Читать книгу A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East онлайн

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The imperial ambitions motivating geographical research begun under the Hellenistic rulers continued under Augustus after he had firmly established Roman dominance in the Near East, and M. Vipsanius Agrippa was the major authority, serving as governor in Syria and leading a number of campaigns there. He oversaw production of a world map at Rome in the Porticus Vipsania, still incomplete at his death in 12 BCE, and several accompanying commentaries (Dilke 1985: 41–42, 1987: 207–209; Nicolet 1991: 98ff; Pliny HN 3.17). Pliny the Elder quotes Agrippa at several points in his Natural History, generally referring to the commentaries, and in a few instances to the map itself. For example, the dimensions of Mesopotamia (800 miles long, 360 miles wide) come from the commentaries (HN 6.137), while the distance of Charax Spasinou (an old Hellenistic city located at the confluence of the Tigris and Eulaeus rivers⁷ ) to the Persian Gulf is obtained from the map “Agrippa’s portico” (HN 6.139; cf. Dilke 1985: 50). Around 1 BCE, preparatory to an expedition by Gaius Caesar, Juba of Mauretania and Isidorus of Charax were commissioned to prepare surveys of Parthia and Arabia, the results of which augmented Agrippa’s earlier information (Pliny HN 6.141).⁸ Isidorus’s description of Parthia contains hints that it was indeed intended for a military force, as with its reference to an army crossing the Euphrates at the confluence of the Khabur river north of Dura-Europos: Isidorus says (FGrH 781 F2 §1) “there the army crosses over to the Roman side,” i.e. from the east bank to the west (Millar 1998a: 120).