Above the Fortieth Parallel North: Contextualizing Accounts from Ancient Thrace and the Euxine Pontus

The aim of this project is to provide some insights into the process of data-gathering in Hecataeus and Herodotus which has resulted in typologically similar geographical and ethnographical logoi. Searching in depth for the true originators of these specific narratives as wells as for the genuine narrative components, modules, and self-contained units delivered by ‘local experts’ to the two extensive travellers, the author introduced the term “bifocal perspective” of the Periegesis Ges/Ges Periodos in order to explain the balance between both the coastline and the inland perspective based on explicit ancient accounts. He concentrates particularly on two types of inland-perspective narratives, the periegesis-style logos and periodos-style logos, which have resulted from the inevitable overlap of information between the logographic work of Hecataeus and its illustration, the perfected map of the world. In order to distinguish between the two narratives, the project pays more attention to the specific way the rivers have been described and their condition of being mappable.