periegesis

plural periegeses

1. A description of an area or territory.

   a periegesis of Greece

   5 more examples

   Dionysius, a learned geographer, to whom is attributed a Periegeſis, or Survey of the Earth, in Greek verse.

   1797, “Dionysius”, in Colin Macfarquhar, editor, Encyclopædia Britannica; or, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature; [...] In Eighteen Volumes, Greatly Improved, 3rd edition, volumes VI (DIA–ETH), Edinburgh: Printed for A[ndrew] Bell and C[olin] Macfarquhar, →OCLC, page 33, column 1

   [H]ad we been able to obtain a periegesis of Greece for the year 776 b.c., we should have discovered from one end of the country to the other nothing but legends, preached by the men of genius, received both with earnest emotion and with sincere faith by the hearers.

   1843 May, “Art. I.—1. Griechische Heroen Geschichten. Von B. G. Niebuhr an seinen Sohn erzählt. Hamburg, 1842. Grecian Heroic Stories; related by B[arthold] G[eorg] Niebuhr to his Son.”, in The Westminster Review, American edition, volume XXXIX, number LXXVII, New York, N.Y.: Published by Leonard Scott & Co., 112 Fulton Street, →OCLC, page 158

   Where did Cassiodorus read that the Huns were the neighbors of the Seres, supposedly the Chinese? There is little doubt that his source was one of the popular compendia which, directly or indirectly, went back to Dionysius [Periegetes]' Periegesis. Cassiodorus recommended "the map of Dionysius" to his monks. It is not particularly significant that in both the Getica and the Periegesis the Caspian Sea is a gulf of the ocean; this was a belief held and combatted since the time of the Ionian geographers.

   1973, J. Otto [Otto John] Maenchen-Helfen, “Early Huns in Eastern Europe”, in Max Knight, editor, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISBN, pages 445–446

   There is not a single ancient Greek source that depicts someone using maps in a practical situation. […] '[G]eographical knowledge' did not depend on maps, but on other media, such as travel reports, sea journeys and periegeses, descriptions of a particular country. Geography relied on words and discourses, on human memory.

   1999, Christian Jacob, “Mapping in the Mind: The Earth from Ancient Alexandria”, in Denis [E.] Cosgrove, editor, Mappings (Critical Views), London: Reaktion Books, →ISBN

   A periegesis is usually understood to be a geographical catalogue, cast in the form of a tour, often of a local area but sometimes more extended in scope. The form is related to local history. Modem scholarship has established that there was a specifically periegetic form of historiography, stretching back at least to the third century b.c.; […]

   2001, Ian Rutherford, “Tourism and the Sacred: Pausanias and the Traditions of Greek Pilgrimage”, in Susan E[llen] Alcock, John F. Cherry, Jaś Elsner, editors, Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece, Oxford: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 45