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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
I would like to thank the discussants of my essay for their pertinent questions, sincere criticisms and useful suggestions. Though I shall try to remove some of their hesitations to accept my interpretation of the observed patterns and correlations, it is already clear in advance that I shall not succeed in convincing each of them on all points on which we disagree. For while Oosten is defending the proposition that ‘[t]he phenomenal landscape can only be described in terms of an imaginary landscape’ (my italics) and thus seems to deny the existence of two modes of perceiving alternately actualized, Scheid, on the contrary, qualifies my line of inquiry as ‘justified’. According to him, the Ancients had ‘apart from a day-to-day perception of the environment, (…) also a “mythical” representation of space and landscape’. Moreover, while Scheid believes that the present author ‘convincingly demonstrates how in his research area the choice of Mars or Hercules as sovereign deities was linked to the economic model imposed by the landscape’, Oosten judged me to be trapped by ecological determinism. Such contrasting views, which are partly related to different traditions of research, cannot be expected to be solved here, though I shall not avoid to discuss them. I only hope that with respect to other points of the dispute my efforts will have a better chance to persuade the participants of this dialogue. I will begin by answering the questions and criticisms which directly refer to the understanding of my paper and leave my reply to some of the suggestions made for future investigations to the latter part of this response.