Cosmography and the Idea of Hyperborea in Ancient Greece

Renaud Gagné is University Reader in Ancient Greek Literature and Religion at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Pembroke College. He has published Ancestral Fault in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 2013); Choral Mediations in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 2013, with Marianne Hopman); Sacrifices humains (Liège, 2013, with Pierre Bonnechere); Regimes of Comparatism (Leiden, 2018, with Simon Goldhill and Geoffrey Lloyd); Les dieux d'Homère II (Paris, 2019, with Miguel Herrero). In 2015 he received the Philip Leverhulme Prize.

• List of Illustrations; Acknowledgments; List of Abbreviations; Introduction: Cosmography; Part I. Sanctuaries of Cosmography: 1. Hyperborea Between Cult and Song; 2. Cosmography and Epiphany; Part II. Cosmography, Periods and Genres; 3. The Wondrous Road: Archaic Travel Narrative; 4. Hyperborea and the Classical Economies of Knowledge; 5. Impossible Worlds? Hellenistic Reconfigurations; Conclusion: Further Trajectories; Glossary; Bibliography; Index Locorum; General Index.

'There are places, not necessarily real, that enter into the imagination of a culture and shape its vision of the world. Hyperborea, that region 'beyond the north,' was such a place for the ancient Greeks, and Renaud Gagné has traced its formative role in Greek cosmography and theology with exceptional insight and immense learning. There are treasures on every page.' David Konstan, Professor of Classics, New York University