Le Monde comme le voyaient les Grecs

How did Ancient Greeks conceive of the Earth, and the world in general? We can postulate fairly confidently that from Homer’s time to the dawn of our own, the most widespread representation was that of a pancake capped by a celestial hemisphere, and probably with a symmetrical hemisphere beneath it. Was there anything above this ideal sphere? Few pondered that question. As for the Earth itself, people more or less knew that it consisted of three continents, but preferred to conceive of it — for political as well as satisfyingly logical reasons — as harmoniously shared by only two continents: Europe and Asia. Was this image supported by scholars? Although Aristotle wrote in the 4th century BC that “the earth must necessarily be spherical,” and the idea that one might reach India by navigating westward from Gibraltar did not seem incredible to him, “philosophers” did not all agree with this view. Some Greek and Roman geographers born after Aristotle believed, for example, that only a small space of the northern hemisphere was inhabitable, which is why they drew odd world maps. The analysis provided in this book allows readers to explore two parallel Greek representations of the world: that of scholars, rather easy to trace through their writings (attested to from the early 4th century BC, and prolific during the Hellenistic age), and that of the people — less studied, but which can nonetheless be clearly read between the lines in literary, and sometimes in figurative, works. Danielle Jouanna has devoted her entire life to ancient Greek. Professor in Strasbourg and Versailles, author of numerous academic textbooks, she has published such notable works as Aspasie de Milet, égérie de Périclès (2005), L’Europe est née en Grèce (2009), Les Grecs aux Enfers (2015), L’Enfant grec au temps de Périclès (2017), Le Monde comme le voyaient les Grecs (2018).