Emma Gee

There are very few accounts of the afterlife across the period from Homer to Dante. Most traditional studies approach the classical afterlife from the point of view of its "evolution" towards the Christian afterlife. This book tries to do something different: to explore afterlife narratives in spatial terms and to situate this tradition within the ambit of a fundamental need in human psychology for the synthesis of soul (or "self") and universe. Drawing on the works of Homer, Plato, Cicero, Virgil, and Dante, among others, as well as on modern works on psychology, cartography, and music theory, Mapping the Afterlife argues that the topography of the afterlife in the Greek and Roman tradition, and in Dante, reflects the state of "scientific" knowledge at the time of the various contexts in which we find it. The book posits that there is a dominant spatial idiom in afterlife landscapes, a "journey-vision paradigm"--the horizontal journey of the soul across the afterlife landscape, and a synoptic vision of the universe. Many scholars have argued that the vision of the universe is out of place in the underworld landscape. However, looking across the entire tradition, we find that afterlife landscapes, almost without exception, contain these two kinds of space in one form or another. This double vision of space brings the underworld, as the landscape of the soul, into contact with the "scientific" universe; and brings humanity into line with the cosmos.

From Homer to Dante

Mapping the Afterlife

Professor of Black Sea History David Braund

Lecturer in Classics Emma Gee

Department of Philosophy Christopher Gill

In this collection of essays, an international team of outstanding scholars engage with the ideas and methods of Professor Peter Wiseman's past and present work. They provide a sustained response to the work of one of the most widely respected Roman historians of this generation. The contributions range over myth (Corialanus and Remus), the interplay between historiography, literature and myth-making (on Cleopatra, for instance), and art and story-telling at Boscoreale. They explore Roman drama (Pacuvius) and links between drama and Virgil's Aeneid; they discuss Catullus in Bithynia and Cicero on Greek and Roman culture. Professor Wiseman has been at the forefront of innovative research in Roman history, historiography, literature in context, drama and myth, for many years. His work is marked by the combination of a powerful historical imagination with an acute sense of the limitations of our knowledge and of the need to negotiate with the complexity of our sources.

Studies in Honour of T.P. Wiseman

Myth, History and Culture in Republican Rome

The astronomical material in Ovid's Fasti has been overlooked. It is this material which is the subject of this book.

Astronomy in Ovid's Fasti

Ovid, Aratus and Augustus

"This book examines the innovations of the ancient philosopher Aratus in the field of astronomy"--Provided by publisher.

Aratus and the Astronomical Tradition

This book is a tour of Afterlife landscapes from Homer to Dante. It argues that the topography of the Afterlife in Greek and Roman tradition, and in Dante, reflects the state of 'scientific' knowledge at the time of the various contexts in which we find it, and the landscape of the Other World is a way of exploring and assimilating the shape of this world. This book posits that there is a dominant spatial idiom in afterlife landscapes, which I call the 'Journey-Vision paradigm.' By this the author means the presence of two kinds of space in afterlife representations - the horizontal journey of the soul across the afterlife landscape, and a synoptic vision of the universe. This has, in studies of individual texts, often been characterised as an inconsistency or anomaly: many scholars have argued that the Vision of the universe is out of place in the underworld landscape. However, when one looks across the entire tradition, one finds that afterlife landscapes, almost without exception, contain these two kinds of space in one form or another. The function of this double vision of space - the Journey-Vision paradigm - is, the book argues, an attempt to harmonise the underworld, as the landscape of the soul, with the 'scientific' universe, and to understand humanity in terms of the cosmos, and vice versa.

Emma Gee

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