the heavenly bodies are emphasised by the repeated use
of verbs such as e9li/ssesqai, dineu/esqai, ei9lei=sqai, and stre/fesqai. Curvaceousness, born
of all these sources of imagery, is the salient characteristic of Dionysius landscape182
especially of its rivers, but also of its coastlines and gulfs, and by extension its mountainranges.183 He puts enormous emphasis on the sinuosity of the southern coastline of Asia
Minor. The Bay of Issus curves back on itself, like a u3splhc (121), then it belches its twisted
177

52 (the Persian Gulf), 431 (the Aetolian plain), 800 (the coastline of Asia Minor): rivers
go in Hes. fr. 70.23 M.W., Strab. 4.6.5, and Dionysius 979, 1089; so does a star in Il.
22.317 (though not in Aratus).
178

Of rivers: 410, 795, 831, 982, Call. fr. 384.31 Pf; of the coastline of Asia Minor: 800; of
the Taurus range: 642.
179

Rivers: 222, 496; seas: 93, 147; coastline: 123; dry land: 23, 174, 272, 897.

180

Call. fr. 43.42 H. (50 M.) i3n 3Ipparij a0gku/loj e3rpei (cf. 123), and perhaps fr. 699 Pf.
amnis, ut ait Callimachus, in flumina serpit per Laconum fines, cf. Pfeiffer ad loc.; Nic. Ther.
159, 481 e3rpei, 297 die/rpei, 717 e3rpwn, of the motion of snakes or spiders. For inanimate
subjects, see LSJ 2b.
181

e9li/ssesqai is a favourite verb, 21 times in all, of which 11 involve rivers, and the
majority waterways or coastlines. There are of course antecedents (Hes. Th. 791, fr. 70.23
M.W.; Eur. IT 7; Ap. Rhod. 2.368, 3.1277; Call. Hymn 4.13, 105, and perhaps Hecale fr.
116.1 Hollis e9likw/taton u3dwr, although the meaning is disputed); nevertheless, the use of
the verb swells to enormous proportions in the Periegesis.
182

Jacob 1982, 2334, well notes the contrast between the language of sinuosity (la
mtaphore du serpent prdomine) and the linear images used for the Muses and their
guidance of the poet (63 stoixhdo/n, 651 i0qu/ntaton i1xnoj). Nonetheless, the opposition
breaks down after a while: the Muses path may be linear, but it may also twist and turn with
the landscape (62 skolia\j e0ne/poite keleu/qouj); on the other hand, the landscape itself,
once in a while, may present itself in a straight line (514 a0peiresi/wn sti/xa nh/swn).
183

The Taurus range is a0gku/loj (640), an epithet otherwise shared with the southern coast
of Asia Minor (123); it is named differently in each curve (648 strofa/liggi), a word also
used of the Black Sea coast (162) and the motions of the heavens (584, 594).
129

waters westwards (122 strepth\n . . . a3lmhn), and finally it is compared to a dragon (1235).
But Dionysius imputes sinuosity even to coastlines and waterways which are not sinuous at
all:184 the Gulf of Aqaba coils between Syria and Arabia (925 ei9lei=tai), and the itinerary
along the Adriatic coast is a drama of bends and curvature (38397 n.).
Dionysius use of imagery from snakes and stars is in many ways parallel. Each group
receives a formal simile, but Dionysius also alludes to contexts where the imagery is more
explicit than in the Periegesis itself, or (weaker still) uses vocabulary which suggests, or is
compatible with, the imagery in question. The two most important snake-passages are the
dragon simile (1235) and the planned climax of the Greek itinerary at Delphi (4413). But
snakes are also implied for other waterways. There is an echo of Nicanders King of the
Snakes for the long, narrow neck of the Caspian (47 n.), perhaps distantly for the Ladon,
which stretches out its waters at length (417 n.). Eustathius also reads snake imagery into
Dionysius many uses of the verb su/resqai; this is hard to corroborate, but plausible.185
It is a similar story with star imagery where, aside from the express comparison of
islands to stars, Dionysius uses vocabulary which suggests, or is compatible with, stellar
subject-matter. It is not that such words have an exclusive association with stars, for then
astronomical metaphor would be readily demonstrable, but that he uses vocabulary which is
capable of this inflection, and has been so inflected in his poetic models. Examples include
the conspicuous placement of the islands (556 n. peri/shmon); the whirl of the northern
coastline of the Black Sea, and of the curvatures of the Taurus range (1612 n., 594, 648
strofa/ligc); the circumambient Plotai and curvaceous Caspian (4656n., 718
a0mfie/liktoj); perhaps even the girdling of land by water, or (apparently) of a mountain by
a swathe of country (4, 430, 555 n. e0stefa/nwtai). While snakes are used to impart
suppleness and motion, especially for waterways, language suggestive of stars and stellar
184

Although ancient conceptions of coastline may be highly defective, and gulfs and bays
radically underestimated or overestimated (Janni 1984, 1407).
185

Of rivers: 16 (Eustathius ad loc. notes the metaphor), 433, 660, 796, 1077, 1139. Of seas
and straits: 46, 137, 380, 475. The verb is not used of serpents by Nicander, but the image is
not difficult if it refers to things being dragged along the floor (e.g. AP 9.310.4 = Garland
1040, of a mouses full stomach). For later authors, see Ael. NA 10.48 dra&kwn to_ me\n
plei=ston tou~ sw&matoj e0pisu&rwn; Euseb. Comm. in Isaiam 89 (GCS Eusebius 9, i. 172.13,
ed. Ziegler) h}n d' ou{toj o( skolio_j ou{toj o1fij kai\ dra&kwn prosfuw~j w)nomasme/noj
dia_ to_ xamai\ su&resqai kai\ e3rpein; Nonn. D. 41.60 o)fiw&dei" su/reto tarsw|~ (of Cecrops).
The application of the verb to currents of water (as opposed to objects being dragged along
by water) seems to be attested first in Dionysius, but occurs again in Symmachus rendering
of 2 Sam. 14: 14 katasuro/menon u3dwr; Alciphron, Epist. 2.10.2 katasuro&menoi (sc.
potamoi/); Anon. Peri\ tw=n tessa/rwn merw=n tou= telei/ou lo/gou, iii. p. 580.15 Walz o9
potamo\j polu\j su/retai; John Chrys. e.g. PG 50.461.47 potamo\j . . . su/retai;
Philostorgius, Hist. Eccles. 3.8 (GCS p. 37.20, edd. Bidez/Winkelmann) pro_j to_n Persiko_n
katasu&retai ko&lpon (of the Euphrates); Geopon. 5.2.17 h( ga_r u(grasi/a . . .
katasurome/nh.
130

motion is used for general appearance/visibility (36 n. and 451; 90, 493 nn.); for things
coming into sight, like stars or constellations rising (2989 n.); and for curvature and flexion,
where landscape features with curved outlines are sometimes described using language which
Aratus uses for the circuits of the stars (1612 n., 925). Dionysius also shares with Aratus a
good deal of quasi-cartographical vocabulary, though specific neither to stars nor to terrestrial
features: words for extent (p. 123 teta/nustai, tetanusme/noj), placement (386 n., 442, 927
parake/klitai), orientation (2989 n., 926, 1034 e0j e0p . . . tetramme/noj, a1xri(j)); and
even though it pulls against the idea of motionfixity (204 n., 495, 551 e0sth/riktai). The
revolutions of the stars become the sinuosity of the landscape, and language used for the
embeddedness of the stars in the heavens is equally appropriate to the fixity of landscape
features.
Homage to Aratus and Nicander is implied, not only by the presence of snake and star
similes, but also by the fact that two of the poems three major acrostichs follow patterns
associated with these poets. The snake simile (1235) is embedded in a name-acrostich (112
34), just as Nicander names himself in a purple patch (Ther. 34553) (though without a
simile). Wires are slightly crossed at the other end, however, where form and content do not
coincide: the Aratean star-simile (5312) appears in highly elaborate acrostich (51732),
but the one that follows the Aratean pattern (30711)a gamma-shape, where the encoded
five-letter word is also spelt out in the first word of the first lineis reserved for subjectmatter of a different type.
The acrostichs in particular, and the snakes and stars theme in general, remain true to
Dionysius combinatory and conflative approach. The Nicandrean simile has certain points
of contact with Nicanders language (1236, 123, 124nn.), but more obvious on a lexical
level is that it employs window-allusion through an Apollonian snake-simile to a Homeric
one (123n.). The language of the Aratean star simile, meanwhile, is more obviously
indebted to Homeric star-similes (5302 n.), while the Aratean gamma acrostich (30711)
can also be seen as an allusion back through the Phaenomena to the inadvertent Homeric
acrostich at the beginning of Il. 24 (298330 n.).
Dionysius pays tribute to both Nicander and Aratus, but also draws on the literal and
figurative use of snakes and stars which reaches back to early Greek hexameter poetry;186 and
he is surely aware that both Aratus and Nicander, in the course of a work about the one
subject, readily evoke the other. The one, very close to the beginning of a poem about the
stars, includes a set-piece description of a serpent (Phaen. 4562), while the other, straight
after the proem of a poem about snakes, includes a mythological set piece which climaxes in
a catasterismos (Ther. 1320). Indeed, Aratus description of Draco includes the
Phaenomenas first simile, and the comparison of the twisting celestial serpent to a river (45)
perhaps sets up yet another background for Dionysius comparison of the southern coast of
186

Stars: 2989 n. e0pite/lletai. Snakes: 1236 n. (Hes. fr. 70.23 ap. Strab. 9.3.16, cf. Dueck
2005, 42); also Hes. fr. 293 M.W. (ap. Serv. on V. Georg. 1.2445), the constellation Draco
potamw=| r9ei/onti e0oikw/j, and Th. 7901, where the description of ocean di/nh|j a0rgure/h|j
ei9ligme/noj has serpentine connotations (Janko on Il. 14.2448).
131

Asia Minor to a snake. Never one for confining himself to one thing at a time, Dionysius
evokes multiple models, and inasmuch as some words are appropriate to snakes, stars, and
waterways all at once (skolio/j, o9lko/j, e9li/ssesqai), activates several image-groups
simultaneously (1612, 488, 8613 nn.).

132

V. GEOPOETICS
Most areas in the world may be placed in latitude and longitude,
described chemically in their earth, sky and water, rooted and fuzzed
over with identified flora and peopled with known fauna, and theres
an end to it. Then there are others where fable, myth, preconception,
love, longing, or prejudice step in and so distort a cool, clear appraisal
that a kind of high-colored magical confusion takes permanent hold.
Greece is such an area, and those parts of England where King Arthur
walked.
(John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley, Part Four)

A LL landscape features of the Periegesis, whether natural or man-made, all spatial extent,
and even gaps and absences, are meaningful. The modern distinction between abstract or
measured space and affective, experienced place (pp. 22-3) is unhelpful for an ancient
geographical poem in which all space is treated subjectively, and none is merely abstract.
Cities, rivers, and mountains are treated with a particularism which is nevertheless
constrained by the scale of the poem and by the presence of repeated themes and emphases.
On the other hand, the poet evokes a sense of vastness, playing off specificity against
imprecision and closed series against boundlessness. Early Greek hexameter poetry and
Apollonius had already offered a series of adjectives denoting vastness or innumerability in
conjunction with features of the landscape subjectively perceived, since a given sea is not
boundless, though it may seem so to those travelling over it or living beside it. Dionysius
extends and develops these adjectivesa0qe/sfatoj (23); a0me/trhtoj (1171); a0peire/sioj,
a0pei/ritoj, a0pei/rwn;1 a1pletoj (98); a1spetoj;2 periw/sioj3which he applies to tribes,
1

Of vastness: islands: 4, 458 v.l., 550; countries: 323, 1030; gulfs and seas: 119; forests: 659;
rivers: 666, 977, 1137; regions: 430; wealth: 1062. Of innumerability: oceanic gulfs: 57;
peoples: 165, 217, 635; islands: 514, 613, 616; rivers: 644; Delphyne 443. In early Greek
hexameter poetry, a0pei/rwn or a0pei/ritoj are often used of gai=a and po/ntoj. More
interesting are Il. 24.545, used by Achilles of the Hellespont; Od. 19.1734, used by
Odysseus of the peoples of Crete; HHom. Ap. 431, of the gulf of Crisa (as it appeared to the
sailors?). For the subjective viewpoint implied by these adjectives, even when not strictly in
character text, see G. Bartelink, LfrgrE s.v. a0peire/sioj, 1011.2931; a0pei/ritoj, 1012.60
3: von dem . . . was einem Betrachter (meist einem imaginren, k 195 jedoch viell. der
handelnden Pers.) unendlich erscheint, ohne es tatschlich sein zu mssen; sim. a0pei/rwn,
1013.3640: . . . relativ vom Standpunkt eines (allerdings stets imaginren) Betrachters aus.
2

Races: 138, 186, 1142; coastline: 200, 387; lands: 305, 809; an island archipelago: 488; an
isthmus: 636; rivers: 920. Wealth: 712, 1057. In earlier poetry, cf. Il. 18.4023 r9o/oj
0Wkeanoi=o . . . a1spetoj; Ap. Rhod. 4.838 dolixh&n te kai\ a1speton oi[mon (focalised by
Thetis), 4.10012 strato_j a1spetoj . . . Ko&lxwn.
133

lands, rivers, coastlines, an island archipelago, and other sweeps of landscape (as well as the
favourite theme of wealth). Specific measurement is eschewed. Yet he also elides vast
distances across the outer ocean by focusing on the peregrinating addressee, and treats the
circumference of the oi0koume/nh as a series of island hops from one colourful local destination
to another. Even desert wastes or barren plains are places within the literary imagination
Scythia, with its wagon-trundling nomads, the sweltering caves of the Erembi, and the
scrubby wastes of Ariana offset by precious stones and coral.
Dionysius sets out to inform and instruct his reader about a world in which no place is
without significance. It is against this background that I now turn to the literary presentation
of the world itself, beginning with descriptive epithets and categories, and moving on to
Dionysius manipulation of the conventions of ethnography and chorography.

1. EPITHETS
As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.
(Puddnhead Wilsons Calendar;
Mark Twain, Puddnhead Wilson, ch. 11.)

Comparing the Periegesis with the hypotyposis makes plain how essential epithets are to the
poeticisation of the subject-matter.4 The starting-point is naturally geographical description in
early Greek hexameter poetry, especially the Catalogue of Ships; from here proceeds a
double set of questions, first concerning the specific selection of epithets (how generic? how
individuated?), the second concerning their intended effect, in the light of the ancient theory
and practice of the decorative style. The deliberate cultivation of a Homeric register imparts a
reassuring stability and traditionality to the landscape, the pleasurable experience of which is
heightened by an enriched vocabulary of sanctity and beauty. Beyond that, the epithets effect
is multivalent; for Strabo, the geographer, the topographical descriptions of the Catalogue are
precise, and partake of a historiographic concern for truth;5 for the literary critic, on the other

Mount Ida: 504; the British Isles: 568; the fu=la of Arabia: 960; the Babylonian plain: 1009.
In early Greek hexameter poetry it is not used of geographical features; of peoples in Ap.
Rhod. 2.394, Simias fr. 1.9 P.
4

On the descriptive epithets of the Periegesis, see Jacob 1990, 423.

1.2.17. Comparing Strab. 1.2.3 = Eratosthenes I A, 4 Berger, Radt ad loc. (I p. 25,136)

derives the passage from Eratosthenes; even the latter had conceded the descriptive quality of
Homeric epithets, and that none was ever thrown away redundantly. For Ammianus vivid
verbal images in geographical passages, used as individualizing tags which equate to
Homeric epithets, see Sundwall, 637.
134

hand, epithets are stylistic highlights, illuminating the poem like jewels or stars.6 We are also
reminded of the propinquity (which Eustathius noted7) of geographical description and
encomium, for in his address to the Alexandrians, Dio Chrysostom noted how most people
. . . count themselves blessed if they dwell, as Homer puts it, on a tree-clad isle or one that
is deep-soiled or on a mainland of abundant pasture, rich in sheep or hard by shadowy
mountains or fountains of translucent waters.8 For this reason, epiniciana collateral
(rather than direct) relative of the Periegesisis also a relevant comparison, in that praise of
his homeland is an expected part of the celebration of the victors achievement;9 indeed,
Pindar seems to be the source for a handful of Dionysius epithets (p. 36).
With early Greek hexameter poetry, of course, questions arise about oral poetics, the
extent to which epithets are purely formulaic, and how far they might be context-sensitive.10
Although the ground has now shifted, it is still legitimate to ask how Dionysius has
reproduced the effect of the formulae he has inheritedwhich emphases he has retained,
which he has altered, and whether he has tried to retain, or create, an effect of pseudo6

Macrob. Sat. 5.14.8; on stella as a literary-critical term, Roberts, 54; for stars in the
Periegesis, 5302 n. and pp. 129-30. For oral poets, Minchin 2001, 86, suggests that the
epithets with their strong visual appeal served as an aide-mmoire.
7

What prompts Eustathius to identify encomia are usually honorific epithets, or other
presentations that redound to a place or persons credit: the manifold blessings of Egypt and
the Egyptians (on 232, 239); the honour that has fallen to Crete to be the birthplace of Zeus
(on 498); the proud fact that Thebes was home of both Dionysus and Heracles (on 623); the
beauty of the Lydian Bacchants (on 839); the glamorous presentation of life in Arabia (on
933), and again the honorific fact that Dionysus was born there (on 939); and the brief royal
encomium that consists in the reference to the Roman subjugation of the Parthians (on 1039,
cf. GGM ii, p. 214.1).
8

Dio Chrys. Or. 32.38 oi9 plei/ouj . . . makari/ouj e9autou_j kri/nousin, a2n oi0kw~si kaq'
3Omhron nh~son dendrh&essan h2 baqei=an <h1> tina h1peiron eu1boton, eu1mhlon, h2 pro_j
o1resi skieroi=j h2 phgai=j diauge/sin (transl. Cohoon and Crosby); cf. also Ar. Ach. 63940
for the encomiastic potential of an epithet (in this case liparo/j).
9

For Pindars encomia of place (the Heimatlob), see SadTrd-Boulmer; Mader, 756. Ol.
5.914 (although untypical) is a particularly good comparison, featuring geographical
Realien, especially water (a sacred grove, river, lake, canals), rather than abstract qualities,
and even listing them in a catalogue-like structure (SadTrd-Boulmer, 164; Mader, 75).
For Pindars choice of epithets, see especially SadTrde-Boulmer, 1645: generic (seagirt islands, well-ordered cities) and morally weighted descriptions are prominent, as well
as epithets for fame, beauty, fertility (especially for overseas settlements), and prosperity. For
Bacchylides (special emphasis on sanctity, splendour), Elliger, 2089.
10

Visser distinguishes between purely generic epithets and epithets with a individualising
quality, and shows how the latter can be subdivided by terrain (coastal, hillside, mountainous,
grassland); once those categories are accepted the poet can be seen to adhere to the principle
of economy.
135

formularity. Epithets in the Periegesis may be borrowed from early Greek hexameter poetry;
independently of this, they may recur within the poem, sometimes in lightly varied phrases
and cadences. For example, h0nemo/essa in early Greek hexameter poetry is above all the
epithet of Ilium, but has a far wider application in the Periegesis;11 a0fnei=oj is only once
applied in Homer to a geographical personal name, but occurs six times here;12 on the other
hand, ai0peino/j in Homer is used generically of fortified cities,13 but in the Periegesis only
once, of an island (521 n.).
As for specificity, what we find is a spectrum, all the way from the generic to the
local, individual, and pointed. All positions along this spectrum represent deliberate effects: a
generic element may be, less a misfire or a failure of inspiration, than a deliberate attempt
to sound a particular register, especially the Homeric. An epithet may of course be traditional
and yet appropriate at the same time. Swiftness is a traditional property of rivers, but that of
the Tigris (983 w1kistoj a9pa/ntwn) was famous; the silver eddies of the Achelous may also
be more than a verse-filler (433 and 4967 nn.). Epithets for richesa0fnei=oj, liparo/j, the
Callimachean r9uhfenh/j (337), and the picture of a plain weighed down with sheaves of corn
(358)are all well chosen and apposite for places which are agriculturally or mineralogically
rich. The harbour of Carthage is a beautiful instance of the generic and particular in
immediate juxtaposition: it is both lovely and enclosed by the city, as the historical harbour
really was (195 n.). And well-crowned Croton (369) is interpretable as a pointed, indeed
encomiastic, epithet masquerading as a formulaic one.
Among epithets which were generic in Homer Dionysius has especially cultivated
those denoting beauty and sanctity.14 Homeric epithets are leavened with examples from later
poetry, and sometimes by Dionysius own innovations. It is mostly a matter of reproducing a
semantic range, though specific passages or metrical patterns are sometimes reproduced.
Dionysius vocabulary of holiness is not particularly innovative or extensive, but it is
insistent, with one example each of za/qeoj (814 n.), qei=oj (1145, cf. 1144b1148 n.), and

11

Though Dionysius appears sensitive to its use in Homer and earlier poetry, whose
application of the epithet to high ground (Visser, 134, and Brgger et al. on Il. 2.606;
Kienzle, 25) is reflected by 472, Peloris (cf. Sil. Ital. 14.78 celsus harenosa tollit se mole
Pelorus); 831, Tmolus; 1091, Caucasus; 1129, Indian mountains. Also used in 521 (Scyrus),
815 (Ilium), 855 (Phaselis); v.l. 912 (Sidon) (White, 325).
12

Il. 2.570, of Corinth, cf. Visser, 1267, and Hes. fr. 240.12 M.W., of Ellopia; this and
other epithets for wealth in Kienzle, 889. In Dionysius: 258 (Alexandria); 356 (Rome); 564
(Iberes); 734 (Bactrians); 955 (Nabataeans); 1004 (Matienoi).
13

Visser, 1289.

14

Kienzle, 868, beauty (as he notes, such epithets may be affective or colourless); 7981,
sanctity. For epithets of beauty in Hesiod, Elliger, 160, in lyric, 178, and of sanctity in Pindar,
205.
136

eight of i9ero/j, which he favours and whose range he extends.15 As for beauty, he avails
himself of Homeric epithets of loveliness (816 a0glao/j; e0ph/ratoj;16 e0rateino/j;17
i9merto/j;18 195 n. poluh/ratoj) and adds to them from other archaic or Hellenistic
hexameter poetry (1107 n. e0rato/j; 534 n., 806 i9mero/eij19), or suo Marte (337, 370 n., 913
xari/eij, apparently not associated with a place-name in early Greek hexameter or Hellenistic
poetry). kalligu/naic is a notable absence, though the tableau of Lydian dancers conveys its
spirit (Eustathius on 839); so are other epithets praising the quality of a countrys inhabitants
(eu0a/ndroj, eu0h/nwr, a0glao/kouroj).20
Water is a particularly fine illustration of the effects the poet achieves through his
choice of epithets. The spectrum extends from more or less generic epithets, which allow the
Ganges both to be black-eddying (577) and to have white waters (626),21 or which allow a
description to be transferred from one river of the Troad to another as if they are
interchangeable (Il. 2.84950 ~ 796, 819), to the Hydaspes, which is plwto\j nh/essin
(1139) for the good reason that Alexander sailed down it. Nevertheless, water has a
consistently dynamic and vivacious character, a tradition which Dionysius has inherited from
the Iliad and ultimately Indo-European (p. 126). Seas have strong currents and their waters
are turbulent (198, 325 a0ga/rrooj;22 85 n. kurto/j; 126 nh/xutoj; 86, 143, 863
polu/klustoj); these epithets tend to crowd out Homeric colour-terms which were perhaps
too sombre for Dionysius bright universe.23 Rivers24 are silver-eddying (433 n., 1140, cf.
15

Towns and cities: 88, 1005; rivers: 298, 747; islands: 448; a plain: 788; a grove: 916; the
sea: 1182. In early Greek hexameter poetry i9ero/j is used with names of cities, islands, and
rivers (LfrgrE i9ero/j, 1140.501141.33, 1143.1131; West on Hes. Th. 788 (rivers)). These
uses continue in later poetry: rivers and springs in Ap. Rhod. 1.1208, 2.515, 3.165, 4.134,
4.1417; Nisbet and Hubbard on Hor. Od. 1.1.22. For islands, cf. Call. Hymn 4.3.
16

Of islands: 458 v.l. (see n.), 509; of countries: 351, 1099 (negated). In early Greek
hexameter poetry, also of Troy: Il. 18.512 = 22.121; of islands: Hes. fr. 205.4 M.W.; of
Parnassus: HHom. Ap. 521, cf. 529 (negated).
17

Rivers: 410, 7946 nn.; countries: 802 = 925 (see 8002, 1107 nn.); Visser, 1234.

18

Cities: 354, 369 (cf. Bacchyl. 1.123); islands: 537 n. Also of rivers: Il. 2.751, Ap. Rhod.
2.939; regions: Mimn. fr. 9.2 W.
19

Extending the range of early Greek hexameter poetry, where it describes cities (Hes. fr.
43a.62 M.W., HHom. Ap. 180).
20

Obviously germane to Pindaric encomium: SadTrd-Boulmer, 165.

21

Elliger, 98, notes that Homeric water, too, may be both leuko/n and dnofero/n.

22

Brgger et al. on Il. 2.845: Epitheton von Gewssern mit starker Strmung.

23

Elliger, 96. The exceptions are 879 polih=j a9lo/j and 169 kuanauge/oj a0mfitri/thj (see
n.).
24

For Dionysius river-epithets see also Ilyushechkina 2010, 1489.

137

497 a0rgurodi/nhj), white (626, 774 leuko\n u3dwr), and have a fast, lively current (693 =
981, 991 qoo/j;25 1090 (see 108993 n.), 1146 la/broj; 983 n. w0ku/j; 49 n. ai0pu/). They
share beauty and sanctity with the rest of Dionysius landscape (to the examples above, add
353, 848, 984, 1152 e0u+rrei/thj;26 246, 289 kalli/rrooj; 796 ka/llistoj). Rivers are
impressive (424 n. qespe/sioj), enormous (a0peire/sioj, a1spetoj; see above), an ancient
feature of the landscape (1055 n., 1124 a0e/naoj; 417 n. w0gu/gioj), and their fertilising
properties (824 n. liparo/j) contribute a favourite theme. At the same time, many of these
epithets have point: the river of the Romans is basileu/tatoj (353), the Amazonian
Thermodon e0nua/lioj (774); the frost-bitten Thermodon krumw/dhj (780); the Danube delta
penta/poroj (301); the Nile pio/tatoj (221 n.); and the Arcadian Ladon w0gu/gioj (417)
with reference to its mythology and to Arcadias famed antiquity. Glancing at Apollonius
brings Dionysius interests into closer focus: his rivers may be sacred (n. 151), but they are
not conspicuously lovely. The Nile and Phasis are large and broad, but it is the sea which is
characterised by speed and dynamism,27 and some rivers are even gentle, tranquil, and
modest in their flowqualities quite lost to view in the Periegesis.28
Where epithets are context-sensitive or pointed, they may simply, neutrally, allude to
a places well-known natural attributesfor example, liparo/j to the Nile floodplain (227),
Campania (357), or the Maeander (824)but it is hard to find convincing examples of
epithets which render features of a landscape as it was described, for instance, by Strabo. It is
as we should expect: this is a literary landscape, not a geographical treatise. Many epithets
simply perpetuate the way a place figured in the literary tradition: the landscape has timeless
characteristics. Ilium remains windy (815), Thebes hundred-gated (249); and if flowery is
correct for Sidon it is presumably because Europawho was sometimes located there,
sometimes in Tyrewas picking flowers when she was abducted (912 n.; v.l. h0nemo/essan).
In sum, if we take the bare lists of islands in Strabos hypotyposis as a reasonably good
indication of the material on which the poet based his description of the islands of the
Mediterranean, Dionysius approach comes into focus. Some epithets are generic or
conventional (epithets of loveliness for Corsica, Samos, and Tenedos: 458 (v.l.), 534, 537; of
size for Sardinia, Crete, and Lesbos: 458, 502, 537); some refer to mythological associations
(Cyprus and Lemnos: 509, 522); but they are leavened by literary allusion. Crete in 502 is
liparh/ because in Od. 19.173 it was kalh_ kai\ pi/eira; Corcyra in 494 presumably on
25

The application to water is post-Homeric; of the sea in Ap. Rhod. fr. 8.2 P. qoa_ be/nqea
po&ntou.
26

The background is early Greek (Il. 6.34, Od. 14.257, Hes. fr. 10a.35 M.W.) rather than
Hellenistic, though Dionysius reproduces no specific verse-patterns except 1152 ~ Hes. Th.
343.
27

la/broj: 1.541, 2.594, 3.343, 4.944, 4.1243; leuko/j: 2.570, 4.1574, and of a river 2.368;
qoo/j: fr. 8.2 P.; for Apollonius sea-epithets, see A. Lesky, Thalatta: der Weg der Griechen
zum Meer (Vienna, 1896), 2545.
28

2.937 prhu+ta/tou potamou=, cf. 2.367 meio/teroj; 3.876 liaroi=sin e0f u3dasi
Parqeni/oio.
138

account of the fertility of Homeric Scheria, with which it was identified; and peri/dromoj in
461 teasingly suggests what the ambiguity of the verbal adjective refuses to confirm, that
Aeolus Homeric kingdom is still afloat.

2 . C HOROGRAPHY AND E THNOGRAPHY

Chorographia is an ancient word;29 ethnography is not. It properly refers to the description of
regions or countries, but if the term might properly be applied to Melas account of the
inhabited world, so too it might to the Periegesis. Ethnography, a modern term, apparently
emphasises the ethnological aspects of the subject; but people live in a landscape, and in
practice the description of terrain, its shape, climate, and productive capacity, is integral to
ancient accounts of population. By the time the Periegesis was written a framework had long
been in place for the description of peoples and their relation to the landscape. It began with
an account of qe/sij or situs (defining the shape of a territory, often using shape comparisons,
and giving the approximate alignment of its sides by compass point), then moved on to its
climate, its natural resources (animal, vegetable, and mineral), the products of human
cultivation (crops, trees, and livestock), and then the human population itself, especially its
origins, but also customs and telling details that indicate its cultural level. This framework
underpins Dionysius ethnographies. The occasional technical or semi-technical geographical
term, such as katagra/fein (707), qe/sij (556, 886, 933), sxh=ma (242, 269, 277, 620, 718,
887, 1128),30 as well as pleura/ (pp. 77-8), hint at the specialist prose tract. But the whole
ethnographical scheme is treated in an extremely flexible and selective way, as befits a
cursory poetic treatment.
Above all, an effort is made not to routinise; to vary. This is the most important
compositional principle. The Periegesis contains fully fleshed ethnographies which touch on
most or all of the main components in the ideal scheme, but many other notices restrict
themselves to a single element or twothe alignment of a region,31 the lifestyle of a group

29

First in Polyb. 34.1.5 (= Strab. 10.3.5), 34.5.1 (= Strab. 2.4.1); see Walbank on both
passages. For Strab. 2.5.1 more than mere description is required, for a chorographer must
have some knowledge of physical and mathematical hypotheses. Ptol. 1.1, who does not
claim that mathematics is a prerequisite for chorography, distinguishes it from geography as
part from whole. See Silberman on Mela 1.1, n. 1; Dueck 2012, 7; for the ancient title of
Melas treatise, Silberman, p. xiv and Dueck, 47.
30

Less technical is r9usmo/j (271, 620), cf. Ross on Arist. Met. 985b16. Neither it nor morfh/
(169, 239, 269, cf. 1177) is applied to the shape of countries by Polybius or Strabo.
31

Seas surrounding Greece (399403) and Arabia (92732); the central spine of Italy (339
44).
139

(with little on their locale),32 or comments on traditions about national and civic origins and
colonisation (n. 150, pp. 174-5).
A fairly rounded ethnography is that of Syria (897922). The countrys layout comes
first (897901), then the distribution of the human population, followed (as usual in
Dionysius) by agricultural produce, though fauna and flora are barely registered. Within the
review of the human population there are diversions on familiar themes (national origins,
906; eu9rh/mata, 9079; potamography, 913, 91920). The categories are also well-defined in
the ethnography of Persia (105379): position (10625), territories and peoples within the
country (106670) (the opening fanfare, 105662, already handled aspects of Persian
culture); rivers (10714) and natural produce (10759). At the opposite extreme, Parthia
(103952) is entirely lop-sided: interest concentrates in the Parthians lifestyle, apropos of
which occurs one of the poems rare cultural nomoi (10489). An unconventional example is
Arabia (92761), where, after alignment (92734), the main ethnography is given over to
fragrances and spices, with the qau=ma of Dionysus birth and the Golden Age effects that
follow. This structure nevertheless permits observations on fauna (942, 944), flora (spices
passim), by implication climate (936), and lifestyle (953). A brief northsouth review of
tribes concludes it (95461).
The ethnographies are varied by shifts of emphasis and by different modes of
presentation. Some items are treated in the form of tableaux; there are arresting qau/mata; a
favourite device (discussed below) is the priamel. With the art that conceals art, similar
structures are deployed, yet varied in such a way that the reader either fails to notice the
underlying pattern, or appreciates all the more the poets pains to vary it from one item to the
next.
Both the existence of a pattern, and its flexibility, emerge from the ordering of items
with ethnographies. There is a strong tendency for sxh=ma, or situsinformation about a
countrys shape, the alignment of its sides, the rivers, seas, and mountain-ranges that border
itto come first. This occurs in the opening descriptions of all three continents, as well as in
Syria and Arabia. For Egypt, Persia, and India a different system is adopted. In these three
cases a prospectuswhich in two cases comes halfway throughis followed (rather than
preceded) by situs (23841 + 2426, within 22168; 10625, within 105379; 11289 +
11301 within 110765). Persia begins with an introductory fanfare on gold and boundless
wealth before it touches on anything as prosaic as situation. In the other two cases the
transition to that country has made it convenient for Dionysius to start with something else
(viz., the course of the Nile, leading up from southern Libya; Indias easternness, which leads
on to the colour of the inhabitants skin).
In four cases (Egypt, Syria, Persia, and India), this description of situs is followed by
a review of the countrys centres of population,33 and in three of those four cases these
32

18694, the Libyan Nomads (remarks in passing about u3lh and dri/a); 73945, the
Massagetae (located beyond the Araxes, with nothing more about terrain); 9629, the Erembi
(remarks on caves and burning sun).
33

Eratosthenes appears to have proceeded in a similar way (Thalamas, 2489).

140

reviews are introduced by a formula calling attention to the peoples blessedness, that is, to
their advanced state of culture (247 = 902 = 1135 kai\ th\n me\n polloi/ te kai\ o1lbioi a1ndrej
e1xousin).34 Located here or elsewhere, such a review is almost de rigueur in Dionysius
ethnographies; Parthia is the only real exception, though that of Media in 10305 is sketchy.
It proceeds in an orderly fashion, from north to south (Arabia, 9549; Mesopotamia, 10018;
Persia, 106670), south to north (Egypt, 24764; Syro-Phoenicia, 91020), or, in the more
elaborate, climactic, example, west-to-east (India, 113544). The effect can be contrasted
with the sketchiness device or a0peire/sioj topos (p. 97). Whereas the latter suggests that
the poets stamina is petering out, or that he is swamped by the magnitude of his task, these
highly selective surveys create an illusion of plenitude, of comprehensive coverage.
Finally, there is a tendency (no more) for a section on natural products to follow the
review of human population (Syria: 9212, concluding 897922; Mesopotamia: 100913,
concluding 9921013; Persia: 10759, concluding 105379). In three cases a section on
rivers comes at or near the end of the review of human settlement (very briefly Syria, where
the Orontes, 91920, the only river mentioned, ends the review of cities; Persia, 10714;
India, where it is combined with, and eventually takes over from, population, 113752). This
does not apply to the special cases of Egypt and Mesopotamia, territories which are variously
defined by their rivers.
Turning from structure to presentationfrom dispositio to elocutiowe find a
combination of, or tension between, closure and opennessbetween items under which a
more or less palpable line is drawn once they are finished, and a more free-flowing structure.
There is a double background. The first is within catalogue writing and approaches to listing
(discrete or continuous, formally structured or more free-form) with which Hellenistic and
Roman poets experimented, and which we have already discussed.35 The second inheres
within ethnography itself, where Trdingers almost century-old, and still excellent, analysis
laid emphasis on two different compositional principles: in the first, items are treated in an
orderly way under (more or less predictable) headings, while in the second they may be
chosen more selectively and arranged associatively by the literary artist.36 If that is right,
Dionysius felicitously combines formal experiments in catalogue writing, dear to the
Hellenistic poets, with two ways of ordering ethnography which can be traced back at least to
Herodotus.
Dionysius whole approach is flexible. The discrete style is best exemplified by his
treatment of situs, which is largely predictable in position, orderly, and solemn. Rather than
34

The first two peoples also receive praise as primi inventores, including in astronomy,
though not at the same point in the description (2327, 9079 nn.).
35

Hutchinson, 746; J. L. Lightfoot, Ovid and Hellenistic Poetry, in P. E. Knox (ed.), A

Companion to Ovid (Chichester, 2009), 21935, at 232.
36

Trdinger, e.g. 256 (Herodotus), 68 (Nearchus), 77 (Megasthenes), 132 (Trogus/Justin),

163 (Tacitus). He suggests that Ionian ethnography employed a discrete style where topics
were arranged under headings (peri\ qusi/hj, etc.) and Herodotus himself introduced the
associative principle, whereby one topic suggested another.
141

being run together with other items in the ethnographic rigmarole, this topic is itemised,
inventoried, and given its own special space. Its prominence in the Periegesis compares with
the special position reserved for discussions of situs in full-length formal ethnographies such
as Tacitus description of Germany, but contrasts (for example) with Virgils laudes Italiae,
where the situs of Italy barely figures: Richard Thomas comments that Virgil omits or
contracts certain elements which are unsuitable in a poetic setting (such as the elaborate
treatment of situs which is found in Strabos passage) (1982a, 39; the reference is to Strab.
6.4.1). Here Dionysius cultivates the impression of technicality and prose-like precisionan
effect that much of the rest of his ethnographies will countermine.
For the most part the touch is lighter. Items are glimpsed en passant rather than in the
course of a dutiful tour, and their inclusion is often ingenious and gently opportunistic. For
instance, the treatment of fragrance in Arabia permits reference to various kinds of terrain
and their produce (9501: fields: frankincense; mountains: gold; rivers: perfume) and to the
clothing of the inhabitants (953). The population of Media is divided across different types of
terrain (rocky or pasture), with a natural product associated with each (a precious stone,
1031; wool, 1033). In India, natural resources, rather than being treated in a separate section,
are run together with the activities of the inhabitants (111424): gold-mining, linen-weaving
(which implies the cultivation of the plant as well as the sartorial peculiarity noted by Mela
3.63), and the extraction of precious metals. Later, Indian tribes are combined with
potamography (113551). A whole ethnographic category may be evoked by a glancing
mention of a single item; in 1126, Indian millet (ke/gxroj) is a sort of metonym for all the
crops India produces, which are listed in full in the parallel accounts in Strabo and Diodorus.
Given the economy of the poem, such items have a suggestive power out of proportion to
their length.
It follows that ethnography in Dionysius hands is beautifully manipulable and fluid;
except for the formally marked sections on sxh/mata we barely notice the transition from
one category to another. For instance, the southnorth review of Phoenician cities culminates
with Antioch-on-the-Orontes, and the mention of the river eases the transition to the short
notice on agricultural fertility which follows (91920 + 9212). Since rivers are so often
assumed to carry precious stones downstream, the river systems of Persia segue first into
mineralogy (10757) then into further natural produce, crops and climate (10789). India is a
fine example of crafting and the art of transition. It falls into two parts. The first leads off
from Indias easternmost position: this suggests the inhabitants sun-burned skin colour, and
in turn gives way to their activities, combined with the countrys natural resources (which
they either extract or from which they manufacture products). The second half is introduced
by a fresh syllabus (11289), followed by the formal situs with orientation of the countrys
sides (11304). There follows a review of the centres of population, combined with
potamography, which takes us as far as the Gargaridae and the Hypanis, the limit of
Alexanders advance. The rivers are then uncoupled from human population and serve to take
us into remote regions: the mention of human tribes falls away and clears the ground for a
final tableau of Dionysus in Nysa; and that in turn is concluded by the image of the god
erecting his pillars beside the ocean: we have reached the eastern edge of the earth (11625).

142

It is a beautifully crafted structure, unparalleled in scale; we have no other opportunity of

watching Dionysius think as big as this.
Let us turn to the stuff of Dionysius descriptions of landscapes and peoplesto the
material with which he has filled out his categories, and to the way he has manipulated it. I
begin with the natural landscape and geophysical features, and gradually move in towards the
human landscape and Dionysius presentation of human cultures.

The landscape
Non Tesin, Po, Varo, Arno, Adige et Tebro,
Eufrate, Tigre, Nilo, Ermo, Indo et Gange,
Tana, Istro, Alfeo, Garona, e l mar che frange,
Rodano, Ibero, Ren, Sena, Albia, Era, Ebro . . .
Petrarch, Canzoniere 148.14

The natural landscape has its own story to tell in a poem about a world that is by and large
beautiful and vibrant, and is both diverse (according to the envoi) and yet stylised. It includes
seas and islands, lakes (253, 267, 987, as well as the Maeotian Lake), woodland and forest
(188, 286, 460, 492, 659), meadows (836, 1125), plains (665, 692, 837, 872, 888, 1009), and
sandy desert (212, 10991100, cf. the Indian gold-bearing sand at 1115). But there is always
something; there is never an absence of feature. Where Herodotus Scythia petered out into
nothingness (4.1731, passim), even Dionysius e1rhma are relieved by surface detail (7546,
colourful flowers among the Seres), or are freighted with historical association (208, where
the e0rhmwqe/nta me/laqra of the Nasamones still advertise the righteous chastisement of
Rome). A few landscape features and marvels emerge into individual clarity: the Pillars of
Heracles; the Syrtes fronting the north African shore; the lake into which the Tigris sinks
before emerging again with renewed vigour (this last with no known poetic background). Yet
the real stars of the physical landscape are rivers and mountains.37 Their parallelism is
ancient; Near Eastern texts in various genres seem to pair them as if they form a natural
couple,38 and to a large extent that is still true here. The first of the poems cosmological
37

Cf. Melas lists of chief examples of x: 2.17, chief rivers and mountains of Thrace; 2.36,
mountains of northern Greece; 2.43, chief cities, mountains, and rivers of Arcadia; 3.2930,
chief swamps, forests, mountains, and rivers of Germany. Or his lists of chief features of x,
including mountains: e.g. 2.41, central Greece and the Peloponnese.
38

(i) Narrative: West on Hes. Th. 129 cites a Hittite text from the Kumbarbi cycle. (ii)
Various Egyptian and Hittite treaties given in translation in ANET, pp. 201, 205, 206. For
example, a treaty between the Hittites and Egyptians in the reign of Rameses II (13th-c.)
invokes . . . the Lady (of the) mountains and the rivers of the land of Hatti . . . the male gods;
the female gods; the mountains; and the rivers of the land of Egypt; the sky; the earth; the
great sea; the winds; and the clouds (p. 201). (iii) Exorcism formulae and requests for
143

syllabuses (12) begins with a Hesiodic triad of earth, seas, and rivers; mountains, another
element in the armature of Hesiods universe (Th. 12930), figure side by side with rivers
both in later cosmological reviews,39 and in the Periegesis itself.40 There are many ways in
which their treatment runs parallel,41 and their joint prominence is one sign of how far
Dionysius has moved from the periplous into something more like an aerial journey: we soar
above mountain ranges and the anfractuous courses of rivers, not just those visible to a
mariner threading his way along the coast. Both are, moreover, associated in rhetoric with
encomia of place.42
Rivers have a privileged place in ethnography.43 Herodotus treatment of the Nile and
the river-systems of Scythia put them there, and the mighty rivers of India dominate accounts
of the physical landscape in the Alexander historians.44 As Strabo explains, rivers are
important in geographical writing because they serve as natural frontiers, but the Nile and
Indian rivers are special: they offer a certain advantage as compared with the rest because of
the fact that apart from them the countries are uninhabitable, being at the same time
navigable and tillable, and that they can neither be travelled over otherwise nor inhabited at
all (15.1.26, transl. H. L. Jones). They stamp their identity on lands through which they
flow; cities are built on them, tribes live beside them. Through mention of their fertility (p.
138), they segue happily into discussions of natural produce, trees, crops, and pasture land.45
The variety of their roles in chorography and ethnography is matched by the diversity of the
ways in which geographical writers treat themorganising the entire description of a country
around them, using them to divide up a territory into a series of tranches which can then be

absolution (so-called lipur litanies): see W. Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography

(Winona Lake, IN, 1998), 208 and n. 1, with bibliography. E. Reiner, Lipur Litanies, JNES
15 (1956), 12949, at 1325, published a text in which a series of named mountains are asked
for absolution (May Mount Sbu absolve, the home of Enlil . . .) followed directly by rivers
(May the Tigris absolve, which brings abundance . . .).
39

Ap. Rhod. 1.5012 (cf. Virg. Ecl. 6.40, but without rivers), 3.1646; Hor. Odes 1.34.912,
and Nisbet and Hubbard on 9, 11 (interpreting Atlanteus . . . finis as a reference to Mount
Atlas).
40

1055 (Persia), 11289 (India), 1183 (the whole world and the poem); 70914 (naming a
river, a sea, a people, and a mountain range); sea, mountains, and stars in 71617.
41

Cf. Ilyushechkina 2010, 2746. Thalmann, 152, notes that Apollonius gives rivers the
priority over mountains.
42

Nisbet and Hubbard on Hor. Odes 2.9.16.

43

On rivers and ethnographical theory, Jones, 3747. For Dionysius own river scheme,
Ilyushechkina 2010, 277.
44

Strab. 15.1.2638; Arr. Ind. 3.96.8; Mela 3.689; Curt. 8.9.311.

45

Kienzle, 545, Counillon 1983, 280.

144

tackled singly, using them as points for orientation,46 describing individual rivers, or simply
listing famous names.47
Yet if ethnography gives a minimal explanation for the prominence of rivers in the
Periegesis, and if there are many parallels between Dionysius own treatment of rivers and
that of other authors, much remains that is individual. Above all, his rivers contribute
liveliness, vivacity, dynamism to the landscape through the poetic lexicon for running water
which he exploits to the hilt. Somesuch as the continent-dividing Nile and Tanaisare
obvious stars, while literary considerations thrust others into the limelight: the Thermodon is
given a mythographical tour de force to match Apollonius topographical one; the Rhebas is
plucked out of obscurity in Apollonius, inter alia to serve as a geographical hinge or turningpoint. Some, very obscure indeed, raise the possibility of the use of a specialist tract (p. 34).
Others, though known from earlier sources, appear to have been subjected to manipulation, in
some cases to Dionysius hallmark combinatory technique (31415, 4967, 6635, 691
4 nn.). Springs, on the other hand, do not feature (unless any of the otherwise unknown rivers
are springs), despite their appearance as a separate category in the poems closing syllabus
(1183), as well as in papyrus lists.48
Rivers, like mountains, serve both to divide and to connect, as well as to impose
internal order within the poem. The Danube divides central Europe, just as the Caucasus
range divides Asia,49 and sections of the poem are organised around both divisions. To a still
greater extent than mountains, they bound countries and continents. In the latter case,
although Dionysius is aware of the method of division both by rivers and by isthmuses, he
seems to prefer the formereven though this leads to some ambiguity in the case of Egypt
(22064, 262b264 nn.)and he invests both Nile and Tanais with local colour and cultural
significance. Rivers also mark the western and eastern sides of a huge country like India
(11324). In a few cases, a rivers underlying boundary function is almost lost to view (361,
367, 7846 nn.), but elsewhere it is enhanced, especially when it is a question of marking
sections also within the poem: the vast Tanais (boundary of Europe and Asia; beginning
46

For Eratosthenes main meridian (running through the mouth of the Borysthenes and the
Nile Delta), see 1718 n.; for the British Isles and the Rhine Delta, 566 n.; for the river
Amnisos in Crete, 498 n.
47

For rivers in Hecataeus, see Jacoby, RE s.v. Hekataios, 2692.318, 2694.18, 2704.56
2705.57; for Herodotus Scythia, see Corcella on Hdt. 4.1631 (p. 586), with bibliography;
for Xenophon, M.-F. Baslez, Fleuves et voies deau dans l Anabase , Pallas, 43 (1995),
7988; for Eratosthenes, Thalamas, 2489. For lists of rivers in Mela, see p. 144 n. 37,
adding 3.71 (Ariana). His account of Gaul is entirely organised round three major rivers
(3.20, 3.21, 3.24).
48

Nine most beautiful springs in the Laterculi Alexandrini (P. Berl. inv. 13044, col. 12, ll.
516); Legras, 16970. The absence is surprising, given that they include famous names like
Arethusa, Castalia, and Dirce.
49

This is more obvious in Strab. 2.5.301, where the Danube and Taurus are dealt with in
two successive chapters.
145

travelogue of northern Asia); the tiny Rhebas; the Ganges, which is reinforced with the
Pillars of Dionysus and Nysa, the end of the Emodon mountains, and the ocean (6236 +
115265). On the other hand, they connect features of the landscape through which they
flow, running predictably from mountains to sea.50 Instead of separate rosters of mountains,
rivers, cities they intersect, lakes into which they plunge, the sea they eventually reach (and
even the islands in their estuary), they are all joined seamlessly together. One effect is to
enhance the two-dimensionality of the landscape, and the impression that we are able to look
down from a height and take in a wide, synoptic view (p. 123). Even in the periplous-like
journey along the Black Sea coast, the gaze is directed not just towards the mouth of the
river, but at the whole of its course.
Rivers aid definition and help to anchor peoples and places in a landscape. This is
particularly useful in north eastern Asia, regions remote and otherwise hard to visualise. The
Mardus runs through the territories of the Dercebii and Bactrians (7345); the Araxes divides
the Massagetae from the Caspian tribes (740); the Oxus flows through the middle of Sogdia
(747); the Sakai live beside the Jaxartes (74950), the southern Scythians beside the Indus
(1088). The Indian rivers also structure the account of Indian tribes (113747). Closer to
home, where the settlement pattern is by cities rather than tribes, cities are set beside them.51
The relationship between human and physical geography emerges most clearly in connection
with rivers.
It is because rivers are so readily associable with the landscapes through which they
flow that by an extremely common poetic figure they may serve as the primary identifiers of
a region, or even as metonyms.52 So too in the Periegesis, where rivers evoke cities or
regions: the Alpheus and Olympia (374); the Ilissus and Attica (1023); the Ismenus and
Thebes (1165). In 575 the almost wholly obscure river Apsynthus particularises Thrace itself,
its famed connection with Dionysus expressed through a choice obscurity. More often a river
50

Not a foregone conclusion: in Herodotus, the mighty rivers of southern Russia rise in lakes
(4.51, 52.1, 54, 55, 57; cf. 2.33.3, where the Istros rises in the city, not mountain, Pyrene).
Aristotle, Meteor. 349b4350a13, cf. 356a134 (targeting Plat. Phaed. 111 C113 C), devotes
an extensive refutation to the view that rivers rise out of underground reservoirs of water (cf.
Thomson, 104, and commentary by H. Strohm, Meteorologie: ber die Welt/Aristoteles
(Berlin, 1970), 1579, 1734); in V. Georg. 4.36772, waters break out from founts
underneath the sea; underground rivers and reservoirs in Sen. QN 3.15.
51

Rome, 3516; Epizephyrian Locri, 3657; Croton, 36970; Sinope, 7739; Ilium, 81819;
Aspendos, 852; Tarsus, 8689; Sidon, 91213; Antioch, 91820 (and perhaps formerly
Emesa: 916b920 n.).
52

e.g. Il. 2.877, 5.479, 6.172; on Pindars use of hydronyms for towns, see SaidTrdBoulmer, 164, Mader, 76, 77, and Braswell on Nem. 9.9 0Aswpou=; for tragedy, Biehl on Eur.
Troad. 1323; Mastronarde on Phoen. 126, 222, 3478, 6468; W. Breitenbach,
Untersuchungen zur Sprache der euripideischen Lyrik (Stuttgart, 1934), 178; Mynors on V.
Georg. 3.475; Nisbet and Rudd on Hor. Od. 3.4.356, 3.29.278; for river-metonyms for
India (Hydaspes, Ganges), Andr and Filliozat, 400 n. 398.
146

runs through an already-named territory, adding to its characterisation. Greece is a country of

rivers to a remarkable degree (41013; 41617; 4235; 4325; 43940). Each of its famous
regions has one or more famous rivers, and it is worth asking why rivers have been chosen as
signifiers rather than cities. Estelle Oudot has offered some thoughts on the Ilissus as a
signifier of Athens,53 but instead of, or as well as, sinking a depth-charge, she might have
asked why all of Greece is treated like this. The regions of Asia Minor, too, have their
distinctive rivers, but this time the rivers compete with cities: the Mysian Cius (806); the
Sangarius in Greater Phrygia (811); Xanthus and Simoeis rivers of Troy in Lesser Phrygia
(819); the Ionian Maeander (8235); the Maeonian (Lydian) Pactolus and Cayster (831, 837);
the Lycian Xanthus and Eurymedon (847, 852); the Cilician Pyramus, Pinaros, and Cydnus.
These connotative rivers evoke the places with which they are associated: the Tanais,
Scythia (65979); the Lydian tableau (83046) projects the reader so vividly into the
landscape that he is encouraged to imagine himself on the banks of the Pactolus listening to
the swans song in spring. This scene, which culminates in the sacred place of Dionysus, is
balanced at the opposite end of Asia by the honoured and sacred place consecrated to
Bacchus beside the Ganges (115260), the site of his victory over the Indians: the two
festivals are paired, but a site of dancing and rejoicing contrasts with a site of contumely and
anger. The connection between rivers, gods, and festivity is anticipated by Apollonius, who
has several tableaux figuring gods and/or cultic revelry on their banks.54 Besides this, a
wealth of riverine mythology is there to be exploited: Phaethon and the Heliades on the
Eridanus (2903); Boreas and the Ilissus (4245); the Amazons on the Thermodon (7745);
Hylas on the Cius (8068); and the pice de rsistance, the Sinope epyllion (7759), which
both creates and takes away a sense of local myth, for the eponymous city is not beside the
river, and the maiden is an elaborate confection of earlier literary maidens and myths.
In short, rivers create a sense of specific place.55 The rich vocabulary associated with
running water in hexameter poetry endows them, together with seas and coastlines, with a
lively character; they roar, foam, and perform their serpentine manoeuvres in the landscape
whether there is anyone to see or hear them or not. At the same time they evoke histories,
myths, and other topoi, and perhaps on occasion specific literary texts. Let us now turn to
mountains, with which they have so much in common.
Although orography seems not to have been a special area of interest to the same
extent as potamography, the ways in which mountains figure in earlier chorography and
ethnography in ways do prefigure the Periegesis. They both define and serve as referencepoints. They bound countries andon the theory that continent-division is by isthmus rather
53

Oudot, 25761.

54

1.3079, 1.5369 (a reference to the temple of Ismenian Apollo on the banks of the
Ismenus: Paus. 9.10.2; Schachter, i. 801), 2.90410, 3.87684 (where two rivers have been
substituted for two mountains in Od. 6.103).
55

R. Jenkyns, Virgils Experience: Nature and History: Times, Names, and Places (Oxford,
1998), 18: Virgil makes them [rivers] part of his imaginative, humanized landscape,
inspirers of patriotic sentiment and sense of place.
147

than waterwayslarger land-masses, so that the Caucasus marks the border of Asia and
Europe;56 they mark the beginnings and ends of seas, and points on the coastline.57 Beneath
them are situated peoples, cities, and other landmarks,58 and they connect one place with
another: the Caspian Gates, a mountain pass, are the starting-point for routes in western Asia
(10348), while we follow the Taurus range from its Lycian outpost, Cragos (84950), all the
way to the eastern end of the world (11623). Along the way, rivers run off it (644, 663, 748,
1091, 11467), peoples adhere to its sides (690, 714), it bisects the continent of Asia (638
43, 890) and demarcates the northern boundary of India (1134). Dionysius makes more of his
mountains than, say, ps.-Scymnus or Mela; this is less an exercise in orography than a study
of sensibility. On the one hand, their use as boundaries, or dividing lines, or to pinpoint other
locations, are all associated with a precise, descriptive style; on the other, they are also used
to evoke a sense of a landscape whose most distinctive and famous features they are. Regions
of Greece (415, 4312, 4389) and Asia Minor (814, 8301) and some Aegean islands (502,
535) have their characteristic heights, and sometimes rivers too; the summits of snowy
Haemus denote Thrace (4289), as mountains emblematise regions and countries in other
poets.59
It is no surprise that mountains and the rivers in the Periegesis have much in
common. The latter diversify the earths surface through a dynamic lexicon, imagery, and
rich cultural associations; the former lack such a wide range of imagery, yet also supply
contour and relief. Both demarcate, divide, and connectnot least to each otheras well as
structure the poem: the Tanais divides Europe as the Taurus does Asia, in both cases with the
northern side treated first. Where linear, they can mark lines of latitude and longitude;
conversely, a point, such as a cape, headland (51112, 5613), or river mouth (542, 566) can
be used to orient an island.60 More associatively, both are connected with precious stones
(below); rocks and water are both sources of natural bounty and exquisite colour. In the
spring tableaux which complement each other so exquisitely, Apollos choirs match
Dionysuss revels, and the nightingale in the mountains (5289) the swans on the river
Pactolus (8334).
56

Countries: 9001, 9545, 9701, 1063, 1134, 1162. For the Caucasus, see 1921, though
the isthmus is flat in 6367.
57

Seas: 109, 11516 (not in fact a mountain: see n.), 129, 37981. Coastline: 3889, 87890.

58

737, 81415, 10023, 10667, 10978. As already in Hecataeus, e.g. FGrH 1 F 73;
Jacoby, RE s.v. Hekataios, 2693.3967.
59

Mountain metonyms are less common than rivers, but cf. Tmolus for Lydia (Il. 2.866,
Aesch. Pers. 49, al.), Pindars use of Kro/nion as a metonym for Olympia (Ol. 1.111, 6.64,
9.3; Elliger, 203). Commoner in Latin poetry, e.g. Rhodope and Ismaros for Thrace (V. Ecl.
6.30); Ida for Phrygia (V. Aen. 7.207, Sil. Ital. 1.126); Etna for Sicily (Sil. Ital. 9.196);
Niphates for Armenia (V. Georg. 3.30). Rivers and mountains combined at Il. 2.8689
(Caria), Call. Hymn 4.701 (Arcadia); Orph. Arg. 80 (Thrace); V. Georg. 3.3501 (Scythia),
4.4613 (Thrace); Hor. Od. 2.9.201 (Armenia), 3.25.1012 (Thrace).
60

Compare e.g. Mela 2.106 (Lemnos opposite Mt. Athos).

148

The differences are also illuminating. Mountains are less associated with human
culture. Troy is at the foot of Mount Ida (81415), the Germans leap across the Hercynian
range in a bravura display of hardihood and recherch Hellenistic vocabulary (2856). But
few myths are attached to them (save to the Ceraunian mountains, 3907), andexcept for
Dionysus pillars at the extremity of the Taurusno gods. This is curious. Artemis and her
retinue might have danced over them; Zeus as thunder-god might have been enthroned upon
them; the Nymphs might have made them uncanny; and although Pan is mentioned once
(995) it is in connection with pan-pipes, not with his native mountains. The rather decorous
attempts to evoke Dionysian cult (below) do not extend to oreibasia, nor does Cybele, the
Mountain Mother, sweep across them in her chariot.61 The mountains are not emblems of the
wilds, opposed to cities as carriers of civilisation. It is presumably in keeping with the spirit
of harmony that pervades the poem that there are no volcanoes, eitherno Typho, and no
Hephaestus or Cyclopes blasting away in their smithies.

Natural resources
Natural resources are a traditional category of ethnography. Fauna and flora, including
agricultural produce, and livestock, belong here; so too do mineral resources.62 Some items
have a curiosity value: it is diverting to hear about elephants and crocodiles. But their main
significance is as background for the character of the human population.
In what follows wild animals and natural flora are treated separately from the
products of human cultivation. Dionysius is far more interested in civilisation and what
sustains it. Yet a few items of natural flora do emerge: the oaks of Crete (503); fragrance and
spices in Araby the Blest (9379, 945, 951), Babylonian palms (1010), the scrubby soil of the
Arieni (10991100); Indian sweet reeds and millet (11267). Animals are not very numerous,
but space is found for the elephant (593, 111617) and sea-monsters of the Indian Ocean
(597605); swans on the Pactolus (8315) come from poetry rather than ethnography. The
cinnamon-bearing birds of Arabia (9445) are a local curiosity, converted into Dionysiac
miracle. In general, peculiarities of fauna and flora characterise the non-classical world, with
the exception of Cretan oaks; they individualise the landscape, whereas the ivy and vines
which accompany Dionysus cult from the far west to the far east (573, 9478, 1157, 1160)
have the opposite effect.
All this is fairly incidental. The aspect of the natural world in which the poet shows a
much more sustained interest is mineralogy, with repeated descriptions of precious and semiprecious stones. It is worth while considering why they are here at all. Other ethnographies

61

On gods associated with mountains, see Gerber, 3001, R. Buxton, Imaginary Greece:
The Contexts of Mythology (Cambridge, 1994), 856; on the associations of mountains in
mythology, ibid. 8696.
62

Thomas 1982a, 34.

149

pay significantly more attention to precious metals:63 not just in their own right, but because
they can be connected with cultural products such as weapons, coinage, and jewellery. In
such products the Periegesis shows no interest whatsoever, and even the raw metals come in
a very poor second.64 On the other hand, some geographical writers do pay attention to
gemstones. Strabo does, repeatedly,65 as does Agatharchides, whose work On the Erythraean
Sea is also reflected by Diodorus Siculus.66 If the extant fragments of Posidonius show more
interest in precious metals, he nevertheless mentioned the precious stones brought back to
Egypt from India in the reign of Euergetes II (146116 BC) by the explorer Eudoxus;67 and a
specialist treatise on rivers ascribed to Plutarch associates with each river a specific plant and
precious stone.68 Plinys Natural History of course has a separate book on gemstones which
is our best single source for ancient gemmology. So if the sheer prominence of mineralogy
within the poem remains striking, the mere fact of its presence in a geographical compendium
is no surprise.
Various traditions of lapidary writing are represented in poetry and in prose.69 Each is
broadly definable, but in practice a given text will often overlap with the others besides the
one to which it is mainly affiliated. The one most assimilable to geographythe one to
which Dionysius mineralogical notices seem most akinis that which puts a premium on
precise description and classification. It is represented by Plinys thirty-seventh book, and
perhaps also by Dionysius lost poem De Lapidibus, from which a mere handful of
63

e.g. Diod. Sic. 3.1214 (gold-mines on the borders of Egypt with Arabia and Ethiopia, a
section drawn from Agatharchides: see B. Bommelaer, Diodore, iii (Livre III), xii, xv, xviii),
5.27 (Gaul); Caesar, BG 5.12.45 (Britain); Tac. Germ. 5.26.1. Unprovenanced fragments
of Posidonius (F 23940 E.K. = 19, 402 Theiler) mention Spanish mines (gold, silver,
copper); tin in the Tin Islands; silver, tin, and white gold in the far north-west of Lusitania.
64

Tin: 563; iron: 76871; gold: 832 (a topos), 951, 1114, 1144.

65

e.g. 4.6.2 (amber among the Ligures); 12.2.10 (crystal and onyx near Galatian territory);
15.1.67 (Indian crystal, anthracite, pearls), 15.1.69 (precious stones in India); 16.3.7 =
Nearchus, FGrH 133 F 28 (pearls and other precious stones on islands in the Persian Gulf);
16.4.6 (topaz on Serpent Island in the Arabian Gulf); 16.4.20 (emerald and beryl in Arabian
gold-mines); 17.2.2 (mines of precious stones in Meroe); 17.3.11 (lychnis and the
Carthaginian stone in Masaesylia).
66

1121 n. (topaz on Serpent Island); Diod. Sic. 1.33.3 (precious stones in Meroe, possibly
also from Agatharchides: see P. Bertrac, Diodore, i (Livre I), 11); cf. also the gold-mines on
the Egyptian border (n. 63).
67

Strab. 2.3.4 = Posidonius F 49 E.K. = 13 Theiler.

68

Ps.-Plut. de Fluviis; see RE s.v. Plutarchos, 870.39871.19 (K. Ziegler); J. Bidez, Plantes
et pierres magiques daprs le ps.-Plutarque de Fluviis, in Mlanges offerts M. Octave
Navarre (Toulouse, 1935), 2540. It is published with a commentary by Mller, GGM ii.
63765.
69

HalleuxSchamp, p. xvi.
150

fragments, partly overlapping with the Periegesis, are preserved.70 Such works are not
immune from superstition and the reportage of magical properties which is characteristic of a
second category, described by Halleux and Schamp as containing un courant franchement
magique, souvent vhicul par des apocryphes orientaux, and a couplet from the Periegesis
(also attributed to the lost poem in S Od. 10.323) credits jasper with the power of protection
against Empusas and other ghosts (7245). The very idea of stones being born (below)
seems to rest on an animistic conception,71 though it could by now be dead metaphor. In any
case, precious stones are among the resources of the land, and as such must be precisely
located and described.
Dionysius tends to associate precious stones with Asiaespecially central Asia and
the far east (India: adamas, amethyst, beryl, jasper, topaz; Media: narcissite; Ariana: coral
and sapphire; Persia: agate; Babylon: beryl), but also the Caspian (jasper) and Asia Minor
(jasper and crystal on the Thermodon). Within Europe, they are found on Pallene (lychnis
and asterios) and the borders of the ocean in the far north (adamas and amber). Save for
Pallene and the Thermodon, the exoticism of these locations recalls, first, Herodotus belief
that the edges of the earth bear the costliest things (including precious minerals and gold),72
and, second, the tendency, already marked in Posidippus, for precious stones to be associated
with exotic places. The exception, Pallene, is perhaps explained by literary considerations,
namely symmetry with the preceding, matching section (298330 n.).
Gemstones are referred to both within ethnographies and as stand-alone curiosities.
Traditional ethnography treats mineral resources alongside agriculture, as specimens of a
countrys produce.73 Precious stones are accordingly mentioned alongside livestock (10303)
or crops (10759). Elsewhere they appear as isolated notices, and/orquite frequently
placed at the end of a section or subsection.74 That is to say, gems are useful for
paragraphing. There are mineralogical sign-offs in 101113 (Mesopotamian beryl), 10757
(agate almost ends Persia), 11036 (coral and sapphire conclude the peoples to the west of
the Indus), and in 7245 crystal and jasper divide the situs of the Caspian from the review of
its people.

70

GGM ii, p. xxvi; Knaack, RE s.v. Dionysius, 924.127; Bowie 1990, 79; HalleuxSchamp,
1412. Amato 2005a, 6874, cf. 2005b, 110 and n. 58, sees it rather as un prodotto del
sincretismo magico-astrologico orientale risalente a Zoroastro, ai Magi ed ai Caldei
(quotation on p. 70).
71

Jacob 1990, 44.

72

Hdt. 3.106.1, 11416, and 116.2; Jacob 1991a, 52; J. S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in
Ancient Thought (Princeton, 1992), 3841; Nesselrath; Rood, 1301. Herodotus cites gold in
India, Aethiopia, and northern Europe; amber and tin e0c e0sxa/thj, but denies the existence of
Eridanus and is agnostic about the Cassiterides.
73

Thomas 1982a, 44.

74

Counillon 1983, 183.

151

Within ethnographies, although human beings may turn mineral resources to account
(2923, 11016, 111822), gemstones are more often seen as natural products of the land
(31618, 3289, 7245, 7802, 101113, 1031, 10756), which they beautify and to which
they add colour and exquisiteness. This type of writing is quite different from poetic
ecphrases of highly wrought jewels or otherwise exceptional stones. There is no interest in
their worked state; they are never cut, or engraved; the final stage of transforming them from
nature into culture vanishes from view.75 It is the same with metals: humans may extract
them, but, in contrast to the treatment of metals in many other Greek and Roman
ethnographies, there is not the slightest hint of what might be done with them. As a corollary,
the question of value does not arise.76 The effect is quite different from Virgils treatment of
the precious metals of Italy. Richard Thomas suggests that the mention of precious metals,
particularly of gold and silver, again suggests luxury, and the presence of such metals implies
a high degree of civilisation and the potential for decline.77 Dionysius minerals may be
carried down from the mountains by rivers, but the process is arrested before it gets as far as
human adornment.78 It is the landscape that is beautified; there is no room for worrying
human luxus.
The most obvious poetic effect of the stones within the poem is that they, like Chinese
silks, add brilliance and colour, which is described carefully. The mere fact that they do so is
important, for neither Homeric epic nor Herodotean ethnography paints the world in bright
tones, though the Alexander historians are sensitive to colour in their evocations of the
qau/mata of Central Asia and India.79 Colour and brilliance are precisely the two usual

75

Plin. NH 37.1 violare etiam signis, quae causa gemmarum est, quasdam nefas ducentes.
Contrast e.g. Agatharchides (p. 150 n. 66 above), who, having described the appearance and
extraction of topaz, concludes by saying that it is given over to the polishers (De Mari Erythr.
82, Diod. Sic. 3.39.9 toi=j dia\ th=j te/xnhj duname/noij e0kleai/nein to\ paradoqe\n
oi0kei/wj); Strab. 15.1.69, on furnishings and utensils studded with precious stones in an
Indian religious procession. On Strabos interest in the extraction, exploitation, and
profitability of precious metals, see Jacob 1991a, 156; Aujac 2see213.
76

Contrast e.g. Nearchus ap. Strab. 16.3.7 = FGrH 133 F 28 margari/thj polu\j kai\
poluti/mhtoj.
77

Thomas loc. cit.

78

Unlike Posidippus, in whom it does: see D. Schnur, A Garland of Stones: Hellenistic

Lithica as Reflections on Poetic Transformation, in B. Acosta-Hughes, E. Kosmetatou, and
M. Baumbach (eds.), 11822, at 11819.
79

Elliger, 96102; Trdinger, 79. For the Alexander historians, Nearchus, FGrH 133 F 11
(Arr. Ind. 16.4) and Onesicritus, FGrH 134 F 21 (Strab. 15.1.30) on dyed Indian beards (T. S.
Brown, Onesicritus: A Study in Hellenistic Historiography (Chicago, 1981), 52, 75); Arr.
Anab. 6.29.56, on Cyrus tomb-chamber; Cleitarchus, FGrH 137 F 18, 21 (Ael. NA 17.2,
23), on Indian snakes and the catreus bird; also Solin. 52,18, on Indian hair-dyes.
152

focuses of ancient descriptions of gemstones.80 Both figure in Posidippus Liqika/

strikingly so, given David Petrains observation that the resplendency of stones is a
commonplace in Latin literature, but surprisingly enough the Greek epigrams that we
possessed before the discovery of the papyrus seldom mention a stones sparkle (345). At
the same time, stones are identified and categorised by colour, and when Posidippus
describes the colour of his gemstones with the kind of precision Dionysius emulates (and in
one case directly imitates), it raises the question of their use of technical, prose treatises.81
Indeed, Dionysius descriptions of the colours of his gemstones usually marry up nicely with
the lapidary handbooks and manuals.82 The chromatographic tradition contrasts with Strabo
(for example), who does not feel called upon to describe as well as name the stone, and more
often than not does not.
Born among the rocks, and associated time and again with rivers and coastlines, there
is a marked formularity in the presentation of gemstones. The verb fu/esqai is repeatedly
used for their genesis in rocks (328, 1013, 1031, cf. 1104 w0di/nousi) and once for the genesis
in the Caspian of crystal, which was in fact believed to be composed of water (724). This
same verb and its equivalents (genna=sqai; nasci) are repeatedly used by ancient lapidary
writers, who apply it equally well to water, to rock, and to the stones country of origin.83
Another motif is that of stones carried downstream by rivers (10757, 111824, cf. 31618).
The so-called river topos figures several times in Posidippus (7.12, 16.12, cf. 15.1 A.B.;
presumed in 1.1 and 10.3),84 but may also have been seriously proposed by Posidonius,85 and
80

Roberts, 52, citing TLL s.v. lumen (generatim), VII.2. 1817.518.

81

Colour: 3.1 a1nqrac] au0ga/zwn; 4.1 la=an] . . . glauko/n; 5.12 to\n a0stero/enta
sa/peiron [sc. lapis lazuli] | to/nde xrusi/thn; 6.3 marmai=ron b[hru/llion; 7.3 me/liti
xroih\n li/q[on ei1kelon; 16.1 to\n polio\n kru/stallon. Radiance: 8.56, 9.3, 14.1, 16.5.
Smith, 106, compares Posidipp. 8.56 A.B., with Theophr. Lapid. 3.18, and concludes that
from parallels such as this it is clear that Posidippus is relying to some degree on technical
writing.
82

Standard colour-epithets are used for amethyst (1122 n.); beryl (1012 n.); coral (1103 n.);
jasper (724, 782, 1012 nn.); sapphire (11045 n.). But they are subject to the usual
difficulties about ancient colour termswhich becomes a particular problem with topaz
glaukio/wn (1121 n.).
83

Agatharchides, Mar. Erythr. 82 (Diod. Sic. 3.39.8 li/qoj fuo/menoj/Phot. 456 b 15

gi/netai); ps.-Plut. Fluv. (passim) and ps.-Dioscor. Lapid. (e.g. 28, 32) use genna=sqai; Orph.
Lith. Keryg. uses both fu/esqai (e.g. 5) and genna=sqai (e.g. 8); Pliny and DamigeronEvax
use nasci.
84

See Bastianini and Gallazzi on 10.3 A.B. (= col. II 9); Hunter 2004b, 97; see also T.
Wright (ed.), The Travels of Marco Polo the Venetian (London, 1854), Book III ch. 21, 398
9 and n. 3 (diamonds in the kingdom of Murphili).
85

See EdelsteinKidd on their Posidonius F 49.165 ff. (p. 243): a Posidonian origin is
uncertain.
153

is another nice example of the inseparability of poetic and prose backgrounds to Dionysius
gemmology. Dionysius builds on both connections, enhancing them in his idiosyncratic way.
He both formalises them (all Indian gemstones are apparently carried down by rivers) and
adds the natural beauty of the brilliancy and colour of the gems to the animatedness of the
running water.
It seems highly likely that Dionysius knew Posidippus. Their shared interest in
colours, brilliancy (328, 328, 111920 n.), in exotic origins, their shared use of the river
topos, verbal correspondences,86 and perhaps also their fondness for similes,87 all speak in
favour of this. There are also overlaps with Pliny, which is unsurprising, given Plinys range
of sources and encyclopaedic coverage. The most impressive correspondence is in their
treatment of jasper, a nice instance of the way Dionysius apparently combines allusions to his
Hellenistic poetic predecessors with technical writing. On the one hand, the mention of jasper
in three separate locations throughout the poem (724, 782, 1120) is apparently an attempt to
differentiate three local varieties in a way that corresponds nicely to information in NH
37.115; on the other, h0ero/essan i1aspin in 724 appears to echo the same clausula in
Posidipp. 14.1 A.B. Apart from this, narcissite (10301) is mentioned only in Pliny and one
other lapidary writer; asterios (3279) is again located on the coasts of Pallene in the
manuscripts at NH 37.132, though many editors accept the emendation to Patalene; and the
presence of amber and adamas in the far north agrees with a fragment of Metrodorus of
Scepsis quoted by Pliny, though Pliny himself does not believe it (31819 n.).88 Other
technical treatises which Dionysius must also have used are inscrutable.89 Several other
oddities and oddments cohere, now with one writer, now with another, but no overall pattern
emerges.90
In the end, what we have are the poetics of gems in the landscape and in the
Periegesis itself. Posidippus epigrams on stone, lapidary in both subject-matter and
execution, are rightly seen as a figure for his own art, and although a didactic work of 1200
86

319, 724 n., 111920 n., cf. 10757 n.

87

Similes for light/colour: 317 oi[a/ tij au0gh/, 328 oi[a/ tij a0sth/r, 781 oi[a/ te pa/xnhn;
Posidipp. 4.3 a0ntise/lhnon, 5.1 to\n a0stero/enta sa/peiron, 16.6 w3sper kai\ kalo\j h0e/lioj
(but formally and metrically compare rather Ap. Rhod. 3.814 oi[a/ te kou/rh, 4.317, al.).
Other: 1011 xrusoi=o . . . xarie/steron, 10757 (see n.); Posidipp. 15.5 yeu/dei+ xeiro\j
o3moion, 17.4 ma/gnhj oi[a li/qoj, 19.6 tou= Polufhmei/ou skaiote/rhn qureou=.
88

Following Mller (on 314), Gthe, 223, argues that Metrodorus of Scepsis was the source
underlying all of 3027, 31619 (nations north and south of the Ister and the precious stones
associated with them); cf. Counillon 1983, 246, 256, 308 (adding 724, 7812, 1119).
89

Greaves, 914, proposes that Dionysius was using specialised mineralogical treatises for
northern Asia and Europe, and sources for middle and southern Asia which (like the Periplus
Maris Erythraei) treated its natural produce more fully.
90

See 328 n. (asterios in Pallene); 101113 n. (Mesopotamian beryl); 1075 n. (Persian agate);
1103 n. (coral in Ariana); 11045 n. (sapphire in Ariana); 1121 n. (Indian topaz).
154

lines is obviously on a different scale from an epigram, the gemstones are also a good
metaphor for the poikilia and minute, particularistic detail of the poems aesthetic. (It is not
far from gemstones to the mosaic metaphors which suggest themselves so readily.) Of course,
the Hellenistic gemstone poems are about cut gems, whereas the Periegesis treats precious
stones only in their raw state, and never anticipates the finished, cut products. Perhaps that
does not matter. It takes nothing away from their exquisiteness, though the lack of human
finish does mean that, no matter highly wrought or intricate the poem (and it is both), the raw
state of the gemstones would spoil any Callimachean notion of mo/xqoj. If that were the
point, the Chinese silk woven from flowers in 7546 would be a more suitable metapoetic
figure.91
David Petrain has suggested that a couple of passages on gemstones in Augustan
Latin are early examples of what would in later antiquity be called the jewelled style. This
is characterised by visual detail, by the division of a whole into parts (leptologia), by dense,
richly textured effects, and intricate variations over a set of short, similar word groups.92
Although neither he nor Michael Roberts, who studied the styles late-antique exemplars,
considered whether it was represented in Greek poets as well, the question arises whether the
style is reflected in Dionysius, considering that it is born of the same quest for vividness (pp.
116-7) which characterises the Periegesis, and that its content is so particularistic and packed
with detail. In practice, the highly spun antitheses and rhetorical artifice of the Latin jewelled
style are not characteristic of the didactic poem, but it is still worth drawing attention to the
passage where the treatment of gemstones reaches its climax:

h1 pou bhru&llou glaukh_n li/qon h)d' a)da&manta

marmai/ront' h2 xlwra_ diauga&zousan i1aspin

1120

h2 kai\ glaukio&wnta li/qon kaqaroi=o topa&zou

kai\ glukerh_n a)me/quston u(phre/ma porfure/ousan

This highly wrought list of five jewel-names, spread over four lines, consists of two basic
constructions (li/qoj + gem name in the genitive, and gem name + epithet) each of which is
elaborated in the second pair of lines. No antitheses, but a series of short word-groups with
micro-variation in each one.
In short, gemstones showcase the earths spontaneous beauty. To quote Pliny, here
natures grandeur is gathered together within the narrowest limits . . . very many people find
that a single gemstone alone is enough to provide them with a supreme and perfect vision of

91

Flowers as a stylistic figure: Roberts, 4851; fine cloth: S. J. Heyworth, Notes on

Propertius Books III and IV, CQ2 36 (1986), 199211 at 209 (Call. fr. 532 Pf.; Prop. 2.1.56,
4.5.57).
92

Petrain, esp. 344, 349; Roberts, 525.

155

the wonders of Nature.93 Precious minerals had a place in traditional ethnography, but in the
Periegesis they are an emblem of a diverse, beautiful, and fundamentally benign world, as
well as a metaphor at some level for the exquisiteness of the poem.
The next category comprises natural products which are the result of human
cultivation. In traditional ethnography they are usually divided into the categories of crops,
trees, and livestock.94 Dionysius, who is interested in a countrys productive capacity,95
obviously reflects them, and it beautifully illustrates his sensitivity to formal minutiae that in
9212 he uses a styleme otherwise apparently attested only in Latin poetry,96 whereby the
three categories are tersely distributed over two lines:
pa~sa de/ toi liparh& te kai\ eu1botoj e1pleto xw&rh,
mh~la& te ferbe/menai kai\ de/ndresi karpo_n a)e/cein.
In general, however, rather than registering a places bare capacity for the production of
standard footstuffs or supporting livestock, Dionysius prefers to treat traditional items like
karpo/j, si=toj, mh=la, bo/ej, in some more individuated and artistic way, as if an attempt is
being made to lift them out of banality.
Numerous rhetorical set-pieces put this into effect: for Egypt, an encomium of the
Nile and its population; a Dionysian Golden Age tableau for Araby the Blest; for
Mesopotamia, a miniature bucolic idyll complete with panpipes; for India, a review of its
native industries and the fertilising properties of its famous rivers. Another device is the
negative priamel, whereby the poet registers departure from the civilised norm. The Libyan
Nomads provide the clearest example of primitivism: they do not use the plough or wagon,
have no cattle, but live like wild beasts (1903). The Massagetae are more frightful than
pitiful: they consume no corn or wine, but mares milk mixed with blood (7435). Like them,
the Parthians are formidable warriors: they plough no fields, nor sail in boats, nor pasture
cattle, but from birth are mounted horsemen, and obtain food by hunting (10415, 1050). The
Seres are not so much primitives as so far removed from ordinary usage as to be almost
utopian: they have no livestock, but make silk from the variegated flowers of the earth (753
6). Other accounts of the Seres supply what needs to be understood here to make sense of the
93

NH 37.1 in artum coacta rerum naturae maiestas . . . ut plerisque ad summam

absolutamque naturae rerum contemplationem satis sit una aliqua gemma (transl. D. E.
Eichholz, adapted).
94

Thomas 1982a, 34; the categories appear also in Tac. Germ. 5.1.

95

Egypt (229, 2345, 2401); Syria (9212); Mesopotamia (9949); Persia (1079); India
(11257).
96

Noted by Thomas 1982a, 40, citing V. Georg. 2.1434, 2223, both of which, like
Dionysius, are concerned with soil excellent enough to produce all these good effects, and
4.1289, on poor soil which has the opposite property; other examples in 3.3523, 4.55960,
Hor. Epist. 1.16.3; no livestock in Lucan, BC 9.4334.
156

antithesisthey make a living by exchanging their goods with the outside world (Mela 3.60);
but by omitting any mention of contact with outsiders Dionysius enhances the impression of
children of nature living in an unpierced idyll.
After anaphora and epanalepsis, the priamel is one of Dionysius favourite stylistic
twitches, which he replays no fewer than half a dozen times.97 Based ultimately on a fairly
common ethnographical styleme no agriculture, but . . .,98 their particular model is
Apollonius account of the Chalybes, and their distinctive way of life:

toi=si me\n ou1te bow~n a1rotoj me/lei ou1te tij a1llh

futalih_ karpoi=o meli/fronoj, ou)de\ me\n oi3ge
poi/mnaj e9rsh&enti nomw|~ e1ni poimai/nousin:
a)lla_ sidhrofo&ron stufelh_n xqo&na gatome/ontej
w}non a)mei/bontai bioth&sion . . . (2.10026)

Here we have, in the context of the periplous-cum-ethnography of the south Pontic coast, a
people whose peculiarity is brought out by a triple negative (cf. 1902, 9946). The form is
cultivated, the content traditional. The most civilised peoples practise agriculture; primitives
are ignorant of it.99 While Herodotus had opposed agriculture to the life of pastoral nomads,
later authors develop the historical schematism and have a more sophisticated taxonomy of
lifestyles.100 Dionysiuslike Apollonius before himdraws a series of antitheses with the

97

1903; 70915; 7435; 7536; 9948; 10415; cf. also 5759 (not thus).

98

Examples of not x + adversative, in Hdt. 1.216.3 (Massagetae), 4.46.3 (Scythians, but the
immediate point is invulnerability to invasion, not primitivism); Caes. BG 4.1.8 (Suebi),
5.14.2 (inhabitants of inland Britain); Tac. Germ. 46.3 (Fenni); Dio 49.36.2 (Pannonians). In
poetry: Ap. Rhod. 2.9879, 9967 (Frnkel, 2623); Virgilian examples of not x but y are
noted by Thomas 1982a, 38; add Aen. 8.31618 (early Italians).
99

Jacob 1991a, 162, Rottier, 523 (Strabo); to the examples in Mattern, 72, add Mela 3.59 ob
inmanitatem habitantium inculta, Plin. NH 6.53 proxima (sc. pars) inculta saevitia gentium
(both of the far east).
100

On the ancient hierarchy of lifestyles, see Shaw 1982a and 1982b, esp. 2931; Lund, 57;
Mosino, 15. Historical schematisation in Dicaearchus fr. 48 Wehrli (the earliest men lived on
fruits produced spontaneously by the earth; then came hunting and pastoralism; finally
agriculture). In a synchronic analysis, Arist. Pol. 1256a301256B7 distinguishes pastoralism,
brigandage, fishing, and hunting (including fowling); he admits that some of these lifestyles
are combinable with others. In practice, pastoralism and agriculture may of course coexist,
but this was not often acknowledged in antiquity (Polybius Celts, 2.17.811 are unusual);
elsewhere, agriculture is known but suppressed as a deliberate lifestyle choice (Caes. BG
157

civilised practice of agriculture, all of them, however, pitiful, fearful, or (like the Seres)
unattainable.
What interests him, then, is a peoples cultural levelabove all, as evinced by its
alimentation.101 What matters is not how natural products can be economically exploited (as
with Strabo102), but what they indicate about the lifestyles of their possessors, advanced or
backward, prosperous or wretched. The double silence about foodstuffs on both sides of the
antithesis is curious. On the one hand, he never mentions those indices of classical culture,
the olive or the vine, and rarely specifies which cereal crops are grown.103 On the other, he is
equally silent about the bizarre or downright repulsive diets that other classical ethnographers
attribute to other peoplesraw fish, lice, locusts, and so on.104
The range of nomoi that so fascinated Herodotuscustoms regarding birth, marriage,
and above all the disposal of the deadgo for nothing here; one of the very few culturally
distinctive practices that Dionysius registers is a dietary one, when he notes that the Parthians
disallow feasting until they have exerted themselves in battle (10489). Sporadic attention is
paid to clothing:105 the Blessed Arabians wear soft golden robes (953); the Indians weave
linen (1116); the Erembi in contrast are gumnoi/ (965); weaponry is not exactly a category,
though four peoples are said to employ bows and arrows (740, 7501, 8567, 1067). But it is
worth reflecting on the general dearth of nomoi. It could partly be a matter of sources and
what they fail to supply. The Alexander historians are selective with regard to Indian
customs, disregarding the traditional Ionian categories of religion, tafai/, o3rkia, and
pi/steij;106 on the other hand, the nomos about Parthian feasting turns up in similar form in
Trogus Parthian ethnography. Nevertheless, Dionysius overall lack of interest in cultural
curiosities and diaita is a general characteristic of the poem as a whole; it emerges clearly in
contrast with Mela, who has a lively interest in them.107 One of the consequences is that it is
impossible to build up the sort of detailed picture-by-negatives of the narrators society
6.22, among the Germans). Aristotles taxonomy is followed by Strabo, with the addition of
subsistence from trade and commerce (van der Vliet 2003, 264).
101

A feature of ancient ethnographies which can be traced back to Homer: Jacob 1991a, 25
30; Woolf, 323; for Herodotus, S. R. West 1999, 76.
102

Aujac 2000, 11423.

103

For Strabos interest in the olive and vine, see van der Vliet 1984, 57; Aujac 2000, 117.

104

For the Ichthyophagi, Jacob 1991a, 137; among Herodotus Libyan tribes, lice (4.168.1);
dried locusts sprinkled in milk (172.1), snakes and lizards (183.4), apes (194).
105

For clothing in ethnography, see Trdinger, 175, s.v. Kleidung; van der Vliet 1984, 635
(Strabo).
106

Trdinger, 7680.

107

Brodersen 1994b, 79. Like Dionysius, Mela is interested in diet and clothing, but also in
topics which pass Dionysius by: the relations between the sexes, weaponry, political life,
religion and ritual practices.
158

beyond the obvious facts that it is classical and prosperouswhich has been a corollary of
ethnographical observation from Herodotus onwards.108 It is not that deviations from a norm
are never registered, but they are bland and reflect only the most general assumptions by
classical peoples of what constitutes civilised behaviour.
A sense of self is engrained in the workthe narrators acknowledgement of the
political power of Rome, his implicit affiliation with Alexandria, his Graeco-Roman
sensibility and myopia about cultures other than the classicalbut it is perhaps a corollary of
the low definition and lack of specificity in which his own culture is framed that there are no
Greeks versus barbarians in the poem; the word barbaros occurs only once, of the Seres
(752), and these are a gentle, remote race, emblematised by their cobweb-fine silks.109
Nevertheless, a contrast is suggested between peoples who are agricultural (or occasionally
mercantile), and therefore advanced and civilised, or those blessed with advantageous natural
resources, and those who are warlike.110 For bellicosity is a remarkably frequent quality in
the poem.111 It tends to adhere to peoples on the edges of the empire, such as the Caucasus, or
outside it, and to that extent corresponds to the traditional image of the aggressive, and often
mountain-dwelling, barbarian.112 Yet Persian militarism has disappeared behind Persian gold,
and on the other hand there are also warlike races within Italy, above all the Latins
themselves. Despite the frisson of fear the narrator feigns for the Massagetae (741), none of
108

Detailed comparisons with our practices in Tacitus (Trdinger, 166): Tac. Germ. 6.2 nec
. . . in morem nostrum, 16.1 non in nostrum morem, 25.1 non in nostrum morem, 26.4 non in
totidem (i.e. as many as among us); hinted by negatives in 8.2, 9.2 (no anthropomorphic
deities), 17.2 (womens dress), 18.2 (dowries), 1920 passim (marital ethics). Some are very
culturally specific to Rome; see also Thomas 1982a, 125.
109

Still more so in Mela: 3.60 genus plenum iustitiae.

110

People tend not to be both; similarly in Strabo, bellicosity is directly connected with
paucity of natural resources (Thollard, 814). Two closely related exceptions are Dionysius
Matieni (1004), and Strabos Hyrcanians, endowed with good agricultural land yet remaining
imperfectly civilised (Thollard, 201).
111

31 a0reimane/wn 0Arimaspw=n; 285 a0reimane/wn Germanw=n; 305 a0lkh/entej 0Alanoi/; 350

me/rmeron e1qnoj a0gauw=n . . . Lati/nwn; 376 Marsw=n qoa\ fu=la; 6538, the Maeotae and
Sauromatae, descended from the Amazons, e0sqlo\n e0nuali/ou ge/noj 1Areoj . . . pai=dej
megalh/torej; 682 a0lkh/entej 0Axaioi/; 699, the Iberes a0pexqe/a dh=rin e1xontej with the
Hyrcanians; 731 0Albanoi/ . . .. a0rh/i+oi; 740 Massage/tai . . . qow=n r9uth=rej o0i+stw=n; 750
1 to/ca Sa/kai fore/ontej; 8567 i1driej e0n pole/moisi Luka/onej a0gkulo/tocoi; 1002
a0gxe/maxoi Matihnoi/ . . .. 1Areoj eu] dedaw=tej; 104052, the Parthians; 1067 tocofo/rwn
. . . Mh/dwn.
112

Dauge, 42832, 6235, and passim (index s.v. feritas, ferocia); Lund, 434, 46, 61, 69
70, and passim; Jacob 1991a, 1602; Mattern, 72, 74, 75, 778, with examples from Polyb.
2.17.10 (Celts), Caes. BG 6.23.14 (Germans), Dio 49.36.3 (Pannonians); on brigandage,
Batty 2007, 1619, 27883, 480506.
159

them poses a real threat, with the possible exception of the Parthiansso it is precisely here
we are reassured that the Romans put them down. In general, the application of traditional
epithets to warlike peoples casts a Homeric patina over them, generalising and indistinct, not
inaccurate but somewhat blurred; even peoples known to geographers as vagabonds or
bandits may be glamorised by the application of a Homeric epithet.113 In Virgil, it may be
that the warlike qualities of the gentes of Italy implies a post-lapsarian state,114 but the move
of the Periegesis is rather to Homerise, or epicise, their bellicosity away into literary topos
and harmlessness, as opposed to nuisance or menace.
Prosperitythe property of those who are not bellicoseis distributed across the
world, but whereas people on all three continents are a0fneioi/ (258, 356, 564, 734, 955), only
easterners apparently possess o1lboj.115 Yet there is no suggestion of the corrupting power of
wealth.116 Perhaps this is because o1lboj is usually a matter of natural wealth, which reflects
rather on the beneficence of the earth than on the corruption of the uses to which it is put.117
So firmly is natural wealth associated with Asia that instead of hearing, for example, about
the desolation of the Fish-Eaters of the Gedrosian coastline, we learn of two beautiful natural
products that alleviate the hardships of the Arieni (1102). The exception are the Persians,
who got theirs from sacking Sardis (1057, 1062)and even there it is hard to pick up a whiff
of disapproval. Rarely is wealth transferable: only among the merchants who risk their lives
in the pursuit of gain in India (712), and among the Arieni, who sell their minerals to make a
living.

Peoples and their environment

In general, peoples and products adorn that part of the oi0koume/nh where they happen to be.
Movement is envisaged, though only haphazardly. The Phoenicians invented navigation
(908), and one of the peculiarities of the Parthians is that they do not travel in ships (1043).
The narrator himself does not travel in ships like a merchantbut some people do (70912),
and the addressee moves across the seas in a boat, in one instance a o9lka/j, literally a
113

2812, 305, 350, 3756, 658, 6809, 731a, 857 nn. Not all the epithets are Homeric
(a0reimanh/j originates with Simylus; a0lkh/eij is also post-Homeric), but tocofo/roj,
a0gxe/maxoj, a0rh/i+oj, megalh/twr are.
114

Thomas 1982a, 459.

115

For o1lboj, see Counillon 1983, 2767.

116

For corrupting Asiatic riches, Dauge, 155, 417, 6347, 648, 7045; Dionysius lack of
interest in this idea is shared with Strabo (Thollard, 245). He also lacks the image of the
tribes unspoilt by lucre (contrast e.g. Mela 2.10 Satarchae auri argentique, maximarum
pestium, ignari).
117

229, the fertile Nile, cf. 247; 9212, good agricultural land in Syria, cf. 902; 927, 934, 949
Arabian spices; 1102, the minerals of the Arieni; 1123, the diversity of natural o1lboj
produced by India, cf. 1135.
160

merchant ship (155 n.). This being a periplous, there are five mentions of harbours (75, 195,
480, 516, 617); but instead of registering any of the practical functions which harbours serve
and for which they are noted in other periploi (their capacity, the presence of sources of fresh
water, their significance for trade118), Dionysius treats them as markers of civilisation (617),
or as decorative ways of referring to position (516), or as partakers in his universe of
delightsomeness (195 poluh/raton, 617 e0ph/raton), but never as stopovers for sea-traffic or
places of trade and exchange.119 The diversity of the world, and the poikilia of the poem, is
mainly the result of people staying in their ecological nichescolourful tesserae in a large
and basically static whole.
A connection between lifestyle and environment is assumed by the whole classical
system of beliefs about civilisation and its oppositesnomadism, primitivism, barbarism
which underpins the poem.120 Of the poems three sets of nomads, the Erembi live in their
scorching caves up in the rocks, and the Scythians are driven to migrate by the coldthough
we hear nothing about the climate of the equally wretched and backward nomads of Libya.
The high cultural level of the Egyptians (blessed, numerous, city-dwelling) is also implicitly,
but directly, related to the resources of their country, in the sequence in which the items are
presented: the Nile flood prompted other eu9rh/mata through the practical need to measure the
progression of the seasons (2337). Yet even the tableau of Scythian cold fails really to
connect lifestyle with climate (as opposed to the need to flee it). Contrast the details about the
practical consequences of the extreme cold given by Diodorus (3.34.2): in Dionysius the
Scythians just trundle their wagons away, and that is an end of it. Some peoples survive
despite rather than because of, or by adapting to, their environment: the Arieni have
compensatory resources which allow them to eke out a living in an awful terrain (1097
1106). The Persians lifestyle is the result of a territorial conquest in the distant past (10578)
rather than the direct result of their environment.
118

The Odyssey already notes harbours (Elliger, 10810); in prose, from Hecataeus (FGrH 1
F 106, 343; Jacoby, RE s.v. Hekataios, 2694.2); for Timosthenes Peri\ Lime/nwn, Meyer
1998a; in general, Mosino, 201. The author of the Periplus Maris Erythraei is particularly
interested in the role of harbours in trade networks (Pdech, 1767; Casson, 2717); the
authors of the Periplus Maris Magni and the Periplus Ponti Euxini frequently note their
quality, their capacity for shipping, and the presence of water-supplies. Descriptions of
harbours in early Greek hexameter poetry and later imitations often mention safe shelter and
water-supply (Kienzle, 601).
119

It is also instructive to consider how a harbour is treated in rhetorical encomia. Ps.Libanius, Progymn. 12.8 = viii. 4835 Frster describes a harbour as a place of busy
transition and exchange between sea and land. Dio Chrys. Or. 32.36 (cf. 37) praises the
beauty of Alexandrias harbours in the context of commerce and prosperity.
120

For the influence of environment, Lund, 3555; Shaw 1982a (on the connection between
primitivism and harshness of climate); Thomas 1982a, 1112 (on temperies); Dauge, 46871
(on zone theory). For Strabo, in whom the effect of climate on character is not wholly
deterministic, see Thollard, 1219; van der Vliet 1984, 59, 60, 612, 71, and passim.
161

When Dionysius refers to human populations he does so usually using ethnic

adjectives, but if he refers to types of settlement it is in terms of either cities121 or tribes
(fu=la, e1qnea122). There are no kw=mai. Cities and tribes are not quite mutually exclusive, but
there is a strong tendency for cities to be within the Roman empire and tribes without; the
distinction between centre and periphery is particularly clear at the Danube, which divides
the tribes of northern Europe (302) from the a0ste e0remna/ (v.l. e0rumna/) of the south (321).
Tribes and cities coexist in Italy; Asia Minor in the main is a land of cities, but Asians
generally, and the inhabitants of Pontus and Cilicia in particular, can also be referred to in
tribal terms. There are also tribes of Iberes and in north Africa. Conversely, cities are a
feature of Mediterranean lands, with only a few exceptions (Babylon, Syene, Thebes). The
only city outside the Roman empire itself is Babylon; even where other populations were
known to live in cities, Dionysius eschews the name.123
Rome is the mother of all cities, and in his Roman Oration Aristides draws out and
makes explicit what Dionysius pregnant phrase implies: it is Romes sovereignty that
supports the unprecedented urban prosperity throughout her empire.124 Yet under Romes
121

On cities in the Periegesis: Jacob 1990, 534; Oudot, esp. 250. In other encomiastic
treatments of place, the sheer number of cities within a given territory is an index of
developed culture and prosperity (Theocr. Id. 17.815 (Egypt), V. Georg. 2.1556 (Italy);
Manil. 4.6869 (Europe); for Ammianus, see Sundwall, 628); this idea is not absent from the
Periegesis, but less explicit.
122

fu=la: 2 (general syllabus); in Asia: 138, 700 (Camaritae), 726 (round Caspian), 765
(Becheiri), 798 (Scythian tribes), 934 and 960 (Arabian tribes), 1142 (Peucaleis), 1161
(Indian tribes); in Libya: 186 (Nomads); in Europe: 285 (Germans), 302 (n. of Danube), 308
(Agaui), 345 (Italy), 347 (Pelasgi), 376 (Marsi), 379 (Iapyges). e1qnea: in Libya: 185
(Maurusii); in Europe: 282, 485 (Iberes); 350 (Latins); 383 (Italy); in Asia: 650, 653
(Sauromatae), 697 (eastern Iberes), 752 (Seres), 763 (Pontus), 864 (Cilicians), 1020 (Medes),
1056 (Persians), 1094 (separated by Indus), 1129 (India).
123

In 9549, the south Arabian tribes correspond to those mentioned by Eratosthenes ap.
Strab. 16.4.2 (III B, 48 Berger), but each is given a po/lij, mhtro/polij, or basi/leion by
Eratosthenes; Strab. 16.4.3 goes even further, and informs us that they are eu0dai/monej,
kateskeuasme/nai kalw=j i9eroi=j te kai\ basilei/oij. Likewise, Taxila and Peukelaotis in
India are not treated as cities, but as quasi-tribes (1141 Toci/loi a1ndrej, 1143 Peukale/wn);
the five thousand cities between the Hypanis and Hydapes (Strab. 15.1.3, 15.1.33, Plin. NH
6.59) have vanished without trace. Even within the empire, the three cities of the Amazons,
mentioned in Ap. Rhod. 2.3734, are silently dropped at 773: very likely the Amazons were
not urbane enough for urban living.
124

Or. 26.929 passim. For example: (93) When were there so many cities on land or
throughout the sea, or when have they been so thoroughly adorned? . . . One would say that
those men had been kings, as it were, of deserts and garrisons, but that you alone are rulers of
cities. (94) Now all of the Greek cities flourish under you, and the offerings in them, the arts,
and all their adornments bring honor to you, as an adornment in a suburb. The seacoasts and
162

tutelage cities are above all carriers of Greek civilisation. In Italy, for example, with the
exception of Rome, Trieste, and Aquilea, one city (Naples) is in Campania, another (Hyria)
in Apulia, and the others are all in Magna Graecia: Italy is predominantly a country of Italian
peoples, but Greek cities. Much the same applies to Africa, which is mostly described in
tribal terms save for three cities, one (Cyrene) a Spartan foundation, another (Carthage)
Phoenician, and a third (Neapolis = Lepcis Magna) in origin also Phoenician, but coloured by
Greek mythology (1957, 2045, 213). The populousness of urban Egypt (24764),
presented in overwhelmingly Greek terms,125 contrasts with the wastes of Scythia (6757).
All this notwithstanding the fact that Greece itself has few cities to its name, and none of the
most glamorous:126 this is a facet of Dionysius treatment of Greece, not of his attitude to
Greek culture.
Cities are located especially in relation to water (beside a river, on the sea-shore).127
Like other landscape-features, they can function as markers, especially of the limits of bodies
of water (29, [118], 37982) and countries (2604). Used metonymically, a city evokes a
larger territory (in 505, Ialysos for Rhodes); used distributively, they convey an impression
of the larger area through which they are dispersed (8545, Pamphylia; 85860, Pisidia; 874
5, Cilicia). On the other hand, 91018 is neither metonymic nor distributive, but a semisystematic catalogue of the cities of Syro-Phoenicia in approximately reverse order.
The range of epithets combines tradition with Dionysius own sensibility. Cities are
well fortified with gates and walls (249, 369, 10056, cf. 321 v.l. e0rumna/),128 but also
beautiful (337, 369, cf. 195), sacred (88, 1005), wealthy (258, 914), famous (248, 816, 860),
and steeped in antiquity (249, 911). Along with rivers, they are focuses for mythology and for
the divine. Foundation-myths (13, 261, 7759, 86871) and temples (257, 371, 828, 1007

the interiors have been filled with cities, some founded, others increased under you and by
you... (98) Never does the flow of gifts from you to these cities stop, nor can it be discovered
who has received the greater share, because your generosity is equal toward all. (99) Indeed,
the cities shine with radiance and grace, and the whole earth has been adorned like a pleasure
garden (transl. Behr).
125

Thebes and Memnon; Alexandria and Zeus of Sinope; the skopiai/ of Pallenian Eidothea;
Peleus and Pelusium.
126

427 Makhdoni/hj te po/lhej; 436 Kefallh/nwn ptoli/eqra; contrast 423 0Attiko\n

ou]daj (not Athens).
127

On or beside rivers: 354, 36970, 413, 81819, 852, 8689, 91213, 91920, 97880, cf.
V. Georg. 2.157 fluminaque antiquos subter labentia muros. In relation to the sea (a
traditional motif: Kienzle, 202): 827, 8512, 912, 915. Both locationsespecially rivers
in Strabo: Rottier, 5202.
128

Kienzle, 301; for the Catalogue of Ships, see Brgger et al., 150, and lexical notes by
Visser, 1289 (ai0peino/j), 1312 (teixio/eij); for Strabo, Rottier, 5278.
163

8)the only kind of building other than city-walls mentioned in the poem129are at home,
or implanted, there.130 On the other hand, the name of a city is occasionally effaced by
mythology: Naples by the Siren Parthenope (3589), who had given her name to the original
city, and Heraclea (7889) by the story of Cerberus.

The divine
It is, as we have seen, rivers and cities that anchor gods in the landscape, rather than
mountains, for all their qualities of sublimity, remoteness, and grandeur. The temple of
Lacinian Hera in south Italy is near the river Aisaros (3701); the Cephisus gives very
approximate anchorage to Delphi (43944). River country is the home of the pious (11435);
holy places of Dionysus lie beside the Cayster (840) and Ganges (11523). A gods springtime visitation is the occasion of two loci amoeni (5279, 8306); Dionysus birth confers
utopian qualities on Arabia.
The treatment of the divine is eclectic. Gods are shaped to fit the needs of the poem,
and it is far from clear that there is a single consistent theology that underpins it. They are
treated to Dionysius habitual art of combination; the dancing women of Maeonia appear to
be a composite of various kinds of Dionysiac cult, just as the dances on Delos are a mosaic of
Apolline festivals. The detail is less informative than confusing, but above all picturesque. At
the same time, the reader is encouraged to explore the poems formal patterning, which
extends to the treatment of the divine. This is a positive result, even if the gains are more for
the structure of the poem131 and appreciation of its aesthetics than for any profound moral
purport or even insight into sources. Mela does not use the gods in this way. He treats them
as a haphazard array of miscellaneous factoids.
Dionysus is the most prominent god132possibly a self-referential pun?133and
patterns and parallels with other deities enhance his characterisation. To begin with, there is
129

For buildings mentioned by Strabo, see Rottier, 528, 5323 (the royal palaces at Susa and
Babylon).
130

371 elides the cape on which the temple of Hera Lacinia was situated with the nearby city
of Croton. At 8513, where Artemis Kastnietis in the poetic model referred to a local
mountain (Steph. Byz. p. 366.17 Mein.), Dionysius has substituted the names of the adjacent
city and river.
131

Counillon 2001b, 1059.

132

Bernhardy, 50710; Jacob 1981, 55; id. 1990, 6671; Greaves, 246; Counillon 1983, 16,
2779, 283, 316, and 2001b; Leo, 149; Coccaro Andreou, 1312; Ilyushechkina 2010, 1758;
ead. 2011, 1737. Dionysius anticipates this gods popularity in poetry of the 3rd c. and later,
and the universality on which it was based: M. Hose, Poesie aus der Schule: berlegungen
zur sptgriechischen Dichtung (Munich, 2004), 13, 15.
133

Bowie 2004a, 185. For self-allusion in Aratus and Apollonius, see Vox, 157, with
bibliography; in their cases the name appears (or is suggested) at the beginning of the poem.
164

an obvious geographical partnership with Heracles.134 The Pillars set up by the pair of them
book-end the world, and the poem (Heracles: 64, 72, 185, 282, 336, 450; Dionysus: 623,
1164).135 The Alexander historians elaborated the myth of Dionysus Indian triumph, but
what interests Dionysius is not the military victory, nor even the gods civilising activities,
but the travels themselves, especially the establishment of these terminal pillars (6236 n.).136
The previous tradition about them is not entirely clear. Some writers speak of pillars, others
of altars, explicitly or implicitly at the limit of the gods expedition; they have an obvious eye
to Alexanders altars on the Hyphasis. Dionysius, in fashioning them as a terminal marker,
has endowed them with a new precision and specificity so as to mark the worlds eastern
limit as quite conclusively closed: the mountains end, the ocean begins, the pillars mark the
edge of the earth. If the western first half of the poem returns, recursively, to the Pillars of
Heracles (pp. 19-20), the Pillars of Dionysus both frame the Asian second half and conclude
the whole.
A more suggestive pairing is that of Dionysus and Apollo. Apollo stars in Delos and
Delphi, but the poem also glances at his presence in Asia Minor (446, Miletus and Claros;
817, Troy); he and Artemis are also the gods of the oracular grove at Daphne, just outside
Antioch (916). Dionysus, on the other hand, dominates Asia, from the Lydian shore to the
Pillars on the borders of the eastern ocean. His Indian campaign predominates, but is
balanced by the Bacchants of the Loire (5704), as well as by the gods presence in Thrace
(5756), Lydia, and the Caucasus (7005). Since Apollo is present in the eastern
Mediterranean, and since Dionysius treats the Cyclades as if on the Asiatic side of the
Aegean, it cannot be said that Apollo reserved for Europe and the west,137 but a contrast
remains between his confinement to areas of classical culture and the ubiquity of Dionysus.
Parallels are also discernible. The circuit of Greece and the itinerary of Asia end each with a
god triumphing over his enemies. Both gods have choirs (Delos, 527; the Caucasus, 7005)
and a spring scene (528, 833) with a certain cross-over, for the Pactolus and its swans have
strong Apolline associations in Dionysius poetic models, even if he himself does not bring
them to the surface (Ilyushechkina 2010, 181).

134

For Heracles in India, a tradition Dionysius has perforce ignored, see Arr. Ind. 5.813,
8.49.4, 9.10, and P. A. Brunt, Arrian with an English Translation, ii (Cambridge, MA,
1983), 43542; An. 4.28.12 and Bosworth ad loc. (pp. 1801); K. Karttunen, India in Early
Greek Literature, i (Helsinki, 1989), 21013.
135

Heracles presence throughout the poem is too scattergun (78892, 8068; Geryon in 558)
to develop a contrast between the endurer and Dionysus the pleasure-giver (Jacob 1990, 70),
especially given the reference to Hylas.
136

On the connection of Dionysus and India, and the antiquity of the tradition, see Kern, RE
s.v. Dionysos, 1039.341041.13; Brunt (n. 134); Dihle, and id. RAC s.v. Indien, 89; Jacob
1990, 68; Bosworth on Arr. An. 5.1.1; Karttunen (n. 134), 21019; P. Schneider, 11722; F.
Vian, Nonnos, v (Chants XIXIII), 111.
137

Qualifying Lightfoot 2008, 24 (which ignored Miletus, Claros, and Daphne).

165

Rather than a tidy antithesis of Apollo and Dionysus as representatives of order and
disorder, there is a tendency for Dionysiac cult itself to be more disorderly towards the outer
margins. The Loire women are noisy, and their devotions take place at night (a detail not
mentioned by Strabo), and in his final appearance Dionysus angrily asserts himself against
his enemies. Contrast this with the locus amoenus in Lydia, where the female celebrants
danceunfrenzied and expressly not wearing Bacchic costume, as they do in both the far
west and the far eastin language drawn from Apollonian and Callimachean references to
nymphs. Even so, the noisy celebrants on the Loire have been toned down vis--vis Strabos
more violent account, and detail of the Indian war is kept to a minimum; the Indian incursion
is not presented as a military expedition, and ends in communal celebration. Dionysus is
stripped of the most riotous excess;138 the section on the Camaritae in the Caucasus
overwrites and obliterates a semi-civilised band of pirates whom other geographers report in
the area, with the result that Dionysus is actually a force for order in comparison with what
might have stood in his stead. In sum, Apollo and Dionysus, the one in a relatively confined
area in the centre, the other from far east to west, form a suggestive partnership and only
partial opposition.
The gods presence in the world is felt through their devoteesin Dionysus case,
through little-known or otherwise totally obscure communities (Loire; the Camaritae; the
Gargaridae), but especially in the Lydian section, where other sources for similar Bacchic
festivals speak of the closeness of the gods presence and Himerius, Or. 46.6, speaks
expressly of e0pidhmi/a in Lydia. Yet for all the divine toing and froing, for all the stories
about divine activity in the past (pote/), for all the ongoing rituals (in Delos, Gaul, or Lydia),
for all the settlements or devotees which attest to divine favour (the Camaritae, Arabians, and
Gargaridae), there is only one truly epiphanic moment in the poem, and that moment is
Apollos, at Delphi. Only here does the god often appearso that the circuit of Greece ends
in a moment of glory, compensating for the mutedness of the treatment of Greeces cultural
riches hitherto. (The simile on which this is based, Ap. Rhod. 1.3079, also depicts Apollos
habitual activity.)
The Aegean islands are treated as a list, which gods embellish. Hephaestus on
Lemnos (522), Demeter on Thasos (523), the Corybants on Samothrace (524), Apollo on
Delos (527), Hera on Samos (534): all except the last fall within a major acrostich, itself
mentioning Hermes. Gods, like heroes (Diomedes, the Colchians, Alcinous, and Achilles),
are useful identifiers, but the particular effect is to create a petit point of godliness in a small
area, unique in the poem. This emerges more clearly by contrast with Strabos and Melas

138

Jacob 1990, 69; Counillon 1983, 229, 2001b, 1078. In a darker reading, Jacob 1990, 68
(cf. Counillon 1983, 2789; 2001b, 109) suggests that the action of the Bacchae looms over
the poem; insofar as the poem has a sense of time, the eastern journeys have happened and
we await the gods the entry to Greece. Against this is the avowed transformation of Cadmus
and Harmonia into snakes after a happy old age (3913).
166

bare lists;139 conversely, the reservation of Greece for Apollo at the expense of, say, Athena
in Athens, Hera in Argos, Dionysus in Thebes, or Zeus in Olympia, is thrown into relief by
Melas Greece (2.3954), which mentions Delphic Apollo, Demeter in Eleusis, Hera in
Argos, Zeus in Elis and Dodona; Poseidon at the Isthmus and in Tainaron, and Hermes on
Cyllene. In contrast to the local gods of the islands and western Asia Minor (827, 853, cf.
817), Dionysus ubiquity is matched only by the actual or implicit presence of Ares (97, 654,
774, 1004), reflecting Dionysius interest in bellicose tribes without heightening any of them
to the point where they become an outright menace.
Zeus, too, figures throughout. References to the Alpheios (3734, 410) and Dodona
(430) evoke his most celebrated cult-places in old Greece, but his most high-profile local
manifestation is at Alexandria, which the patriotic poet advertises as holier than all other
temples. Where Strabo had referred to the Sara/pion, Dionysius Homeric noun-epithet
combination (255) classicises away any Egyptian associations. This privileged link is the
more striking in the absence of reference to Capitoline Jupiter, or any other gods, at Rome.
However, it is no less clear that Roman power is aligned with that of the supreme deity;
whatever the Nasamones precise fault when they were punished by the Romans for
disregarding him (210), Zeus and Roman might have been aligned in such a way that a
political offence now becomes a graver, theological one.140
The poem implies a theology of reward and punishment, with a moralised view of the
afterlife (5478).141 Sometimes Zeus is expressly the agent (3723, 547), but there are also a
couple of references to an anonymous dai/mwn (6045, 9689) and one to qeoi/ (1169); these
follow the traditional pattern whereby gods are held responsible for providential dispensation,
whereas dai/monej are credited with upsets and with the dispensation of bad as well as good
fortune.142 All are in connection with a series of improving little sentiments whose
didacticism is offset by an overall tendency to fragmentation and a decorativeness that serves
the needs of the moment. Gods are woven into the weft of the poem in a discernible pattern
for sections to end with an image of divine activity or reflection on their governance of the
world. The punishment of Sybaris (3724) is close to the end of the circuit of Italy (383). The
139

Strab. 2.5.21; Mela 2.106 ~ 5224 (Thasos, Samothrace, Lemnos et al. in an

unembellished list), 2.111 ~ 5257 (Cyclades), 2.101 ~ 534 (Samos). Mela does mention
cults in 2.102 (~ 5089, Cyprus) and 113 (~ 501, Crete).
140

Jacob 1990, 645, 712; cf. 1991, 467, 48. For Zeus in the Periegesis, see also Leo, 149;
Counillon 1983, 1516, 153, 173, 316, 318, and 2001b, 110.
141

Jacob 1990, 72.

142

Janko on Il. 15.46170; Cairns on Bacchyl. 3.37 (pp. 2056), citing inter al. Od. 5.3967.
This use of dai/mwn goes back to Homer, when a character is unable or unwilling to name a
specific deity (Il. 7.291 ~ 377, 396, 9.600, 15.468, 21.93), but also occurs occasionally in
narrative (Il. 11.480, 15.418); see Hainsworth on Il. 9.600, 11.480; de Jong on Od. 5.421.
There is therefore no need to see une tendance monothiste qui tmoigne sans doute de
lvolution des croyances lpoque de Denys (Jacob 1990, 67), nor the Stoicising influence
of Posidonius (Counillon 2001b, 111).
167

section on Illyria (38497) ends with the te/raj of clashing rocks which the gods have set up
there (3947). The best example is Apollos appearance at Delphi at the end of the circuit of
Greece (398446), and of mainland Europe as a whole (270446).
Looking closer, one discerns patterns of meaning as well as mere formal decoration.
The impressive opening figure of the ocean with the polyonymous quality of the supreme god
(28) has by the end given way to an argument for Providence. The section on islands, just
before the halfway point, falls into two halves which contain two paired and contrasting
tableaux. The Mediterranean islands (450554) almost end with the ghosts of the heroes on
Leuce (5418), and the islands of the ocean (555612) almost with the sea-monsters of
Taprobane (6005). These figure respectively as images of divinely sponsored reward for
virtue and punishment for sinners; in general, the closer to home we are, the more impressive
the images of divine proximity and favourable disposition. Thereafter, the divine is co-opted
into the poets artistic striving for poikili/a, when, after the contrasted tableaux of Blessed
Arabians and Erembi, we are informed that the god did not bestow an equal share in
happiness upon all men (9689). But this idea is not developed until the coda, where a fairly
extensive adaptation of Aratus proem introduces the notion that the gods in general (1169),
or Zeus in particular (1179), superintend the kind of beneficent and providential cosmic
system with which we are familiar from the Phaenomena.143 They have not set up a system
which is helpfully interpretable, but rather one in which each star seems to have control of a
defined portion of the earth, and the resulting variety itself (1175, 1180) is what we are to
understand as beneficial. The wish to strike up an Aratean chord is evident; the attempt to
persuade us that variety itself is the result of divine providence is not particularly
revelatorybut an appropriate final stance for the poet.
In conclusion, it is only appropriate to stress the gap that separates Dionysius
treatment of the divine from that of many other ethnographers. Orderly or systematic
treatment144 is out of the question, but one might have expected religion to turn up as one of
the flexible, but identifiable, categories in his ethographies, as it does from time to time in
Mela,145 or that gods and different species of worship might at least have been good for
diversion and embellishment. In fact it is not so. Dionysius is flatly uninterested in the
peculiarities of foreign gods and their worship which engrossed Herodotus. This is
particularly clear from their treatments of Persia, where Herodotus (1.1312) registers many
interests to which Dionysius is simply oblivious (the conceptual difference from Greek
understanding of deity; gods as natural forces; cults connected to mountains; cultural
diffusion of deities; equivalences of name; sacrificial peculiarities . . .) and Dionysius no gods
at all. Some silences are hardly surprising. The total effacement of Indian religion in favour
of the topos of Dionysus as conqueror of India comes as no surprise, given that the Alexander
historians did just the same thing. Neither does the total silence on Parthian religion, where
143

Jacob 1990, 71, also emphasises its determinism, rightly.

144

Contrast Tacitus Germania, with a defined section on gods (9) and divination (10).

145

Egyptian animal-worship (1.58), Scythian worship of Ares (2.15), Celtic human sacrifice
and Druidical teaching about the gods and afterlife (3.1819).
168

classical literary topoi about the Parthians are overwhelmingly military (Justin 41.3.6 is one
of the very few classical observations on Parthian religion), nor its absence from the lifestyle
notices on the Libyan nomads, Scythians, Massagetae, or Erembi, which reproduce the
essence of other classical notices about these peoples. But the Greek Dionysus again drowns
out any gesture towards cultural distinctiveness for Araby the Blest, where Herodotus had at
least registered Orotalt, Alilat, and the peculiarities of Arabian oath-taking. The few foreign
deities are mentioned under Greek or culturally familiar aspects, and by means of literary
topoi. Heracles is so emphatically the son of Zeus in Cdiz (454) as to erase (or perhaps
advertise?) the possibility that, as the Phoenician Melqart, he could be regarded in a
significantly different way.146 In Herodotus footsteps, we visit the Babylonian temple of
Belos (10078); any sense of Mesopotamian particularity beyond that is swept aside in
favour of a bucolic idyll with a cameo appearance for Pan (995). About Belos and Sinopitan
Zeus (255; not an official form of nomenclature) we learn only about the costly adornment
of their temples. The acrostich reference to Hermes (Thoth?) in 51721 is inscrutable.
Tauropolos (61011) on the island of Icaros comes from Eratosthenes/Strabo; its unpleasant
smoke is the only even faintly untoward fact about a foreign cult that Dionysius registers.

Mythology147
In his approach to myth, Dionysius has not followed those didactic poems which have a
single substantial mythical narrative.148 He parts company with Aratus, and even with
Nicander, who has a very modest number of myths, which stand out when they do occur.
Instead, he has threaded mythological references throughout his poem, the longest counting
almost as extremely short epyllia (7759, 10218), with many others even more glancing.
This treatment arises out of the subject-matter itself, a landscape rife with myth and legend; it
is like that of Mela, who refers to myths in their appropriate geographical contexts and in
doing so adds variety and colour to what might otherwise have been a dry summary. Aratus,
too, has passing mythological allusions throughout; the heavens are similarly replete with
legend. But, unlike landscape features, constellations ipso facto have latent myth; they are not
natural but man-made in that their figuration depends on mythological stories. Proper names
alone (Andromeda, Perseus, Orion, and so on) evoke the mythological register; visual details
clarify the figure the patterned stars are supposed to resemble; an epithet brings a story into
sharper focus.149 Landscape myths are thick on the groundbut not immanent in it.
So it is a deliberate choice what to evoke and what not to evoke. The vast majority of
Dionysius myths are geographical in character. He is not simply mentioning famous myths

146

For Melas Hercules, see Batty, 87, for whom shades of Melqart are indeed present.

147

Jacob 1981, 535; 1990, 4451; Greaves, 948.

148

Arat. 96136; Nic. Ther. 34358; Manil. 5.538618; V. Georg. 4.315558.

149

348 0Ihsoni\j . . . 0Argw/; 360 0Hridanoi=o poluklau/tou; 654 deilh\ Kassie/peia.

169

in the places to which they adhere, as does Mela.150 He makes a deliberate selection of myths
that involve travelling. The poem is full of famous travellers, whether gods (even Apollo, a
more static figure in the poem than Dionysus, is imagined approaching Delphi from two
alternative places in Asia Minor, 446), heroes (Heracles; Odysseus; Menelaus, with his
steersman Canobus, 13; Diomedes, 4836), and heroines (Io, 140, cf. 7759 n.; Sinope;
Medea, 10218, cf. 1026 plazome/nh kata\ fw=taj). Exiles are a significant category:
Cadmus and Harmonia, translated from Thebes to Illyria (3923); Bellerophon, wanderer in
the Aleian Plain (8703); Peleus, who apparently founded Pelusium when in exile (261).
Colonial foundations and migrations are of obvious interest.151 The Arimaspi are not
wanderers themselves, but come from a poetic account of a journey (31). All this emerges
quite clearly if one considers how many myths in the poem involve travelling only
tangentially, or not at all: such a list might include the Trojan War (81519) and how
Poseidon severed Sicily from the Italian mainland with his trident (476). The poem is
naturally full of aetiological myths, but this one is unusual because it takes us deeper into the
past, when the world had not yet taken on its present form; although it does not involve
travel, Dionysius has nevertheless managed to invest it with a little topographical detail, the
Boeotian origin of the iron. As for the rape of Oreithyia (425), Dionysius leaves it to his
cultivated readers to conjure the model (Ap. Rhod. 1.21318) which supplies the
peregrinations about which he himself is silent.
Despite the foregrounding of the travel theme, the poem contains various kinds of
myth, inhabiting different levels of reality, from Homeric myths of remote peoples which the
narrator will not vouch for in his own voice, to stories that to an ancient sensibility counted as
history. Yet all the stories have to be plotted onto the same map, and they extend all over the
known world.
Beyond this place there be dragons: Dionysius avoids all this. There are no one-eyed
wonders or dog-faced men in the Periegesis. Yet just a little of the charisma of the edges of
the earth clings to the margins of his map: Geryons Erytheia (558) and the Hesperides (563)
find roomvery probably identified with real places, but with the mythological labels
nonetheless. The presence of otherworldly peoples tends to be insinuated, rather than
delineated. The Cimmerii are only evoked (335); the sons of the Arimaspi are there (31),
but the Hyperboreans, their inevitable adjunct, are not. The Ethiopians of the far west are
dealt with differently: although they have something of the blessedness of marginal peoples,
they are colonists, and have no otherworldly, utopian quality (55861). Such historical
150

This is not to say that Melas myths are assembled uncritically, but thatalthough myths
of travelling, nostoi, colonisation necessarily figure prominently in the Chorographiathere
is no sign that he has systematically selected in favour of myths of travel. For a digest of
myths mentioned by Mela, see Brodersen 1994b, 1012.
151

In south Italy: 3478, 3657, 3767. Around the eastern Black Sea coast and the
Caucasus: 553, 6825, 687, 688, 689 (cf. 48990, the Colchians later settlement), 6978. In
Libya: 13, 213 (Spartan colonies), 1967, 4536 (Phoenician colonies), 5601. Phoenicia:
9056. But Diomedes Spanish colonies are not mentioned in 485.
170

traditions of colonisation and foundation, with precise, definite locations in place and time,
are abundant. In between the mythology of real place and that of the peripheries are those
myths presumed to be fixable in real space, though that localisation is only a product of
secondary speculation. This is exemplified by the wanderings of Odysseus, the Argonauts,
Heracles, and so on, fixed, for the most part, in their traditional locations, though brought to
the surface, or not, with various degrees of explicitness. Odysseus is mentioned by name only
once (207),152 Jason and the Argonauts collectively not at all, although their associations
pervade the landscape.153
Different historical and geographical writers have different thresholds of tolerance of
myth (and are not always consistent); even those with a reputation for hard-headedness or
agnosticism may allow the occasional mythographical aside.154 Eratosthenes threw out poetic
geography altogether, specifically including several of the myths of which Dionysius is
fondest (Heracles, Dionysus, and wanderings of Odysseus), and Apollodorus took a similar
line.155 Strabo, who lays down the principle that the admission of mythical elements into
geographical writing serves two conceivable purposesdidactic and diversion156at the
same time operates a filter which allows some myths through as more historical than
others.157 What Strabo goes on to identify as the appeal of myths, even for men of affairs
charm and the fame of the places with which those myths are associated158are doubtless
prime considerations in Dionysius mythography. But it is also important to consider whether
he has his own threshold of tolerance; whether some myths for him are more mythical than
others.

152

Though Ithaca (495) must evoke him. The reference to Aeolus (4614) is laced with
Homeric echoes, although Aeolus figures in Apollonius Argonautica as well, as do the
Sirens (35760, but in a post-Homeric legend) and Alcinoos (494). Implicit allusion to the
Odyssey also in 335, the Cimmerians, and 58990, the rising-place of the sun.
153

1445, 48890, 8068; if 399 0Wriki/h echoes Call. fr. 12.5 H. (17 M.), the context there,
too, is Argonautic. By the time echoes of Apollonius travelogue and myths (e.g. 2913) are
added, the Argonautic roster becomes endless.
154

e.g. Thuc. 4.24.5, with Hornblower ad loc. (a le/getai rider is attached).

155

Eratosthenes, I A, 11 Berger = Strab. 1.2.7 (contra Odysseus wanderings) and I B, 23

Berger = Strab. 15.1.7 (contra the tales about Heracles and Dionysus); Apollodorus, FGrH
244 F 157, ap. Strab. 7.3.6 (among other objects of his scepticism are the Homeric
Hippemolgi; the Rhipaean mountains; the Hesperides; and the identification of Scheria with
Corcyraall admitted by Dionysius).
156

1.1.19 ta\ paradei/gmata xrh/sima and diagwgh/n.

157

For instancedirectly juxtaposed with one anotherthe story of Phaethon, Eridanus, and
the Heliades, is deemed muqeuo/mena or kateyeusme/na, but that of Diomedes among the
Eneti historical fact (5.1.9).
158

1.1.19 to_ e1ndocon kai\ to_ h(du&.

171

Myths are often equipped with an explicit pointer of pastness (pa/roj, pote/).159 Yet
various items are still there, at least potentially, to be encountered in the landscape: peoples
(the Lotus-Eaters, 206; the Camaritae, 7005, though their moment of mythological glory is
set in the past; the Amazons, or at least their descendants, on the Thermodon, 773);
monuments and landscape-features (the tomb of Cadmus and Harmonia, 3923; the Pillars of
Heracles and Dionysus). Now, concerning myths of which traces have been left in the
observable landscape it is possible to detect a certain inhibition.160 The Clashing Rocks are
reported to be in the Bosporus (144, o3qi mu=qoj): an odd conjuncture, for it was easy enough
to go to the Bosporus and see what was actually there. The ghosts of Achilles and the other
heroes are reported to be on the island of Leuce (5456, fa/tij): the theodicy that set them
there still prevailsthough the narrator shies away from bald assertion of their presence.
This reticence extends to the tomb of Cadmus and Harmonia, which is reported, rather than
asserted, to be theirs (391 fh=mij e0ni/spei). Of the two other instances of the ut fama est topos
used for mythology161 much the same can be said: at 78892 the story of Cerberus and
Heracles at Heraclea has left traces in the real landscape (though cultivated readers are left to
supply the details), and in 197 the city of Carthage is still there for all to seeand in both
cases the narrator appeals to tradition, rather than asserting the story for himself.162
What effect is intended? Mela is an interesting comparison, for the Chorographia is
full of allusions to myths qualified by phrases like ut ferunt, dicuntur, accepimus.163 Not all
159

140, Io (o4n pa/roj); 207, Odysseus (e1nqa pot); 2901, the Heliades (ou[ pot e0pi\
proxoh=|sin); 425, Boreas and Oreithyia (e1nqen . . . pot); 489, the Colchians and Apsyrtides
(a3j pote); 775, Sinope (o3j pot); 807, Heracles and Hylas (tou= pot); 869, Bellerophon
(o3qi dh/ pote). Without a marker of past time: 3579, Parthenope; 4614, Aeolus; 4836,
Diomedes; 78892, Cerberus; 81718, sack of Troy.
160

On Dionysius attitude to the supernatural and irrational, see Greaves, 312; Counillon
1983, 215.
161

The men say device is also used for the reportage of geographical data where there can
be no such inhibition (22 h0uda/canto; 105, 111, 287, 562 e0ne/pousi).
162

Comparison with Aratus is useful up to a point. When evoking myths he very often uses
relata refero (see Kidd on 637); 26871, Lyra, and 6538, Cassiepeia, are exceptions. But the
distancing topos must work differently in a poem about the stars, where the very patterning of
the constellations is a fiction based on their supposed similarity to mythological figures (p.
169).
163

1.26, 1.64, 1.80, 1.86 ut ferunt; 1.27 addit fama nominis fabulam, 1.37 dicuntur; 1.76
quem Typhoneum vocant; 1.88 ut aiunt . . . traduntur; 1.92 duplex causa nominis iactatur:
alii . . . commemorant, alii . . . putant; 1.98 accepimus; 1.103 ut ferunt . . . ut aiunt; 1.108
fabula vetere; 2.5 memoratur; 2.26 traditur; 2.28 narrantur; 2.29 signum fabulae; 2.36
fabula; 2.78 ferunt; 2.99 aliquando creditae dictaeque; 2.106 dicuntur; 2.112 multis
famigerata fabulis; 2.120 dicitur; 3.47 accepimus; 3.99 ut aiunt; 3.100 memoratur; 3.106
dicitur . . .. ut incolae ferunt.
172

his mythography is qualified in this way, but a great deal is. Yet it is unclear whether he
means to imply scepticism. He not infrequently refers to signssignaand physical traces
in the landscape that purportedly corroborate mythological stories.164 If the locals report a
story and cite evidence to prove it, or if the narrator himself adduces material to support
what he nevertheless calls a fabula, we are, it seems, strongly encouraged neither to think that
he himself endorses it, nor that he is a sceptic. The effect is of interested but non-committal
reportage.
The difference between the two narrators is that there is a more or less careful
distinction in Dionysius between myths set in the past, none of which uses the ut fama est
topos, and those which continue to resonate in the present, all of which do. Mela has no such
scruples: he draws attention to the reportedness of myths of both types. What results for
Dionysius is a rather mixed picture. There is no hesitation about the mythological past, yet
perhaps a sense of reticence about connecting it too closely with the empirical worldor
perhaps a sense of some need for additional reinforcement where mythography and the real
world intersect. Or perhaps the ut fama est topos occurs with myths whose traces live on in
the present precisely because, as T. W. E. Stinton suggested, it is here that the narrator wishes
to register the presence of the marvellous, yet to preserve an appropriately objective tone.165
A tendency to caution is supported by a certain amount of demythologisation. The western
Ethiopians have been mentioned already; if the Lotus-Eaters are present in the real geography
of north Africa, that is because their name has become attached to peoples whose alimentary
peculiarities are noted by several other Roman geographers besides Dionysius (though he
permits a small Homerising detail, their hospitality, that other authors omit).166 For the Plotai
an etymology was available which understood them as floating islands, but Dionysius is
careful not to commit himself (4656 n.). The ethnographical tradition does admit and expect
qau/mata in the natural world:167 Dionysius uses the word four times (65, 723, 829, 935), for
both natural and cultural marvels, and strikingly the clashing rocks of Illyria (3947) are
reported without inhibition. Nevertheless, the attitude to natural qau/mata seems not to be

164

1.26, Tangiers founded by Antaeus, as proved (in the opinion of the locals) by a huge
shield cut from elephant hide; 1.64, Iope with testimonials of the Andromeda myth: altars
inscribed with the names of Cepheus and Phineus and the bones of the sea-monster; 1.108, in
Colchis are the grove and temple of Phrixus; 2.29, the tower of Diomedes remains as
evidence of the legend; 3.46, the temple of Egyptian Heracles in Gades contains his bones;
3.106, what the Mauretanians report as Antaeus funeral mound, in the shape of a reclining
man.
T. C. W. Stinton, Si Credere Dignum Est: Some Expressions of Disbelief in Euripides
and Others, PCPhS2 22 (1976), 6089 = Collected Papers on Greek Tragedy (Oxford,
1990), 23670.
165

166

For the Amazons on the Thermodon, see 773 n.: the patronymic obfuscates whether it is
they who are still there, or their descendants.
167

Cf. Delage, 2856, for Apollonius.

173

entirely consistent, for Herodotus gold-digging ants in India are replaced by human beings
who dig the gold out of the sand with mattocks (111415).
Dionysius is performing a balancing act, however one characterises the contrast
between scepticism and credulity, or scrupulous reportage and unqualified assertion. The
antithesis is not simply between poetry and prose, because other poets can perfectly well
avail themselves of the same device: for example, Nicander qualifies all the myths he cites at
any length using the ut fama est toposand sometimes expresses himself more strongly than
Dionysius, with a couple of instances of ei0 e1tumon or similar.168 If Dionysius is compared
with the aggressive rationalisers such as Palaephatus, Heraclitus, and with a remarkable
fragment of Agatharchides On the Erythraean Sea,169 where a tendency is discernible again
and again to return to the same set of problematic myths, there is a small but perhaps not
insignificant overlap. The myths of Atlas, Geryon, the Heliades, the Sirens, Aeolus, Boreas,
Cerberus, Pegasus, and Io are dealt with by some or all of these authors, and while Dionysius
is far removed from the fundamentalism of the rationalists, his criteria for acceptability seem
not too far removed from theirs; what they roundly denounce he either passes over in silence
(that Atlas bore the heavens on his shoulders; that the Sirens had birds feet, and Geryon and
Cerberus three heads; that Aeolus held the winds pent up in a bag; and that Io and the
Heliades underwent physical transformation) or qualifies with a relata refero (they say that
Cerberus was brought up from the underworld). With Strabo, too, the difference is more a
matter of style (the presence or absence of explicit polemic) than substance.170 If Strabo
discloses a desire to save Homer, to preserve a kernel of truth in other myths deemed
otherwise far-fetched,171 Dionysius goes about his demythologisation of Aeolus in the same
way, only more quietly (4613); and although Dionysius includes myths to which Strabo had
objected, the offensive aspects of those myths (the cattle of Geryon, the transformation of the
Heliades) are not admitted to the Periegesis either. If he is no strident rationalist, neither does
Dionysius adopt the post of the nave recorder of myths and miracles, or the uncritical
compiler of curiosities. Quietly he enjoys the best of both worldsthe presence of myth, an
appropriate and decorous attitude towards it.

History and time

168

Ther. 10 e0ne/pousin . . . ei0 e0teo/n per; 309 ei0 e1tumon; 343 w)gu&gioj d' a1ra mu~qoj e0n
ai0zhoi=si forei=tai; 484 r(e/ei fa&tij; 835 lo&goj ge me\n w3j pot' 0Odusseu&j.
169

Palaephatus and Heraclitus in N. Festa (ed.), Mythographi graeci, iii/2 (Leipzig, 1902);
Agatharch. Mar. Erythr. 7 (Phot. 442b29444b19), cf. Jacob 1991a, 142.
170

Though Strabo denounces Cerne, the Eridanus, the Rhipaean mountains (219, 2903,
31415 nn.).
171

Charybdis a semi-mythologised but still recognisable study of the tides in the straits of
Messina (Strab. 1.2.16 (paraphrasing Polybius), 1.2.36); Aia a real town, Aeetes and Medea
historical persons, the mineral wealth of Colchis a reasonable explanation for Jasons
expedition (Strab. 1.2.39).
174

Let us drop the Mississippis physical history, and say a word about its historical
historyso to speak.
(Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi.)

With mythology we have already started to talk about the poems other axis, secondary to the
main one: time, as opposed to place. It is developed only fitfully, too patchily to offer any
insight into historical processes: isolated foundation traditions are scattered throughout, but
larger questions about the dissemination of classical culture through travel, conquest, and
colonisation, and above all the rise of the Roman empire, are too big to address.172 Yet
matters of time and history did not have to be treated so spasmodically; after all, traditional
ethnography had a place for the question of racial origins, of origines gentium,173 but
Dionysius proves almost entirely immune to any sense of interest in the subjectall the more
notably, since it might so readily have lent itself to association with the wandering heroes
theme. All he really says about a nations origins (as opposed to the foundation of settlements
and colonies) is that the Medes were named after Medeaand this just takes us back to the
theme of travelling hero(in)es; we are none the wiser about the origins of the race. And since
she is not a Greek, there is still no sign that Dionysius was interested in claiming classical
origins for non-Greek peoples, which, given that it was such a common manoeuvre, is worthy
of remark.
In what follows I consider, not only specific historical allusions, which are few and
far between, but the poems awareness of time. One question is that of its awareness of the
contemporary context and of the pastand the methodological issue of how this might be
discerned (that is, when an allusion is an allusion). Another is the kind of world the narrator
is actually evokingwhether an unhistorical one, in which things coexist that never
coexisted, a timeless one, or one in which anachronisms can in principle be identified.
Historical allusions are readily disposed of; there are not many of them. The
references chosen are those that demonstrate universal powerwhether that of Zeus, who
waxed wroth with Sybaris and destroyed it in 511 BC (3724 n.), or that of the Romans, who
tamed the power of the Parthians in what seems to be the most recent historical allusion in the
poem (10512 n., AD 11417), or of both in alignment, as when the Nasamones tax revolt is
treated as an outrage against Zeus, and the Romans punish them accordingly (20810 n.). On
the two occasions when the Roman empire acts, it reacts to a challenge, rather than taking the
initiative or acting aggressivelydemonstrating by contraries how little interested is the
poem in the outward expansion of its might.
Beyond these specific and easily identifiable references, there are any number of
things that could count as allusions; it is a question, not of some impossible attempt to
adjudicate on presence or absence, but of trying to identify the level at which something
resonates. For example, the Alexander historians are obviously used passim, and descriptions
172

On the poems silence here, Jacob 1991b, 47.

173

Trdinger, 14954.
175

(for example) of Alexanders passage through the Gedrosian desert do show through (1086
7, 10991100 n.); but Alexander is never allowed to come to the surface. The Persian wars
almost become visible in the account of Greece: the one myth mentioned in that section is
Boreas on the Ilissus (4235), which ought to be significant, and Thermopylae has been
brought in apropos of Phocis, though it was not strictly in Phocis at all (438). But again, they
do not quite break the surface. Indeed, the choice to leave that surface unpunctured by
anything too historically specific looks like a deliberate one, given that the poet has opted to
offset his own name and that of his emperor, Hadrian, within acrostichs.174
Awareness of contemporary political realities is in very short supply. Why? In the
first place, the whole-world description is not an intrinsically political scheme (p. 17);
Dionysius template is not one that heeds what is within and without the Roman limes.
174

Jacob 1991b, 4853, also detects a Hadrianic theme running throughout. According to
him, the poem shadows most of Hadrians journeys (except to Judaea), and can be compared
to the commemorations of the provinces and famous places throughout his villa (HA, Vit.
Hadr. 26.5 Tiburtinam villam mire exaedificavit, ita ut in ea et provinciarum et locorum
celeberrima nomina inscriberet, velut Lycium, Academian, Prytanium, Canopum, Poecilen,
Tempe vocaret). One cannot follow in his footsteps, but the periegesis offers a way of setting
his travels in the context of the geography of the world. There is nothing in principle
objectionable about this theory, which revisits earlier suggestions that the sculptural
programme of the Villa in Tivoli could be connected to the emperors travels, and even that
Pausanias Periegesis of Greece was inspired by them: H. Halfmann, Itinera Principum:
Geschichte und Typologie der Kaiserreisen im Rmischen Reich (Stuttgart, 1986), 423 n.
122. In the economy of Dionysius poem, the modern Hadrian could be put on the same
footing as the travelling heroes who populate the poem, whether explicitly or implicitly.
However, the theory is hard to substantiate, given that there is bound to be an overlap
between the itinerary of such a well-travelled emperor and a world-geography. Even if we
should not expect, in a poem that shuns directness, specific references to Hadrianoutherai in
Mysia, or Antinoopolis in Egypt, it is more damaging to Jacobs theory that the cultural
memories of Hadrians tours and of the Periegesis do not obviously overlap. The treatment of
Greece is desperately thin if it is supposed to reflect the interests of a passionate philhellene.
The poem says nothing about Eleusis, where Hadrian was initiated; even if reference to
historical individuals is avoided, so that mention of the graves of Pompey in Pelusium and of
Alcibiades in Phrygia is not to be expected, neither does it mention the tomb of Ajax in Troy
(Philostr. Her. 8.1 [137]); the Syrian Mons Casius, which Hadrian ascended to watch the
sunrise and make sacrifice, for Dionysius is only a marker, and Etna, which Hadrian also
ascended, does not get a mention. The great exception is the reference to Memnon (24950),
which Hadrian visited on 19 and 20 Nov. 130, as documented by the 27 epigrams left on the
colossus by his retinue. Though this was one of Egypts premier tourist destinations in
antiquity it is possible, if unprovable, that it was Hadrians visit that made it popular, but
there is simply insufficient to support a Hadrianic programme in the poem. On Hadrians
travels, see P. J. Sijpesteijn, A New Document Concerning Hadrians Visit to Egypt,
Historia, 18 (1969), 10918, esp 11116 (on Egypt), and Halfmann, 407, 188210.
176

Demarcations of territory can of course be superimposed, but Dionysius seems not to want to
make political capital out of them. The political function of the rivers which featured as
boundaries in Augustus division of the country into eleven regions could not have been
inferred from the way Dionysius himself treats them (361, 367). The city of Rome itself is,
naturally, a highlight. It is placed more or less perfectly in the middle of Europe,175 and it is
advertised by a combination of Dionysius two favourite devices, line-initial anaphora and
epanalepsis. This kind of anaphora is used, not only for the Tiber (3524), but again for
Carthage (1957) and for Ilium (81518). It is attractive to see this as a significant grouping,
of two empires that had to fall before Rome could rise,176 but the same figure is also used for
two other proper names that do not obviously fit the series (Aiolos, 4613, and Rhebas, 794
6). We have noted (p. 119) a contrast between the catalogic precision used for the imperial
capital and the cultural glamour that invests Alexandria (2549), so suggestive about the
different character of the empires two star cities.
Despite the centrality of Rome, there is no suggestion that it (or Italy itself) is in the
centre in any economic, political, cultural, or climatological sense. In other words, the poet
has failed to deploy any of a range of topoi variously associated with the notion of centrality.
There is no suggestion that Italy (or anywhere else) is the most temperate zone, possessed of
an ideal climate, with perfect eu0krasi/a of the seasons;177 that its hegemony is guaranteed by
its location;178 that its political constitution is also the perfect mixture;179 or that it is the
recipient of goods flowing from all corners of the known worlda topos that could be spun
both positively and negatively.180
Nor is there any suggestion that Romes empire is a universal one, of the
coextensivity of the empire and the earth.181 A breach would soon open up between a
175

Jacob 1981, 27 and n. 26 (marking the end of the European section end at 449, which
makes Rome just that little bit more central); Bowie 1990, 75.
176

Bowie 1990, 745.

177

For the notion of temperatio/temperies, cf. Kienzle, 1417, 28; Thomas 1982a, 3, 11.
Praise of Italys climate as an element in laudes Italiae: Kienzle, 17 n. 1, 28; Thomas 1982a,
401, e.g. Strab. 6.4.1; Varro, De Re Rust. 1.2.34; V. Georg. 2.13676, esp. 149 hic ver
adsiduum atque alienis mensibus aestas (though see Thomas, 41); Vitruv. Arch. 6.1.11; Plin.
NH 3.41. Centrality of Greece and Greek eu0krasi/a: Hdt. 3.106.1 (Nesselrath, 22); Menander
Rhetor, i. 345.2831.
178

So Strab. 6.4.1, cf. van der Vliet 2003, 268.

179

Aristid. Or. 26.90.

180

Positively: Aristid. Or. 26.1113 (see Oliver ad loc., with parallels for the same notion
applied to the Piraeus and Alexandria). None of this figures in Dionysius, who is uninterested
in redistribution. For the flow of human, material, and intellectual resources towards Rome in
Strabo, see Clarke 1999, 21924.
181

Contra Jacob 1991b, 47, lEmpire de Denys na pas de limes et sidentifie

loekoumne.
177

cartographical description of the known world and any rhetoric of universality that its author
might care to indulge;182 that is why, as Nicolet says, an altogether more plausible stance for
the Romans was to claim to fit in the order of the cosmic destinyeither they were under
the protection of or they held a covenant with the gods, or they were in some way divine.
They become therefore an element, or the guarantee, of world order.183 It is no accident that
precisely the same rhetoric is found in the Periegesis. If there is no attempt to plot the limits
of empire on the map, with the concomitant and inevitable disappointment of where they fell
short, Dionysius indulges in precisely this rhetoric of Romes alignment with the supreme
cosmic power. The limes of the empire could be painfully exposed, but this was altogether
harder to refute.
Kingliness is the attribute of Rome and the Romans.184 Rome is the home of the
poets masters (355 a0na/ktwn); the Parthians were brought low by the spear of the
Ausonian king (1052 Au0soni/ou basilh=oj), and l. 78 recalls (whether one reads Au0sonih=ej
or -h=oj) the old Hesiodic sentiment that kings come from Zeus (Th. 96 e0k de\ Dio\j
basilh=ej), save that now it refers to the Italians as a whole. But the Romans are not the only
race invested with kingly characteristics. The same combination of kingship with wealth is
found in Persia (105662), who are the kingliest race in Asia: the fact that the superlative
basileu/tatoj occurs just twice in the poem (353, 1056) suggests some sort of counterpoint.
The rhetorical synkrisis of Rome with other empires was very likely familiar to Dionysius, as
a staple of historiography.185 Even so, in the synchronic and tolerant world-order of the
Periegesis there is no sense of the two as rival systems. Thanks to the timeless ethnographic
present, the Persians wealth (which harks back to the days of the Achaemenid empire) is
presented as coexisting with the present reality of Rome.
The poems anachronisms are, on the one hand, a characteristic failing of literary
geography.186 While Strabo, for one, was fully aware of various kinds of defect in his
sources,187 and delineates the increase in knowledge that had come about since Alexanders
182

Nicolet, esp. 2956; 230, index s.v. Universal domination.

183

Nicolet, 356. Nicolet writes of the appearance of globes as symbols of universal

domination on Republican coins that the globe is less the sign of the concrete domination of
space easily located on the surface of the earth than of a sovereignty the more recognizable
for being general and cosmic, even more than geographic (35). Still, the coins have a
propagandist function that the poem does not.
184

Jacob 1991b, 445.

185

Polyb. 1.2 compares the Roman empire with Persia, as well as Spartan hegemony in
Greece, and Macedonian conquests; Dion. Hal. AR 1.2.24, Rome and the Assyrians, Medes,
Persians, and Macedonians; App. Praef. 2942 (Greece, Asian empires, Macedonians and the
successor kings); Aristid. Or. 26.1523 (Rome and Persia).
186

Knaack, RE s.v. Dionysius, 919.3560; F. Gisinger, RE Suppl. 4 (1924), s.v. Geographie

(Verfall), 671.531; Effe 1977, 188 n. 2.
187

Jacob 1991a, 118.

178

time (p. 17 n. 57), the weight of tradition could nevertheless militate against the full
exploitation of up-to-date sources. Serious, yet avoidable, errors continue to appear in
imperial geographers: Mela, for example, still thinks that one arm of the Danube flows into
the Adriatic (2.63). Dionysius has failed to avail himself of sources which he could have used
if he had wanted state-of-the-art geography. Quite apart from the movements of obscure and
distant tribes, which it was altogether difficult to keep track of,188 he is wholly inadequate, for
instance, on northern Europe. Gaul is figured only as the dw/mata Keltw=n (288) and the city
of Massilia (75), Germany in the form of tribesmen leaping merrily, if generically, through
the Hercynian forest (286), and Britain (284, 5659) as a couple of large, featureless islands
in the northern ocean opposite the Rhine.189 (This time Mela did considerably better: he knew
about the Weser and Elbe (3.30), the Vistula (3.33), and Scadinavia and the Danish islands
(3.54).) His haziness about eastern India, which contrasts with what is, by his standards, a
richly detailed account of the Punjab, is the more remarkable if one believes that Strabo book
15, which preserves considerable extracts of Megasthenes and Daimachus (authorities on
what lay to the east of Alexanders conquests), was available to him: perhaps it was not.
But of course he did not want state-of-the-art geography. He wanted the cultural
prestige of poetry, and for him the world still lives in the state in which the poets described it.
Strabo himself is both aware of the gap that separates the world of his sources from that of
his own day, and conscious of a need to bow to Homer, who had so shaped the mental map of
classical peoples;190 in Dionysius this need is even stronger. A place is found on the map for
the Agaui (308) and Erembi (180, 9637), because Homer had canonised them. Thebes is still
hundred-gated (249), and the Pactolus still runs with gold (8312); Strabo disillusions us on
both counts. The Bebryces of Mysia (805) make it into the review of the Propontis on
Apollonius authority, although Eratosthenes might have assured him that this tribe was now
defunct. The ethnographic present speaks of ever-present realities, and is inhospitable to
specific time. The Cimmerians, a dimly remembered trouble already for Herodotus, had long
gone from the Cimmerian Bosporus, but they figure here in the present tense (1678, 681)
perhaps because Callimachus has treated them in the same way (Hymn 3.2534). And that is
why the Persians are preserved in aspic as a royal people, endowed with timeless
characteristics, but not one that has ever suffered a historical defeat at the hands of Greece.
That said, Dionysius use of Strabo, or something closely comparable, brings him up
to date, if not with the state of the art in Augustan geography, at least with a reasonably wellinformed Augustans knowledge. For example, he knows that the sources of the Danube and
Rhine are both in the Alps (298), a discovery made under Augustus (298330 n.), and the
reference to Italian boundary-rivers at least reflects Augustus regional division of Italy, even
though their function is suppressed. He appears to have used other first-century sources as
well. Dalmatias appearance as a subdivision of the province of Illyria is probably late
188

e.g. northern European tribes, 309, 310 nn.; peoples of the Black Sea coast and Caspian:
730, 766 nn.
189

Compare Plinys Britain: Evans 2005a, 51.

190

Clarke 1999, 24851.

179

Augustan (95102 n.). Similarly the Heptapolis (251) may, as an administrative division of
Egypt, go back to Augustus, though it is not certainly attested until later in the first century
but it is entirely possible, even likely, that as a native Alexandrian Dionysius needed no
written source for this. (That also applies to the temple of Sarapis in Alexandria, 256 n.)
Certain peoples better known from later antiquity also begin to be discernible: the Alani
(305 n.), the Indo-Scythians (1088 n.), though a reference to the Huns (730 Ou]n(n)oi) is very
dubious. But the timeless present, combined with the use of sources which reflect a wide
range of different historical perspectives, has resulted in a world where peoples and places
that belong, not only to different periods, but also to different levels of reality, are
juxtaposed.191 A mere three lines separate the Alani, a rising historical threat, from the Agaui,
born of the reification of a Homeric epithet.
The world of the Periegesis is endowed with natural riches. Vibrant waters run
through it; minerals in their natural state endow it with beautiful colour; and its fertile,
cultivable soil sustains populations in whose cultural level the poet seeks to arouse our
interest. The closing paragraph elevates natural diversity into a principle sponsored by the
gods, and the poem itself not only lays out the earth in all its (carefully controlled) variety,
but encourages its contemplation through means of antitheses. Antithetical ethnography is of
course nothing new. It goes back to Herodotus Egyptians and Scythians, and its continued
practice in Roman ethnography is illustrated by, say, Virgils balancing tableaux of Libyan
shepherds and herdsmen of the frozen north (Georg. 3.33948 + 34983), or Tacitus
contrasted pairs of German tribes (Germ. 302, 356).192 Dionysius has the whole of the
known world to choose from, and his pairs are built round the simple, traditional, and
overlapping antitheses of agriculture versus pastoralism, sedentarism versus nomadism, and
soft versus hardin other words, all antitheses of lifestyle. The peoples who illustrate the
terms of the antithesis are less interesting in their own right than as carriers of the values they
represent.193 So, the African nomads at the beginning of Libya (18694) are contrasted with
the Egyptians who, by a sleight of the itinerary, are placed at the end (2327): a culturally
backward nation who live like beasts and practice no agriculture are balanced against its

191

Jacob 1981, 51, and 1990, 40.

192

Trdinger, 36, 1689. Note also Jacobs analysis of Agatharchides ethnographies in On

the Erythraean Sea, where there is a three-way contrast between the gold-miners of Nubia,
the savage tribes of southern Egypt and the Ethiopian Troglodytes, and the blessed tribes of
Arabia (1991a, 13346).
193

See Clarke 1999, 146 and n. 27, on Fish-Eaters and other peoples characterized by their
means of subsistence as stock representatives of different levels of civilization. Unlike
Posidonius Fish-Eaters, Dionysius miserable Nomads do not represent the generic ethnic
distinction of a particular latitudinal zone; nor, like some early modern colonial literature
(cited by Clarke ad loc.), do they carry over particular topoi of primitivism from one people
to another, but they do tend to view cultures in generic rather than individuated terms.
180

inventors.194 (It is curious that the Athenians claim to Triptolemus and the same discovery
goes for nothing in this accountas do Greek prw=toi eu9retai/ in general.) The Nile is then
contrasted, as a continent-marker, with the Tanais (2301 ~ 6612): o1lboj (247) versus
wretchedness (668) is the point, though agriculture is implicit too, for the nomad Scythians in
their wagons are no cultivators of the soil. That same contrast of blessedness and misery
recurs one last time in the antithesis (explicit at 9678) between the blessed Arabians and the
Erembi, who are geographically contiguous as well as culturally antithetical. Like the
Libyans, the Erembi live like animals; like both them and Scythians, they are nomads (967).
The Blessed Arabians, on the other hand, are a9bro/bioi, an interesting adjective whose
earlier applications (968 n.) prompt the reflection that although Dionysius makes use of the
softhard antithesis, he does not do so to the disparagement of the former. The stereotype of
the effeminate oriental did, of course, survive into Roman ethnography,195 and it glimmers
through the soft, radiant garments of the Blessed Arabians. Yet the delicate handling and
non-judgemental tone contrasts with the more strident or contemptuous treatment the same
theme might, in other hands, have received. The two extremes represented by Erembi and
Arabians are aspects of the earths wonderful diversity, but if anything it is the hard
barbarianthe nomad, the rock-dweller, the fighter, the pastoralist or hunter who shuns or is
ignorant of agriculturewho presents a more sustained contrast with the implied culture of
the narrator. For in Hadrians peaceful and prosperous Roman world, the fundamental
contrast was not between the hard-bitten fighters and their plump, vulnerable victims, but
between the haves and the have-nots. And the vision is optimistic. Where Tacitus, for
instance, had chosen to end the Germania with a kind of ethnographical fade-out, where the
northern tribes petered out into irremediable primitivism (46), the Periegesis ends with a
climax of natural and mineral abundance and Dionysian pomp.

194

Compare Strabos antithesis of Ethiopians and Egyptians, the former living nomadikw=j
. . . kai\ a0po/rwj, the latter politikw=j kai\ h9me/rwj, inventors of geometry, astronomy, and
successful cultivators of the soil (17.1.3).
195

Mattern, 734; TLL s.v. mollis, viii. 1379.203.

181

182

VI. THE END OF THE JOURNEY

Not that I care too much about geography; its one of those bossy ideas according to
which, if you locate a place, theres nothing more to be said about it.
(Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King, ch. 5.)

T H E Periegesis is most readily studied diachronically. That is, we can study the influences
on it, because so many of the most important ones are extant, and we can also study its
influence and reception, for, although the secondary tradition is not as rich as it is in the case
of the Phaenomena, we still have Latin translations, the scholia, and Eustathius commentary
as evidence for its transmission into later antiquity and Byzantium. We might like to proceed
synchronically as well. We might want to ask about its place within the learned culture of its
own times, and we might want specifically to ask about its relationship to school geography.1
But that is not easy. In later antiquity, when the Periegesis was recommended reading for the
monks in Cassiodorus foundation at Vivarium in Calabria, we can see that it was taken out
of its original context and read among other pagan cosmographical works as an aid to the
understanding of sacred literature. Cassiodorus specifically does not cite it in his discussion
of the secular liberal arts, the trivium and quadrivium, which occupies the second book of the
Institutiones, but in the first book, in his discussion of sacred letters, where he envisages that
it will serve as auxiliary to the reading of scripture.2
The immediate problem is the lack of any ready-made educational slot in pagan
education into which the Periegesis can fit, but there is also a problem with assuming the
equatability of didactic poems and school curricula in the first place. Even with didactic
poems which seem to have an obvious relationship to the school curriculum it is often
important to note the obliquity of their relationship (if any) with the classroom.3 With a poem
1

Cf. Leo, 148, with further literature.

De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum, 1. 15.

Another example given by Effe of dieser vor allem fr praktische Schulzwecke bestimmten
Sonderform are the three Latin poems by Terentianus Maurus, de litteris, de syllabis, de
metris (3rd c. AD). Here the subject-matter does, obviously, connect with the school
curriculum, as the poems expressly acknowledge (e.g. de litt. 12 elementa rudes quae
pueros docent magistri | vocalia quaedam memorant, consona quaedam). Yet more detailed
and considered analyses, by Jan-Wilhelm Beck and Chiara Cignolo, have emphasised, first,
that the poet departs from standard scholastic terminology and includes advanced, or
abstruse, material which would be unsuitable for beginners (Augustine, util. cred. 17: nulla
imbutus poetica disciplina Terentianum Maurum sine magistro attingere non auderes), and,
second, that the narrative voice repeatedly refers to schoolmasters and pupils in a distanced
way; the persona loquens is not a schoolmaster, nor the addressee a presumed schoolchild
(see J.-W. Beck, Terentianus Maurus, ANRW ii. 34.4, 320868, at 321718, 3215; Cignolo,
i, p. xxix; ii, p. 248). A third example of poetry as Schullunterricht is the anonymous 4th5thc. Carmen de figuris vel schematibus. In this case, current critical opinion seems to concur.
183

on a geographical subject, it is better to situate it within a broad but diffuse interest in the
subject, one widely shared by the educated, but lacking a specific institutional context. The
same applies to the earlier iambic geographical poems: it is perilous to suppose, merely on
formal grounds, that the use of the iambic metre by ps.-Scymnus or Dionysius son of
Calliphon is ipso facto more suited to school instruction than the Periegesis hexameters,
especially given the unbroken use of Homer and Hesiod to teach moral and oratorical
lessons.4 Ancient education could accommodate geographical subjects in many ways, and at
all levels. It was pervasive, but at the same time, except in the hands of a determined few,
unsystematic; so, unlike subjects such as grammar, geometry, or astronomy, there was no
obvious point in a students career when the Periegesis would have been suitable pedagogy.
Conversely, there was no constraint on its possible constituencies of readers.
If we cannot and should not try to force it into a slot which does not exist, we can,
nevertheless, identify some of the characteristics which it shares with other specimens of
ancient geographical learningespecially the proclivity for prestige literary items presented
in lists and memorable, readily digestible forms. Geographical names figure in early writing
exercises. As isolated items, often from Homer or other poets, they appear in bare lists, along

The two most recent editors, DAngelo and Schindel, both see it as a work of the schoolroom
(possibly by a pupil, or with a final section by a pupil, which would indeed be an example of
pedagogy in action), though before them Marisa Squillante saw rather a littrateur borrowing
the didactic form for a display of cultivated preciosity (M. Squillante, Un inventario di
figure retoriche della tarda latinit: lanonimo Carmen de figuris vel schematibus, Vichiana,
1 (1990), 3rd ser., 25561, and Carmen de figuris vel schematibus. Introduzione, testo
critico, traduzione e commento (Rome, 1993), 4453; R. M. DAngelo, Carmen de figuris vel
schematibus: introduzione, testo critico e commento (Hildesheim, 2001), 23, 456; U.
Schindel, Entstehungsbedingungen eines sptantiken Schulbuchs: zum Carmen de figuris
(RLM 6370), in Antike Rhetorik und ihre Rezeption (Festschrift Classen) (Stuttgart, 1999),
8598; id., Die Rezeption der hellenistischen Theorie der rhetorischen Figuren bei den
Rmern (Gttingen, 2001), 5461, and Gnomon, 76 (2004), 67).
4

Effe 1977, 1847, 2313, draws what he calls a sharp distinction (184, 233) between
didactic poems which aspire to be works of art, and poems which use verse as a mere
memory-device for instructional purposes, exemplified by the iambic geographical poems of
ps.-Scymnus and Dionysius son of Calliphon (1847) (es gengt zu sehen, da der Autor
[sc. ps.-Scymnus] keinerlei literarischen Ehrgeiz entfaltet, da er das einzige Ziel verfolgt,
den Lehrgegenstand so darzustellen, da er sich dem Gedchtnis des Adressaten leicht und
dauerhaft einprgt). True, ps.-Scymnus preface makes explicit theoretical claims about
educativeness, but Dionysius hexameter poem also adopts an expressly didactic stance; nor
is it true that an iambic poet necessarily has no aesthetic ambitions, for ps.-Scymnus speaks
also about te/ryij, the combination of utility and delight (4, 434, 923). The iambic works
use a different register, but to rule them out of the category of true didactic poems is
arbitrary.
184

with other proper (as well as common) nouns of fixed numbers of syllables.5 At the opposite
end of the spectrum, Alexandrian scholars and scholar-poets produce specialist monographs
and poetry laced with geographical allusion, writing for a cultivated public with what Doris
Meyer has called a passion for geographical knowledge.6 The mania for detail and for
systematic or semi-systematic listing is perhaps reflected in papyri which contain specialist
lists, of rivers, springs, mountains, and other geographical features, whether we are to
understand these as displays of knowledge in their own right, or whether as aids to the
comprehension of other texts.7
5

See Legras. A good example is SB XII, 10769, end of 3rd or beginning of 4th c. AD (publ.
W. Clarysse and A. Wouters, A Schoolboys Exercise in the Chester Beatty Library, Anc.
Soc. 1 (1970), 20135). The text is a schoolboys exercise, which lists words of one to four
syllables. Geographical names are interspersed among the rest, all with evident literary
associations: they include the islands of Zacynthus (63), Ithaca (81), Lipare, the form used in
Call. Hymn 3.47 (103); the river Scamander (143); Strophie, a spring near Thebes uniquely
attested in Call. Hymn 4.76 (147); Phylake, a city in Thessaly mentioned in Il. 2.695, 700
(170).
6

Meyer 1998, 21415, writing of die Leidenschaft fr die Geographie Griechenlands

innerhalb der Bildungselite des ptolemischen Alexandria, of the combination in
Apollonius Argonautica and Timosthenes peri\ Lime/nwn of the extension of geographical
knowledge with allusions to Greek cultural history and Ionian science. For virtuoso
geographical lists in Hellenistic poetry, see Weber, 31617; M. A. Harder, Callimachus, in
de Jong 2012, 7798, at 84 (Hymn 3), 92 (fr. 43.2855 H. = 50 M.). For the fascination of the
Roman poets with geographical minutiae, see Mayer; M. Grant, Senecas Tragic
Geography, Latomus, 59 (2000), 8895; Dueck 2012, 15, 324. In the 4th or 5th c. Vibius
Sequester produced an alphabetical glossary, presumably for scholastic purposes, of the
names of rivers, springs, lakes, woods, marshes, mountains, and peoples drawn from Virgil,
Silius Italicus, Lucan, and Ovid: ed. P. G. Parroni, Vibii Sequestris De Fluminibus Fontibus
Lacubus etc. (Milan, 1965) and R. Gelsomino, Vibius Sequester (Leipzig, 1967); cf. P. A.
Perotti, Note a Vibio Sequestre, GIF 56 (2004) 8799.
7

For instance, P. Berl. inv. 13044 (the laterculi Alexandrini, 2nd c. BC) contains lists of
islands, mountains, rivers, springs, and lakes, along with lawgivers, artists, engineers, and
others; see G. Geraci, Nuovi documenti dellEgitto tolemaico e romano a Bologna,
Procedings of the XIV International Congress of Papyrologists (London, 1975), 11320; A.
Mehl, Erziehung zum Hellenen Erziehung zum Weltbrger. Bemerkungen zum
Gymnasion im hellenistischen Osten, Nikephoros, 5 (1992), 4373, at 59. A later example is
P. Bon. ISA 1 recto (3rd c. AD), a list of potamoi\ me/gistoi. Of this, G. Geraci, P. Bon. ISA
1, recto: lista di fiumi con equivalenze tachigrafiche, in S. F. Bond, S. Pernigotti, F. Serra,
and A. Vivian (eds.), Studi in onore di Edda Bresciani (Pisa, 1985), 23143, at 239,
comments that lesame della scrittura e il contenuto del documento escludono a priori per
esso il carattere di esercitazione scolastica di istruzione primaria ed inducono e riferirlo ad un
livello di cultura o di apprendimento superiori, ampiamente impregnati di cognizioni
geografiche gi topiche e stereotipe, sia in se stesse sia al fine di intendere i testi letterari.
185

Even when the liberal arts took on firmer contours, geography as such was not part of
the quadrivium, though it was related to both astronomy and geometry, which were.8 It is this
consanguineity Strabo has in mind when he combines a traditionally literary approach with
demands for at least a modicum of technical expertise, for in order to embark adequately on
the study of geography the student must have at least some grounding in astronomy and
geometry. Susan Mattern has suggested that the Periegesis is an example of what might be
taught by the grammatisth/j at the secondary level of education,9 but perhaps we should be
better off envisaging the sort of many-faceted reception which the poems counterpart,
Aratus Phaenomena, demonstrably enjoyed. Responses to this poem ranged from manuals
providing basic astronomical and/or mythographical back-up to higher-level expert interest
from astronomers and grammarians, as well as from the littrateurs who translated the poem
into Latin.10 In Dionysius case we can only speculate about the response; but what we can be
sure of, whatever the level of the texts reception, is that it partakes fully in the belletristic
character of ancient geography, which manifests itself at every level of sophistication at
which geographical subject-matter is treated.
It is also memorable. In the first place, this is the result of form. In his own
geographical poem, ps.-Scymnus saw verse as an aid to memorability: it was ancillary, an aid
to something designed to instruct (3344). With the Periegesis there is no such sense of
forms being secondary to content, but it is true that ancient authors theorise the connection
between metre and memorability, so that the use of the hexameter would ipso facto have the
effect of fixing something in a readers memory; so too would the verse-patterns, the
repetitions, the tri- and tetracola whose sounds and rhythms insinuate themselves into the
readers inner ear.11 Second, the imposition of linear order, in routes that follow a largely
predictable westeast and northsouth direction, helps the reader to establish a mental map of

For the negligible role of geography in ancient education, see Brodersen 1995, 13 and
bibliography in n. 2, and 108; Dueck 2012, 2; further on enkyklios paideia/the liberal arts, H.
Marrou, Histoire de lducation dans lAntiquit (Paris, 61965), 2667 and n. 2 (p. 568), 409
10 and nn. 32, 33 (pp. 6034); H. Fuchs, RLAC s.v. Enkyklios Paideia, v. 36598; D. A.
Russell, Arts and Sciences in Ancient Education, G&R 36 (1989), 21025; T. Morgan,
Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman World (Cambridge, 1998), 339.
9

Mattern, 256.

10

Kidd, 438; Martin, i, pp. ccxi, clxxvii; id. Histoire du texte des Phnomnes dAratos
(Paris, 1956). On the enormous popularity of Aratus in schools, Marrou (n. 8 above), 2779,
410 and n. 33 (p. 603).
11

Ancient theory on metre: Plat. Phaedr. 267 A, cf. Leg. 810; Longin. Ars rhet. I. ii. 202.17
18 Spengel ta\ me/tra ma=llon memnh/meqa tw=n a1neu me/trwn pepoihme/nwn. For versepatterns as an aid to the oral performer, especially in lists and catalogues, see Minchin, 245,
8890.
186

the areas described and to recall details along the way.12 Ancient theorists of memory built on
this simple principle. According to the Roman orators who expound a system of artificial
memory which they derive from Simonides, accurate memory depends on arrangement.13 For
one who wished to cultivate the art, memories could be figured by images (imagines; effigies;
simulacra) disposed across a series or sequence of places (loci), such as the rooms of a house,
or places along a familiar route through a city. They could be retrieved as it were from
storage simply by retracing a route or itinerary and collecting the tokens which had been left
along the way. There is an analogy between this orderly series of loci and a geographical text
which deals with a series of items along an orderly route; Christian Jacobs reading of the
Periegesis as a memory-text views it as a halfway-house between pure topography and these
developed arts of memory.14 The poem is a sort of encyclopaedia in which individual places
are associated with little gems of information (myths, natural marvels, cults and temples),
which may be recalled by the orderly sequence in which they occur.
Yet the analogy can only be pressed a certain way, for the landscape is clearly a
landscape in its own right as well as a series of niches for the distribution of tokens. In the
memory artist, the association between the memory-tokens and the space in which they are
implanted is arbitrary; in a geographical itinerary a places associations are integral. Memory
is indeed crucial to the Periegesis, but memory in the sense of the repertory of shared themes,
images, and ideologies which the poet is trying to evoke in his readers: the Periegesis does
not represent an unfamiliar world, but one we all know. But if we invoke the notion of
cultural memories (pp. 5, 113)as well as their counterpart, collective memories, shared by
those who have experienced events of the more recent past15we should ask what form they
take. Events within living memory are Roman triumphs and vindications of Roman power,
but the stock images and themes which are presumed to belong to the common culture of the
poems readers are less oppositional than inclusive; perhaps that is only to be expected from a
poem whose closing emphasis is on the beauty of natural, or rather divinely sponsored,
diversity. If self-defining clashes are evokedsuch as the Persian warsit is only faintly;
similarly, there are very few myths which underwrite the separate existence of nations and
ethnic groups (long-defunct Media gets its Medea, but there is no Hellen to match her). Nor
are the memories of cultural particularism, at least not in the purposeful, intimately detailed
12

It is suggested that the imposition of linear geographical order already in the Homeric
Catalogue of Ships served as an aide-mmoire to the poet: Minchin, 86; Purves, 37, 1556,
221, 228.
13

Cic. de Or. 2.35060; Auct. ad Herennium 3.2840; Quint. Inst. 11.2.126; cf. Wst, RE
s.v. Mnemonik; F. Yates, The Art of Memory (London, 1966), 126 (cf. also 2749); H.
Blum, Die antike Mnemotechnik (Hildesheim, 1969), 137; Vasaly, 100; Purves, 21819.
14

Jacob 1990, 1518, cf. 1981, 5862; see also Coccaro Andreou, 107, 11921, 131; Selter
2010, 123.
15

Chaniotis, 255, id., War in the Hellenistic World: A Social and Cultural History (Oxford,
2005), 21516, drawing on J. Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedchtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und
politische Identitt in frhen Hochkulturen (Munich, 1992).
187

way in which Pausanias sets about his construction of a religious identity for Greece under
Roman rule.16 Rather, the memories are of literary topoithe civilised Mediterranean
peoples offset against the primitives, the nomads, the warrior peoples in inhospitable terrain,
the inhabitants of utopias and dystopias on the fringesand above all of the literature itself in
which they are invoked, from Homer to the Alexandrians. They are shared, not by a political
or racial community, but by a cultural one.
Read for his content, Dionysius documents the farrago of misconceptions that was
ancient geography. He inherits the notions of a Caspian that communicates with the ocean
(4750 n.); an Egyptian Mons Casius that is a mountain instead of a hill of sand (11516 n.);
the alignment of Britain directly opposite the mouths of the Rhine (though he does not
specify which part of Britain lies there, as other writers do, and get it wrong: 566 n.); the
strange notion of a wasp-waisted Asia Minor (8645 n.). To the failings inherited from
ossified literary geography he adds plenty of confusions, distortions, and anachronisms of his
own. Some fudges could be deliberate, the result of harmonisation.17 Even so, it is not always
easy to draw the line between artful combination and sloppiness, and the result is
geographical chaos either way. Items are taken out of sequence (368, 494, 50612, 1135
51 nn.; cf. the disruption of Arabian tribes, 95461 nn.), directions wrong (48790, 500(?),
87980(?) nn.), sources handled in a hazy, imprecise, or cavalier way (relocations of Nysa,
6256 n., Sinope, 7759 n., Hadramotitai, 95461 n.; boundaries of Coele Syria, 897922 n.;
Persian tribes, 1069 n.). Geographical names are treated with astonishing laxity, sometimes
for metrical reasons, but sometimes in eccentric by-forms the original form of which has been
swallowed up in textual uncertainty.18 Elsewhere the geography is questionable or just plain
wrong (order of Syrtes, 1038, 47780 nn.; course of Eurotas, 41113 n.; Achelous and
Chalcis, 4967 n.; Taprobane and the Tropic of Cancer, 5945 nn.). Given his date, he could

16

S. E. Alcock, Graecia Capta: The Landscapes of Roman Greece (Cambridge, 1993), 174.

17

pp. 41-2; e.g. 88 n. (Gortyn, Phaestos, and Kriou Metopon), 168 n. (Cimmerians and
Taurus), 5418 n. (Leuce), 6635 n. (sources of the Tanais), 73951 n. (rivers east of the
Caspian), 1074 n. (Indian and Persian Choaspes), 10968 n. (Arii and Arieni), 114344a n.
(Gargaridae).
18

30 1Atlaj; 38 Ai0qo/pioj; 82 Sarda/nioj; 343 0Ape/nnion; 382 Tegestrai/wn; 457

Bou=soj; 566 Bretani/dej; 607 0Eruqrai/ou basilh=oj; 747 Sougdia/j; 764 Xalki\j a1roura,
cf. 803 Xalkide/ej; 877 Kommagehno\n e3doj; 916 Posidh/i+a e1rga. Minor modifications of
suffix are common (469 Lilu/bh; 552 Fainago/rh; 589 Xrusei/h; 875 0Agxia/leia; 915
Laodi/khn). 295 1Alpioj a0rxh/ is perhaps Herodotean. For names in -i/j -i/doj, see pp. 52-4.
Peoples: 187 Masulh=ej; 304 Sama/tai; 387 Boulime/wn; 571 0Amnita/wn; 682 Kerke/tioi;
687 Zu/gioi; 734, 738 Derke/bioi; 956 0Agre/ej; 959 Kletabhnoi/; 1015 Kissoi/; 1096
1Aribaj; 1138 Dardane/ej; 1141 Sa/bai, Toci/loi; 1142 Sko/droi; 1144 Gargari/dai. For
vowel quantities, see 21, 65, 469, 855, 867, 918 nn. For Apollonius place-names, see
Delage, 2823: archaism characterises many, but not catachresis.
188

have done better. If one reads him for his geography, what interest he offers is that of teasing
out the different strands of his account.19
Poetically, however, it is another matter. His meticulous literary art is testimony to
neo-Hellenistic erudition as well as ingenious allusiveness and combinatory skill. He is
permeated by the literary values of the high priests of Alexandrianism. Moreover, all the
pieces of this delicate and painstakingly assembled mosaic fit together into a whole which is
full of colour and variety but also well integrated, a convincing unity. We can give a coherent
and satisfying account of Dionysius poetics, but we cannot avoid the question whether he
might also shed light on a certain current of literary sensibility. Before Leues discovery of
the acrostichs which conclusively revealed him to be Hadrianic, Tycho Mommsen had placed
him in the late Hellenistic periodnot because Alexandrianism per se was incompatible with
a lower date, but because of a prejudice against imperial literature, whose stylistic defects he
did not think compatible with Dionysius general tastefulness and moderation. When, in a
later postscript, he acknowledged the new dating, he attributed the poems neo-Hellenistic
aesthetic to die Kunst der Nachahmung antiker Stilarten, so marked a feature of the
contemporary visual arts.20 What will be necessary in further attempts to find Dionysius
proper context is to consider the uptake of the Hellenistic arts, literary and visual, in the
second century, the degree to which they were, or were not, preferred to the arts of the
classical period, and the extent of any difference from previous periods, to distinguish
revivals from continuations.
The obvious one might seem to be the neotericism of Hadrians reign. But it is not so
simple. Not all the sources for Hadrians own tastes and for literary fashions during his reign
are to be taken at face value.21 They do not allow us to draw a crude distinction between
Homerisers and the avant-garde, an opposition which has been properly debunked in
scholarship on Hellenistic poetry, andsupposing anyone were to entertain it in this form
no less vulnerable in the Antonine period too. The verses quoted by Athenaeus 15.677 F from
Pancrates poem on Hadrians lion-hunt contains reminiscences of Hellenistic poetry in its
sentimental theme of floral metamorphosisthe very poem which, identified with the
fragments preserved in P. Oxy. 1085, has also been dubbed Homerising.22 Dionysius has
19

For a fairly unsparing appraisal of Apollonius geographical errors, see Delage, 2912.

20

Mommsen, 80624; for his judgement of imperial poets, see 806, and for the epilogue,
8234. Incidentally, this view entailed that Dionysius even predated Strabo (Anhut, 2 n. 5). In
reaching this conclusion, Mommsen was influenced by his reading of Gottfried Hermann,
Orphica (Leipzig, 1805), 695, placing Dionysius between the younger Alexandrians
(Nicander and Moschus) and the hexameter poets of the first Christian centuries (812).
21

Discussed by Bowie 2004b, who is inclined to dismiss the claim of Dio (69.4.6) that he
tried to unseat Homer and elevate Antimachus in his place as silly gossip (173). The tittletattle is also treated sensibly by Marguerite Yourcenar, in Memoirs of Hadrian (London,
1955), 198.
22

P. Oxy. 1085 = XV Heitsch; but note that with the subsequent discovery of another lionhunt poem in P. Oxy. 4352, John Rea encourages doubts over the attribution of 1085 (vol.
189

opted for a genre, style, and diction that enables a virtuoso blending of the Homeric and
Alexandrian, with no sense of tension. The Catalogue of Ships was the authorising model,
and while Dionysius is far from the wretched pasticheurs who can manage no better than
au0ta\r e1peita,23 he draws without inhibition on Homeric formulae and clausulae, and on the
rare occasions when he wants to Homerise (as for Ilium, 81519) he produces a recognisable
miniature portrait. More characteristic, though, is the combination of the archaic and
Hellenistic, or rather, the refraction of earlier models through the medium of Hellenistic
poetry, to which Periegesis owes the refurbished didactic genre. In fashioning the didactic
voice, Dionysius choices circulate around the theme of knowledge and its transmission, its
literary basis, the literary nature of the narrators journey, the confidence with which he can
dispense his knowledge, and the points beyond which his capacity is taxed; all the stances he
adopts come from early Greek hexameter and Hellenistic poetry, reworked in the context of
polite imperial belles-lettres. It is hardly surprising, given its passion for detail, that dozens of
references to toponyms, local myths and other peculiarities, come from Hellenistic poetry.24
Apollonius Argonautica is both a model of orderly, linear itineraries, which Dionysius can
take over (or reverse), and a source of details which he can reconstitute and relinearise into an
itinerary of his own (2903, 38397 nn.). It is also a model for ways of looking at the world,
adopting the viewpoint not only of one who travels past, but also of one gazing down from
above. For it is far more than a matter of Realien. The beauty of Dionysius world has its
birth in stock Homeric epithets of loveliness; but they are crystallised in tableaux of loci
amoeni, especially associated with divinities, festivals, and choral dances, where the
interweaving of Homer and Hellenistic poetry reaches its height. He is especially given to
reworking similes, both in his dynamic language for running water and in his special
tableaux. In the one case, what was exceptional in the Homeric poems becomes the norm; in
the other, similes involving toponyms, loci amoeni, or simply a strong sense of place become
morceaux de bravoure.25 Archaic and Hellenistic poetry are mobilised equally in support of a
project to present the world in a heightened, intensified, unquotidian form, one where nature
is rich and vibrant, and gods are to be seen revelling with their worshippers at the riverside.
In 1990 Ewen Bowie was sceptical about the very possibility of writing a literary
history of the Antonine period, though twenty years later that prospect is now looking less
LXIII, pp. 3, 13). On Pancrates poem, see Bowie 1990, 813; id. 2004b, 173 (Homerising),
181; Leo, 159; A. S. Hollis, Myth in the Service of Kings and Emperors, in J. A. Lpez
Frez (ed.), Mitos en la literatura griega helenstica e imperial (Madrid, 2003), 114, at 9
14.
23

Pollianus, AP 11.130; Bowie 2004b, 175.

24

In a few cases, echoes and near-citations are carried over from the original to new
geographical contexts, almost as if the physical attributes of the landscape stayed the same,
and only the places associated with them changed: 245, 386, 502, 617 nn.
25

5289, evoking Od. 19.51819, Il. 14.290, Theocr. 12.7 (all bird comparisons), ps.-Theocr.
Id. 9.34, and possibly more, if we could trace the source of ku/ei; 83245, drawing on similes
in Ap. Rhod 4.13002; Il. 2.45963; Ap. Rhod. 4.949 e0p i0cu/aj; Anacreon, PMG 408.1.
190

distant, with signs of life in the study of imperial poetry.26 This study of the Periegesis
might constitute at least one piece of a complex jigsaw. Further research into Oppian and ps.Oppian is an obvious need. Their choices differ from Dionysius in respect of four main
characteristics of didactic poetry (p. 101), but what of other matters, such as their most
privileged models and their techniques of allusion? Despised as it has often been, and inflated
with rhetorical jingles, the Cynegetica of ps.-Oppian is nevertheless, as Adrian Hollis has
shown, thoroughly imbued with the Hellenistic manner.27 Another intriguing comparison is
Nestor of Laranda, explored and given a context in a characteristically brilliant article by
John Ma.28 The works of the Severan poet were, as far as we can see, more varied than those
of Dionysius, with a lipogrammatic Iliad, an Alexander epic, a didactic poem or poems, and a
work on metamorphoses.29 Ma suggests that his main influences were Hellenistic, but late
Hellenistic (the Alexikepos clearly invokes Nicander, Parthenius influence on the
Metamorphoses is possible but less certain30) rather than the high Alexandrian masters; he
suggests that some, at least, of Nestors work expressed playfulness, even ironical distance,
towards the Homeric model, and contrasts it with the reverence with which Homer was
imitated at the level of local literary culture.31 Barely more than a dozen lines securely
ascribed to Nestor are still extant; we should dearly like to be able to gauge the negotiation of
the Homeric and Hellenistic heritage across the epic, didactic, and mythographical parts of
his oeuvre.
Another question concerns Dionysius relationship to Roman poetry. The evidence of
the Periegesis cannot determine whether or not he knew Latin. True, there are some instances
where his treatment of a motif has more in common with an often identifiable Greek,
historiographical or chorographical, source than with that of the Romans poets: his
description of silk-making seems to follow Strabos, not the Virgil-based Roman tradition
(752b757 n.); Latin poets also know of the disappearance of the Tigris (Hunink on Lucan,
BC 3.261), but Dionysius account is demonstrably related to that of Strabo and perhaps
Eratosthenes (98391, 98791 nn.); the Parthian method of fighting is a Latin topos second to
none in poetic ethnography, but Dionysius account has several points in common with
26

Bowie 1990, 90: I have offered a sketch, not a history: whether our material will ever
allow the latter to be written is doubtful. The quotation refers to the collection of essays
edited by K. Carvounis and R. Hunter and published as a Ramus supplement in 2008.
27

Hollis 1994; Whitby, 11114, and ead., The Cynegetica Attributed to Oppian, in S.
Swain, S. Harrison, and J. Elsner (eds.), Severan Culture (Cambridge, 2007), 12534, esp.
126, 128, 132; De Stefani and Magnelli, 5523. On the Halieutica: Whitby, 10811; De
Stefani and Magnelli, 5512.
28

John Ma, The Worlds of Nestor the Poet, in Swain, Harrison, and Elsner (n. 27), 83113.

29

Testimonia ibid. 838.

30

Nicander: ibid. 87, 1078. Parthenius: J. L. Lightfoot, Parthenius of Nicaea (Oxford,

1999), 1645; Ma (n. 27), 84, 107 (more confident).
31

Ma, 110 (cf. 10711 passim); for the fragments, 98103.

191

Trogus/Justin (common source Apollodorus of Artemita?) while it fails to mention their

discharge of arrows while in flight, which so obsesses the Roman poets (1045 n.). On the
other hand, the topos of Massagetae drinking mares milk mixed with blood is found mostly
in Latin poets and in only one other Greek source (745 n.), while the idea that specific rivers
carry gemstones in their waters is one that particularly pleases Seneca.32 If 321 is a reference
to iron-working in Noricum, that too is a Latin topos. There is a rash of references to the
Alani, one of Dionysius most up-to-date references, in Neronian literature, although
locations vary.33 In 576, if the reference to the Bistones is metonymic, the parallels are in
Roman poets, but there may of course be lost Greek sources; so too, although Dionysius is
the only Greek poet before Agathias and then Tzetzes to mention Thule, Mela seems to know
of earlier Greek poetic treatments;34 and while the Tanais section (65979) has several
similarities with Virgils ethnography of northern herdsmen, none is so compelling that it
could not have been drawn from the common pool of tradition on which both tableaux draw.
Two or three noun-epithet combinations find their best parallels in Roman poetry (532 u9gra\
ne/fh, 1171 a0metrh/toio qala/sshj; cf. also 1052 Au0soni/ou basilh=oj), but the first two
have Greek precedent, and in the second case it is particularly clear that the Latin parallels
are calques. Finally one might register certain stylistic touches: the nicety noted on 9212; a
(limited) cultivation of alliteration (440, 1071 nn.35); a predilection for verbal arrangements
and verse-patterns (pp. 73-4) which suggests comparison with Latin poetry; and a fondness
for enallage, especially in its classic form, the transference of an epithet from a genitive noun
to the noun which governs it (37, 131, 168, 392, 513, 556, 655, 734 v.l., 878, 909, 1171), but
also in contexts involving prepositional phrases (845, 878). Critics who have registered
Dionysius other stylistic tics have not noted this one, although it is all the more striking in
that enallage is not a conspicuous feature of Hellenistic (let alone archaic hexameter) poetic

32

Sen. Med. 725 Hydaspes gemmifer, cf. Heracl. Oet. 628 dives . . . Hydaspes; [Sen.] Heracl.
Oet. 6223 omnis plaga gemmiferi . . . Histri; Stat. Theb. 8.237 gemmiferum . . . Hydaspen;
Claud. III Cons. Hon. 4 Hydaspeis . . . gemmis. For the river topos in Posidonius, see pp. 1534.
33

305 n. Lucan, BC 8.223 puts them beyond the Caspian Gates; Martial, 7.30.6, combines
them with the Sarmatians of southern Russia.
34

581; Mela 3.57; Agathias, AP 6.54, Tzetz. Chil. 8.215.672, 8.218.71415.

35

A possible token of Latin influence in a poet of this date, and recognised as such by I.
Opelt, Alliteration im Griechischen? Untersuchungen zur Dichtersprache des Nonnos von
Panopolis, Glotta 37 (1958), 20532 (see also remarks on ps.-Oppian on 216). Systematic
research is lacking, but after its exploitation in early Greek hexameters poetry it seems not to
have been much cultivated as a literary technique. Isolated claims have been made for its
revival by certain Hellenistic poets: Theocritus (J. Defradas, Le rle de lallitration dans la
posie grecque, REA 60 (1958), 3649); Aratus (B. A. van Groningen, La posie verbale
grecque (Amsterdam, 1953), 79); Euphorion (van Groningen ibid. 312; Magnelli 2002, 51).
192

style.36 It could be that it imitates the effect of a conspicuous outlier: Nicander seems to stand
out in his liking for the figure,37 but he also points the way towards later Latin epic, Oppians
Halieutica and Nonnus Dionysiaca, where, as Bers suggests, the influence of Latin usage is
surely at work.38
If we can no more prove that Dionysius had first-hand acquaintance with Roman
poetry than we can for other imperial Greek authors, he nevertheless seems to bear witness to
a sort of common poetic geographical culture. My forthcoming commentary will illustrate the
gratifying precision and nicety with which Dionysius has engaged with its several aspects.

36

Bers, 445 (with three examples from Apollonius and a single example each from
Callimachus, Theocritus, and Lycophron). It is of course characteristic of Pindar and tragedy:
see K.G. i. 263 (Anm. 2); E. Williger, Sprachliche Untersuchungen zu den Komposita der
griechischen Dichter des 5. Jahrhunderts (Cologne, 1928), 916.
37

Jacques, ii, p. civ and n. 219; id. iii, p. cvi (nine examples in the Alexipharmaca).

38

Bers, 45; for Oppian and Nonnus, see bibliography in Jacques, ii, p. civ n. 219. Parallels
for the transference in 319 yuxroi=j 0Agaqu/rsoij are in Latin poetry (31819 n.).
193

BIBLIOGRAPHY
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