Link
https://geographi-latini.uni-koeln.de/
Runtime
2024-2036
Project participants
Project leads: Prof. Dr. Michael Rathmann (Chair of Ancient History, Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt); Prof. Dr. Silke Diederich (Department of Classics, University of Cologne). CCeH staff: Jan Bigalke, Jonathan Blumtritt, Dr. Tessa Gengnagel.
Funding
Funded by the German Research Foundation. [GEPRIS]
Description
A text corpus of Latin geographical writings and fragments from the beginnings to Isidore of Seville is a desideratum of research. This is where the present project comes in, presenting the relevant texts with a critical apparatus, commentaries, translations, introductions and continuously updated bibliographies, together with an innovative cartographic presentation. The open access working tool designed here will provide a scientifically sound research basis from which not only classical studies and its neighboring disciplines will benefit, but also any interdisciplinary and transcultural comparative research in cultural, literary and media studies that deals with historical concepts of space in the course of the topological turn, including cartography, toponomastics, cultural anthropology and migration research.
In order to create a reliable basis and provide impulses for new research approaches, this project merges traditional edition and commentary philology with a completely new digital media format that, in cooperation with the Cologne Center for eHumanities (CCeH), enables innovative methods of presentation and visualization.
This media concept, which has only now become possible thanks to recent developments by the CCeH, provides the ancient texts with animated maps of individual regions and the entire Oikumene. The option of a synoptic presentation of texts, maps and commentaries as well as a cross-link to the online commentary on the Tabula Peutingeriana enables an easy understanding of the complex spatial images of the Roman authors and their recipients in their processes of tradition and change.
Other features include full-text searchability of texts and maps by toponyms, in all surviving spellings. The ability to combine various search parameters (e.g. space, place, time, text type, intended use, target audience) in and/or links makes it possible to locate the places in their respective textual contexts and to juxtapose the various references, so that, for example, it is easy to understand how a geography (such as the location of Thule) changes through the various epochs, literary genres, etc., whereby the texts illuminate each other and the linked commentaries lead to further source texts. A single piece of information thus becomes a relational “cosmos”.
The synthesis will subsequently be presented in the form of a monograph, representing the inaugural comprehensive account of the history of Roman geography, including the first glossary of Latin geographical terminology.
The objective of this project is to develop a novel approach to understanding the geographical worldview of the Roman elites, who conquered a vast empire and imprinted their political, administrative, logistical, religious, and cultural order on this expansive region.
Picture credits
Illustration of Pliny the Elder in a manuscript of his Historia naturalis, Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 82.4, fol. 3r, https://tecabml.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/plutei/id/1109337/rec/3507.