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CONSTRUCTING A BORDERLAND
ROMAN IMPERIAL GEOGRAPHIC WRITERS
ON MESOPOTAMIA
FROM THE 1ST TO THE 4TH CENTURIES CE
Hamish Cameron
1/448
Object Description
| Title | Constructing a borderland: Roman imperial geographic writers on Mesopotamia from the 1st to the 4th centuries CE |
| Author | Cameron, Hamish Robert |
| Author email | hcameron@usc.edu;hamish@ardens.org |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Classics |
| School | College of Letters, Arts and Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2014-05-14 |
| Date submitted | 2014-08-06 |
| Date approved | 2014-08-06 |
| Restricted until | 2016-08-06 |
| Date published | 2016-08-06 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Moatti, Claudia |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Van Bladel, Kevin Thalmann, William G. Fischer-Bovet, Christelle Rouighi, Ramzi |
| Abstract | Geographic writing is often treated as an objective description of space, but the processes of selection, generalisation and aggregation that underlie geographic projects are subjective and ideological. As the only frontier over which Rome faced an empire of similar size and power, the Mesopotamian frontier zone between the Roman and Iranian empires, that is, upper Mesopotamia, the region between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, south of the Taurus mountains and north of Parthian and Sasanian Babylonia, was arguably Rome's most important frontier, yet its representation in Roman intellectual production is seldom studied. This dissertation examines geographic descriptions of that region written in the first four centuries CE, including Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Claudius Ptolemy, and Ammianus Marcellinus as well as the anonymous Expositio Totius Mundi et Gentium. It examines the sources of their geographic knowledge to show the influence of Aramaic, Iranian, Hellenistic, and Roman cultural perspectives and scientific, administrative, and historical genres on their constructions and representations and how those representations fits within their conception of the Roman world as a whole. In other words, how the writers imagined the frontier and how they conveyed that imaginary to their audiences. The historical situation in the region is relevant to my work, especially as it is available for comparison to the descriptions given by the geographic writers, but this project does not aim to present a picture of historical ""reality"", but rather of an ideological space of representation. It also address how these representations changed over the first four centuries of our era. |
| Keyword | Mesopotamia; Roman Near East; Roman geography; classical geography; historical geography; ancient history; Parthian empire; Sasanian empire; Roman Empire; Roman Syria; Roman Mesopotamia; ancient borderlands |
| Language | English |
| Format (imt) | application/pdf |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Cameron, Hamish Robert |
| Physical access | The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given. |
| Repository name | University of Southern California Digital Library |
| Repository address | USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 7002, 106 University Village, Los Angeles, California 90089-7002, USA |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-CameronHam-2780.pdf |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume14/etd-CameronHam-2780.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | CONSTRUCTING A BORDERLAND ROMAN IMPERIAL GEOGRAPHIC WRITERS ON MESOPOTAMIA FROM THE 1ST TO THE 4TH CENTURIES CE Hamish Cameron 1/448 |
