Routledge Illiterate Geography in Classical Athens and Rome - Routledge

This scholarly monograph examines how geographic knowledge spread through classical societies beyond written texts, focusing on non-elite understanding of geography in ancient Athens and Rome. Rather than studying only the scholarly and scientific geography preserved in texts accessible to a small learned minority, this work investigates non-literary geographic knowledge as it was available to educated and uneducated people alike who never read formal geographic works. The study addresses two central questions: how geographic data circulated among non-readers, and what methods communities used to transmit spatial understanding outside textual channels. By exploring these alternative pathways of geographic transmission, the book reveals how ordinary people in classical antiquity acquired, retained, and applied knowledge of distant lands, trade routes, and political territories without relying on written sources, offering fresh insights into the everyday geography of the ancient world.