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THE VIEW FROM THE MOUNTAIN (OROSKOPIA) IN GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2018

Irene de Jong
Irene de Jong*
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
*
*[email protected]
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Abstract

This paper argues for the existence of the topos of oroskopia in Greek and Latin literature. Gods and mortals are positioned on mountains to watch events or landscapes below. The view from above symbolises power (in the case of the gods) or an attempt at control or desire for power (in the case of mortals). It may also suggest an agreeable and relaxed spectatorship with no active involvement in the events watched, which may metaphorically morph into a historian's objectivity or a philosopher's emotional tranquillity. The elevated position may also have a temporal aspect, gods looking into the future or mortals looking back on their life.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Classical Journal , Volume 64 , December 2018 , pp. 23 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Cambridge University Press 

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References

Works cited

Behr, C. A. (1981) P. Aelius Aristides, the complete works. Volume ii, Leiden.Google Scholar
Duff, J. D. (1918) Silius Italicus, Punica, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Duff, J. D. (1928) Lucan, Civil war (Pharsalia), Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Fairclough, H. R. (1968) Virgil. Volume i, Cambridge, MA and London.Google Scholar
Foster, B. O. (1919–59) Livy, History of Rome, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Fränkel, H. (1961) Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, Oxford.Google Scholar
Harmon, A. M. (1968) Lucian. Volume ii, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Hunter, R. (1993a) Jason and the Golden Fleece (the Argonautica), Oxford.Google Scholar
Kilburn, K. (1959) Lucian. Volume vi, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Mair, G. R. (1969) Callimachus, Hymns and Epigrams, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Rouse, W. H. D. (1924) Lucretius, On the nature of things, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Shackleton Bailey, D. R. (1993) Martial, Epigrams. Volume i, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Shackleton Bailey, D. R. (2015) Statius, Silvae, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
West, M. (2003) Greek epic fragments, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
White, H. (1964) Appian's Roman history. Volume i, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
de Bakker, M. (2015) ‘An uneasy smile: Herodotus on maps and the question of how to view the world’, in Barker, E., Bouzarovski, S., Pelling, C. and Isaksen, L. (eds.), New worlds from old texts: revisiting ancient space and place, Oxford, 81–99.Google Scholar
Barton, W. M. (2017) Mountain aesthetics in early modern Latin literature, London and New York.Google Scholar
Buxton, R. (1994) Imaginary Greece: the contexts of mythology, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Buxton, R. (2013) Myths and tragedies in their ancient Greek contexts, Oxford.Google Scholar
van Dam, H. J. (1984) P. Papinius Statius, Silvae Book ii: a commentary, Leiden.Google Scholar
Davies, W. D. and Allison, D. C. (1988) A critical and exegetical commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Dennerlein, K. (2009) Narratologie des Raumes, Berlin and New York.Google Scholar
Fabrizi, V. (2015) ‘Hannibal's march and Roman imperial space in Livy, Ab urbe condita, Book 21’, Philologus 159, 118–55.Google Scholar
Feeney, D. C. (1991) The gods in epic: poets and critics of the classical tradition, New York.Google Scholar
Fehling, D. (1974) Ethologische Überlegungen auf dem Gebiet der Altertumskunde, Munich.Google Scholar
Fränkel, H. (1968) Noten zu den Argonautika des Apollonius, Munich.Google Scholar
Free, A. (2015) Geschichtsschreibung als Paideia: Lukans Schrift ‘Wie man Geschichte schreiben soll’ in der Bildungskultur des 2. Jhs. n. Chr., Munich.Google Scholar
Fuhrer, T. (2015) ‘Teichoskopia: female figures looking on battles’, in Fabre-Serris, J. and Keith, A. (eds.), Women and warfare in antiquity, Baltimore, 52–70.Google Scholar
Greenwoord, E. (2006) Thucydides and the shaping of history, London.Google Scholar
Griffin, J. (1980) Homer on life and death, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hardie, P. (1986) Virgil's Aeneid: cosmos and imperium, Oxford.Google Scholar
Haubold, J. (2014) ‘Ethnography in the Iliad’, in Skempis, M. and Ziogas, I. (eds.), Geography, topography, landscape: configurations of space in Greek and Roman epic, Berlin and Boston, 19–36.Google Scholar
Henderson, J. (1998) Fighting for Rome: poets and Caesars, history and civil war, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Hieke, T. (2013) ‘Berg’, in Fieger, M., Krispenz, J. and Lanckau, J. (eds.), Wörterbuch alttestamentlicher Motive, Darmstadt, 57–62.Google Scholar
Hornblower, S. (1996) A commentary on Thucydides. Volume ii: Books iv–v.24, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hunter, R. (1993b) The Argonautica of Apollonius: literary studies, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Ireton, S. M. and Schaumann, C. (eds.) (2012) Heights of reflection: mountains in the German imagination from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, Rochester, NY.Google Scholar
Jacob, C. (1984) ‘Dédale géographe. Regard et voyage aériens en Grèce’, Lalies 3, 147–64.Google Scholar
Jaeger, M. (2007) ‘Fog on the mountain: Philip and Mt. Haemus in Livy 40.21–22’, in Marincola, J. (ed.), A companion to Greek and Roman historiography, Malden, 397–403.Google Scholar
de Jong, I. J. F. (2001) A narratological commentary on the Odyssey, Cambridge.Google Scholar
de Jong, I. J. F. (2004 [1987]) Narrators and focalizers: the presentation of the story in the Iliad, London.Google Scholar
de Jong, I. J. F. (forthcoming) ‘From oroskopia to ouranoskopia in Greek and Latin epic’, in Bär, S., and Maravela, A. (eds.), Narratology and intertextuality: new perspectives on Greek epic from Homer to Nonnus, special issue of Symbolae Osloenses.Google Scholar
de Jong, I. J. F. and Nünlist, R. (2004) ‘From bird's eye view to close up: the standpoint of the narrator in the Homeric Epics’, in Bierl, A., Schmidt, A. and Willi, A. (eds.), Antike Literatur in neuer Deutung, Leipzig, 63–83.Google Scholar
Klooster, J. J. H. (2012) ‘Apollonius of Rhodes’, in de Jong, I. J. F. (ed.), Space in ancient Greek literature, Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative 3, Leiden, 55–76.Google Scholar
von Koppenfels, W. (2007) Der andere Blick, oder, Das Vermächtnis des Menippos: paradoxe Perspektiven in der europäischen Literatur, Munich.Google Scholar
Langdon, M. K. (2000) ‘Mountains in Greek religion’, CW 93, 461–70.Google Scholar
Leach, E. W. (1988) The rhetoric of space: literary and artistic representations of landscape in Republican and Augustan Rome, Princeton.Google Scholar
Lightfoot, J. L. (2014) Dionysius Periegetes: Description of the known world, with introduction, text, translation, and commentary, Oxford.Google Scholar
Lovatt, H. (2006) ‘The female gaze in Flavian epic: looking out from the walls in Valerius Flaccus and Statius’, in Nauta, R., van Dam, H.-J. and Smolenaars, J. J. L. (eds.), Flavian Poetry, Leiden, 59–78.Google Scholar
Lovatt, H. (2013) The epic gaze: vision, gender and narrative in ancient epic, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Luck-Huyse, K. (1997) Der Traum vom Fliegen in der Antike, Stuttgart 1997.Google Scholar
Maciver, C. (2012) Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica: engaging Homer in late antiquity, Leiden.Google Scholar
Michalsky, T. (2006) ‘“Limes ille Galliarum et Hispaniae, Pirenaeus vertex, inde non cernitur.” Zum Verständnis von Land und Landschaft in verschiedenen Medien des italienischen Spätmittelalters’, in Spiess, K.-H. (ed.), Landschaft im Mittelalter, Stuttgart, 237–66.Google Scholar
Moreno Soldevila, R. (2006) Martial Book iv: a commentary, Leiden.Google Scholar
Nisbet, R. G. M. and Rudd, N. (2004) A commentary on Horace, Odes Book iii, Oxford.Google Scholar
Pausch, D. (2016) ‘Im Katalog nach Korinth: Medea's Rundflug zu sich selbst (Ovid, Metamorphosen 7, 350–393)’, Philologus 160, 276–304.Google Scholar
Poiss, T. (2014) ‘Looking for bird's-eye view in ancient Greek sources’, in Geus, K. and Thiering, M. (eds.), Features of common sense: geography, implicit knowledge structures and ancient geographical texts, Berlin, 69–87.Google Scholar
Polleichtner, W. (2005) ‘The bee simile: how Vergil emulated Apollonius in his use of Homeric poetry’, Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft 8, 115–60.Google Scholar
Purves, A. (2010) Space and time in ancient Greek narrative, Oxford and New York.Google Scholar
Reed, J. D. (2007) Virgil's gaze: nation and poetry in the Aeneid, Oxford and Princeton.Google Scholar
van Rookhuizen, J. (forthcoming) ‘How not to appease Athena: a reconsideration of Xerxes’ purported visit to the Troad (Hdt. 7.42–43)’, Klio.Google Scholar
Schmid, W. (2008) Elemente der Narratologie, Berlin.Google Scholar
Schoch, R. (2014) ‘Der strategische Blick: die Militärperspektive’, in Doosrey, Y. (ed.), Von oben gesehen: die Vogelperspektive, Nürnberg.Google Scholar
Scodel, R. (2010) ‘Teichoscopia, catalogue and the female spectator in Euripides’, ColbyQ 33, 76–93.Google Scholar
Sommerstein, A. H. (1981) The comedies of Aristophanes.Volume ii: Knights, Warminster.Google Scholar
Stanzel, F. (1984 [1979]) A theory of narrative, Cambridge and New York (first published in German in 1979).Google Scholar
Sternberg, M. (1985) The poetics of biblical narrative: ideological literature and the drama of reading, Bloomington.Google Scholar
Stierle, K. H. (1979) Petrarcas Landschaft: zur Geschichte ästhetischer Landschaftserfahrung, Krefeld.Google Scholar
Strauss Clay, J. (2011) Homer's Trojan theater: space, vision, and memory in the Iliad, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Taylor, H. A. and Tversky, B. (1996) ‘Perspective in spatial descriptions’, Journal of Memory and Language 35, 371–91.Google Scholar
Thalmann, W. G. (2011) Apollonius of Rhodes and the spaces of Hellenism: classical culture and society, Oxford and New York.Google Scholar
Vout, C. (2012) The hills of Rome: significance of an eternal city, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Williams, M. F. (1991) Landscape in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, Frankfurt am Main, Bern, New York and Paris.Google Scholar
Behr, C. A. (1981) P. Aelius Aristides, the complete works. Volume ii, Leiden.Google Scholar
Duff, J. D. (1918) Silius Italicus, Punica, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Duff, J. D. (1928) Lucan, Civil war (Pharsalia), Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Fairclough, H. R. (1968) Virgil. Volume i, Cambridge, MA and London.Google Scholar
Foster, B. O. (1919–59) Livy, History of Rome, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Fränkel, H. (1961) Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, Oxford.Google Scholar
Harmon, A. M. (1968) Lucian. Volume ii, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Hunter, R. (1993a) Jason and the Golden Fleece (the Argonautica), Oxford.Google Scholar
Kilburn, K. (1959) Lucian. Volume vi, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Mair, G. R. (1969) Callimachus, Hymns and Epigrams, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Rouse, W. H. D. (1924) Lucretius, On the nature of things, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Shackleton Bailey, D. R. (1993) Martial, Epigrams. Volume i, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Shackleton Bailey, D. R. (2015) Statius, Silvae, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
West, M. (2003) Greek epic fragments, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
White, H. (1964) Appian's Roman history. Volume i, London and Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
de Bakker, M. (2015) ‘An uneasy smile: Herodotus on maps and the question of how to view the world’, in Barker, E., Bouzarovski, S., Pelling, C. and Isaksen, L. (eds.), New worlds from old texts: revisiting ancient space and place, Oxford, 81–99.Google Scholar
Barton, W. M. (2017) Mountain aesthetics in early modern Latin literature, London and New York.Google Scholar
Buxton, R. (1994) Imaginary Greece: the contexts of mythology, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Buxton, R. (2013) Myths and tragedies in their ancient Greek contexts, Oxford.Google Scholar
van Dam, H. J. (1984) P. Papinius Statius, Silvae Book ii: a commentary, Leiden.Google Scholar
Davies, W. D. and Allison, D. C. (1988) A critical and exegetical commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Dennerlein, K. (2009) Narratologie des Raumes, Berlin and New York.Google Scholar
Fabrizi, V. (2015) ‘Hannibal's march and Roman imperial space in Livy, Ab urbe condita, Book 21’, Philologus 159, 118–55.Google Scholar
Feeney, D. C. (1991) The gods in epic: poets and critics of the classical tradition, New York.Google Scholar
Fehling, D. (1974) Ethologische Überlegungen auf dem Gebiet der Altertumskunde, Munich.Google Scholar
Fränkel, H. (1968) Noten zu den Argonautika des Apollonius, Munich.Google Scholar
Free, A. (2015) Geschichtsschreibung als Paideia: Lukans Schrift ‘Wie man Geschichte schreiben soll’ in der Bildungskultur des 2. Jhs. n. Chr., Munich.Google Scholar
Fuhrer, T. (2015) ‘Teichoskopia: female figures looking on battles’, in Fabre-Serris, J. and Keith, A. (eds.), Women and warfare in antiquity, Baltimore, 52–70.Google Scholar
Greenwoord, E. (2006) Thucydides and the shaping of history, London.Google Scholar
Griffin, J. (1980) Homer on life and death, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hardie, P. (1986) Virgil's Aeneid: cosmos and imperium, Oxford.Google Scholar
Haubold, J. (2014) ‘Ethnography in the Iliad’, in Skempis, M. and Ziogas, I. (eds.), Geography, topography, landscape: configurations of space in Greek and Roman epic, Berlin and Boston, 19–36.Google Scholar
Henderson, J. (1998) Fighting for Rome: poets and Caesars, history and civil war, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Hieke, T. (2013) ‘Berg’, in Fieger, M., Krispenz, J. and Lanckau, J. (eds.), Wörterbuch alttestamentlicher Motive, Darmstadt, 57–62.Google Scholar
Hornblower, S. (1996) A commentary on Thucydides. Volume ii: Books iv–v.24, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hunter, R. (1993b) The Argonautica of Apollonius: literary studies, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Ireton, S. M. and Schaumann, C. (eds.) (2012) Heights of reflection: mountains in the German imagination from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, Rochester, NY.Google Scholar
Jacob, C. (1984) ‘Dédale géographe. Regard et voyage aériens en Grèce’, Lalies 3, 147–64.Google Scholar
Jaeger, M. (2007) ‘Fog on the mountain: Philip and Mt. Haemus in Livy 40.21–22’, in Marincola, J. (ed.), A companion to Greek and Roman historiography, Malden, 397–403.Google Scholar
de Jong, I. J. F. (2001) A narratological commentary on the Odyssey, Cambridge.Google Scholar
de Jong, I. J. F. (2004 [1987]) Narrators and focalizers: the presentation of the story in the Iliad, London.Google Scholar
de Jong, I. J. F. (forthcoming) ‘From oroskopia to ouranoskopia in Greek and Latin epic’, in Bär, S., and Maravela, A. (eds.), Narratology and intertextuality: new perspectives on Greek epic from Homer to Nonnus, special issue of Symbolae Osloenses.Google Scholar
de Jong, I. J. F. and Nünlist, R. (2004) ‘From bird's eye view to close up: the standpoint of the narrator in the Homeric Epics’, in Bierl, A., Schmidt, A. and Willi, A. (eds.), Antike Literatur in neuer Deutung, Leipzig, 63–83.Google Scholar
Klooster, J. J. H. (2012) ‘Apollonius of Rhodes’, in de Jong, I. J. F. (ed.), Space in ancient Greek literature, Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative 3, Leiden, 55–76.Google Scholar
von Koppenfels, W. (2007) Der andere Blick, oder, Das Vermächtnis des Menippos: paradoxe Perspektiven in der europäischen Literatur, Munich.Google Scholar
Langdon, M. K. (2000) ‘Mountains in Greek religion’, CW 93, 461–70.Google Scholar
Leach, E. W. (1988) The rhetoric of space: literary and artistic representations of landscape in Republican and Augustan Rome, Princeton.Google Scholar
Lightfoot, J. L. (2014) Dionysius Periegetes: Description of the known world, with introduction, text, translation, and commentary, Oxford.Google Scholar
Lovatt, H. (2006) ‘The female gaze in Flavian epic: looking out from the walls in Valerius Flaccus and Statius’, in Nauta, R., van Dam, H.-J. and Smolenaars, J. J. L. (eds.), Flavian Poetry, Leiden, 59–78.Google Scholar
Lovatt, H. (2013) The epic gaze: vision, gender and narrative in ancient epic, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Luck-Huyse, K. (1997) Der Traum vom Fliegen in der Antike, Stuttgart 1997.Google Scholar
Maciver, C. (2012) Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica: engaging Homer in late antiquity, Leiden.Google Scholar
Michalsky, T. (2006) ‘“Limes ille Galliarum et Hispaniae, Pirenaeus vertex, inde non cernitur.” Zum Verständnis von Land und Landschaft in verschiedenen Medien des italienischen Spätmittelalters’, in Spiess, K.-H. (ed.), Landschaft im Mittelalter, Stuttgart, 237–66.Google Scholar
Moreno Soldevila, R. (2006) Martial Book iv: a commentary, Leiden.Google Scholar
Nisbet, R. G. M. and Rudd, N. (2004) A commentary on Horace, Odes Book iii, Oxford.Google Scholar
Pausch, D. (2016) ‘Im Katalog nach Korinth: Medea's Rundflug zu sich selbst (Ovid, Metamorphosen 7, 350–393)’, Philologus 160, 276–304.Google Scholar
Poiss, T. (2014) ‘Looking for bird's-eye view in ancient Greek sources’, in Geus, K. and Thiering, M. (eds.), Features of common sense: geography, implicit knowledge structures and ancient geographical texts, Berlin, 69–87.Google Scholar
Polleichtner, W. (2005) ‘The bee simile: how Vergil emulated Apollonius in his use of Homeric poetry’, Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft 8, 115–60.Google Scholar
Purves, A. (2010) Space and time in ancient Greek narrative, Oxford and New York.Google Scholar
Reed, J. D. (2007) Virgil's gaze: nation and poetry in the Aeneid, Oxford and Princeton.Google Scholar
van Rookhuizen, J. (forthcoming) ‘How not to appease Athena: a reconsideration of Xerxes’ purported visit to the Troad (Hdt. 7.42–43)’, Klio.Google Scholar
Schmid, W. (2008) Elemente der Narratologie, Berlin.Google Scholar
Schoch, R. (2014) ‘Der strategische Blick: die Militärperspektive’, in Doosrey, Y. (ed.), Von oben gesehen: die Vogelperspektive, Nürnberg.Google Scholar
Scodel, R. (2010) ‘Teichoscopia, catalogue and the female spectator in Euripides’, ColbyQ 33, 76–93.Google Scholar
Sommerstein, A. H. (1981) The comedies of Aristophanes.Volume ii: Knights, Warminster.Google Scholar
Stanzel, F. (1984 [1979]) A theory of narrative, Cambridge and New York (first published in German in 1979).Google Scholar
Sternberg, M. (1985) The poetics of biblical narrative: ideological literature and the drama of reading, Bloomington.Google Scholar
Stierle, K. H. (1979) Petrarcas Landschaft: zur Geschichte ästhetischer Landschaftserfahrung, Krefeld.Google Scholar
Strauss Clay, J. (2011) Homer's Trojan theater: space, vision, and memory in the Iliad, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Taylor, H. A. and Tversky, B. (1996) ‘Perspective in spatial descriptions’, Journal of Memory and Language 35, 371–91.Google Scholar
Thalmann, W. G. (2011) Apollonius of Rhodes and the spaces of Hellenism: classical culture and society, Oxford and New York.Google Scholar
Vout, C. (2012) The hills of Rome: significance of an eternal city, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Williams, M. F. (1991) Landscape in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, Frankfurt am Main, Bern, New York and Paris.Google Scholar