Gagné R. Cosmography and the Idea of Hyperborea in Ancient Greece: A Philology of Worlds

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. — 572 p.Cosmography is defined here as the rhetoric of cosmology: the art of composing worlds. The mirage of Hyperborea, which played a substantial role in Greek religion and culture throughout Antiquity, offers a remarkable window into the practice of composing and reading worlds. This book follows Hyperborea across genres and centuries, both as an exploration of the extraordinary record of Greek thought on that further North and as a case study of ancient cosmography and the anthropological philology that tracks ancient cosmography. Trajectories through the many forms of Greek thought on Hyperborea shed light on key aspects of the cosmography of cult and the cosmography of literature. The philology of worlds pursued in this book ranges from Archaic hymns to Hellenistic and Imperial reconfigurations of Hyperborea. A thousand years of cosmography is thus surveyed through the rewritings of one idea. This is a book on the art of reading worlds slowly.List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List ofAbbreviations
Introduction Cosmography
A Hyperborean Tree
Philological Worlds
Appendix A: Pindar, Olympian 3
Sanctuaries of Cosmography
Hyperborea between Cult and Song
Epidēmia and Apodēmia
Νικηφόρος Βορέω: A Bone Tablet from Berezan/Olbia
Delphic Foundations
Delos and the Hyperborean Maidens
Appendix B: Alcaeus’ Hymn to Apollo
Appendix C: References to Olen
Cosmography and Epiphany
Seeing the God’s Arrival
Epiphanic Geography
Stone Epiphanies
The East Pediment of the Alcmaeonid Temple
Apollo and Dionysus: Plutarch and Divine Alternance
Pausanias and the Galatian Shields
Cosmography, Periods and Genres
The Wondrous Road: Archaic Travel Narrative
Mapping Trajectories from Hyperborea
Reaching Hyperborea: Pindar, Pythian 10 and Bacchylides 3
Homeric Antecedents?
The Hesiodic Periodos Gēs
Aristeas of Proconnesus
Hyperborea and the Classical Economies of Knowledge
Tragic Cosmographies
Expansions of Wisdom
Pythagorean Appropriations
Early Prose Cosmography
Herodotean Incorporations
Impossible Worlds? Hellenistic Reconfigurations
The Archive and the Encyclopaedists
Vestige and Parody
Northern Utopias in Alexandria and Babylon
Cosmopolitics and Eschatology in Athens
Conclusion Further Trajectories
The Archive Strikes Back
Hyperboreans at the Gates
Reading Worlds SlowlyIndex locorum
General index