Output details
31 - Classics
University of Oxford
Dionysius Periegetes, Description of the Known World: Introduction
This publication (101,000 words, also to appear with minor variations in hard copy in 2014 as part of a 280,000-word commentary) is an introduction to Dionysius Periegetes. The research involved assembling material from a huge variety of sources, on the prose side from Hecataeus to the Byzantine era, on the poetic side from Homer to Nonnus and beyond. The introduction consists of chapters on the various traditions within ancient geography, ancient didactic poetry, and ethnography, and how Dionysius relates to each of these. There are also detailed discussions of the poet's sources, especially vis-a-vis Strabo, and of language and metre.