Studien zu Dionysios von Alexandria

PhD ceremony: Ms. E. Ilyushechkina, 14.45 uur, Academiegebouw, Broerstraat 5, Groningen

Thesis: Studien zu Dionysios von Alexandria

Promotor(s): prof. M.A. Harder, prof. R.R. Nauta

Faculty: Arts

The doctoral thesis by Ekaterina Ilyushechkina is an interdisciplinary study on a geographical didactic poem written in Old Greek in the 2nd century A.D. by Dionysius of Alexandria. This poem describes in detail the whole world known at that time. The main goal of the thesis, written in German, is a multilateral historic-philological analysis of the literary tradition on the ancient Black Sea area in the interpretation of Dionysius. The thesis contains two parts: the first one introduces the poem, explaining the specifics of the author and his work. The second part is a case-study that investigates the concrete Dionysius’ data about the ancient Black Sea area against the background of testimonies of other ancient authors.

The didactic poem of Dionysius is of particular value for the reconstruction of the ethnogeographic situation around the Black Sea and the Greek navigation practice from the colonization’s time until the Roman period. The appendix to the thesis examines the reception of the Dionysius’ poem and its influence on the late ancient and Byzantine literature. Also discussed are questions on the manuscripts’ tradition and different editions of Dionysius’ work.

Ilyushechkina also identified the principles of the description of the world by Dionysius (the combination of the protocartographic and periegetic elements, no description of a map) and his didactic intentions (the use of the traditional dialog between the ‘author-teacher and the ‘reader-pupil’, the transmission of the geographical information in numerous compact catalogs, the processing of the data of his predecessors – both poets and geographers, the intellectual play with the quotations). Dionysius’ testimonies about the ancient Black Sea area are of particular value for the reconstruction of the ethnogeographic situation of this region and the Greek navigation practice from the time of the colonization until the Roman period.

Ekaterina Ilyushechkina (Russia, 1978) read classical philology at the Moscow State University Lomonossow. She obtained a Ubbo Emmius scholarship and carried out her research at the Department of Greek and Latin Languages and Culture at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Groningen.