New Approaches to Classics Lecture: Professor Jared M. Hudson

Title: Pomponius Mela on the Periphery: Latin Geography and the Roman Empire Abstract: Pomponius Mela’s first-century CE geography (De Chorographia) offers a unique portrait of what purports to be the entire world articulated in highly artistic rhetorical Latin prose. Once a central text in antiquity and beyond, this detailed geographical handbook has since become practically forgotten. Tracing some of the historical causes for this neglect, this paper examines some of the distinctive features of this fascinating and unclassifiable text, arguing that Pomponius Mela’s written geography represents an important cultural shift in unofficial Roman representations of the layout and knowability of global space.