What were the limits of knowledge of the physical world in Greek and Roman antiquity? How far did travellers get and what did they know about far-away regions? How did they describe foreign countries and peoples? How did they measure the earth, and distances and heights on it? Ideas about the physical and cultural world are a key aspect of ancient history, but until now there has been no up-to-date modern overview of the subject. This book explores the beginnings and development of geographical ideas in Classical antiquity and demonstrates technical methods for describing landscape, topographies and ethnographies. The survey relies on a variety of sources: philosophical and scientific texts but also poems and travelogues; papyrological remains and visual monuments.

What were the limits of knowledge of the physical world in Greek and Roman antiquity? How far did travellers get and what did they know about far-away regions? How did they describe foreign countries and peoples? How did they measure the earth, and distances and heights on it? Ideas about the physical and cultural world are a key aspect of ancient history, but until now there has been no up-to-date modern overview of the subject. This book explores the beginnings and development of geographical ideas in Classical antiquity and demonstrates technical methods for describing landscape, topographies and ethnographies. The survey relies on a variety of sources: philosophical and scientific texts but also poems and travelogues; papyrological remains and visual monuments.

Classics as an academic discipline appears to belong to the lecture hall and the seminar. But Classics is alive outside Classics, as the studies collected in this volume show. We engage with Classics in the 19th century through the hymn Gaudeamus Igitur and a popular song on Herman the German, we meet Classics in the Early Modern school, in the 19th century celebrating the Olympics in King Otto's Greece, and identifying the gorilla, and in the 20th century invention of Spartacus as a Bulgarian. We encounter frauds, hoaxes, and the lexicographical tradition, by looking at two works fraudulently ascribed to a Byzantine author, at a joke presented as a New Testament agraphon, at the lexicographical invention of Euboean Cyme, and at the tradition of poking fun at lexica in lexica themselves. We learn about classicists ousted from Classics through the lives of Richard Laqueur and Victor Ehrenberg, and we engage with two publications which were highly influential in popularising Classics: Falke's cultural history of Greece and Rome, and Asterix. The volume thus presents fourteen studies on Classcis outside Classics.

Wie konnten die Menschen in der Antike ihre finstersten Wunsche durchsetzen? Fluchtafeln und andere Formen des Schadenzaubers geben hierauf eine beredte Antwort: Da bittet jemand den groaten aller Gotter um Rache an Priscilla, die den groaen Fehler gemacht hat zu heiraten und zwar einen anderen. Da vergrabt jemand eine Zauberpuppe, die zuvor an Auge, Hals, Brust, Bauch, Huften und Anus durchbohrt wurde. Und da erfleht jemand fur seinen Gegner nichts auaer ein boses Ende ... In Wort und Bild stellt der Band neue Funde darunter drei hier erstmals publizierte Fluchtafel-Texte und neue Deutungen zum antiken Schadenzauber vor, in anschaulichen Essays internationaler Fachleute.