August 30, 2008

The Ambitions of Amateurs

Condensed snippets from the Oxford Classical Dictonary on Strabo, the ancient geographer:
In the debate over how to do geography… he is inclined to be amateurish… preferring the practical… [and] the particular… [which] leads him to call his work ‘chorography’.
But the entry concludes, of Strabo's exhaustive "Geography":
The work is an extraordinary achievement… [like] a colossal statue whose detailing is less significant than the overall effect… [and it] justifies his more ambitious claim to have fused the disciplines to produce out of a historical and chorographical framework a philosophy of geography.
Hmmmm. Can anybody give me a better term for "New Testament Chorography"?

1 comment:

N T Wrong said...

'Travel books' / 'travel literature'? That suits Pausanias, too.

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