Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire

by Edited by Jason König , Tim Whitmarsh

• ISBN13: 9780521859691
• ISBN10: 0521859697
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-12-03
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The Romans commanded the largest and most complex empire the world had ever seen, or would see until modern times. The challenges, however, were not just political, economic and military: Rome was also the hub of a vast information network, drawing in worldwide expertise and refashioning it for its own purposes. This groundbreaking collection of essays considers the dialogue between technical literature and imperial society, drawing on, developing and critiquing a range of modern cultural theories (including those of Michel Foucault and Edward Said). How was knowledge shaped into textual forms, and how did those forms encode relationships between emperor and subjects, theory and practice, Roman and Greek, centre and periphery? Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire will be required reading for those concerned with the intellectual and cultural history of the Roman Empire, and its lasting legacy in the medieval world and beyond.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Notes on contributors	p. viii
List of abbreviations	p. xi
Introduction
Ordering knowledge	p. 3
Knowledge and Textual Order
Fragmentation and coherence in Plutarch's: Sympotic Questions	p. 43
Galen and Athenaeus in the Hellenistic library	p. 69
Guides to the wor(l)d	p. 88
Petronius' lessons in learning - the hard way	p. 108
Diogenes Laertius, biographer of philosophy	p. 133
The creation of Isidore's Etymologies or Origins	p. 150
Knowledge and Social Order
Knowledge and power in Frontinus' On aqueducts	p. 177
Measures for an emperor: Volusius Maecianus' monetary pamphlet for Marcus Aurelius	p. 206
Probing the entrails of the universe: astrology as bodily knowledge in Manilius' Astronomica	p. 229
Galen's imperial order of knowledge	p. 241
Bibliography	p. 278
Index	p. 300
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