El. knyga: World and Hour in Roman Minds: Exploratory Essays

"Talbert presents a cohesive selection of nineteen 'essays' (articles and reviews) written over the past thirty years, all but one previously appearing in widely scattered publications. Now reinforced by an Introduction, updating and additional illustrations, they primarily document the progress of his pioneering efforts to penetrate the worldviews of Romans up and down the social scale, and to reassess the strengths and limitations of Roman mapping along with its communicative role. The Antonine Itinerary and Artemidorus and Peutinger maps are interpreted afresh, the latter in particular visualized with wider perspective than hitherto, and the challenges of its design, production and copying probed. Talbert points to boundaries, especially those betweenprovinces, as overlooked formative elements in the shaping of Romans' worldview. He finds reason to doubt, however, whether they conceptualized their empire's long-distance roads as an interconnected system - unlike certain comparable premodern states across the Americas and Asia, although these regulated travel very differently from Rome. An instructive comparison is made between Chinese and Roman cartography. For the first time, Talbert unlocks ethnographic and geographic data recorded on Roman military diplomas and on one type of portable sundial. The most recent essays share findings that emerge with a shift of focus from space to time, specifically Romans' daily timekeeping by hours, another neglected dimension of their social mentality. Throughout,the essays are unified by the methods applied: the value of broader, often comparative, approaches is demonstrated, so too the creative potential of untapped testimony and of new digital technology"--