A Merchant-Geographer's Identity? Untangling the Layers of Religious Affinity in the 'Expositio Totius Mundi et Gentium' (original) (raw)

My paper, though modest in scope, is perhaps overly ambitious in the sense that it seeks to identify and discuss indications of religious affinity and/or affiliation in a text that is only a partial and imperfect in its preservation.The Expositio/Descriptio has been studied primarily as a valuable testimony for Late-Imperial trade and economy, but I will argue that it is well worth the while to go through some of its other significant motifs - such as indications of religious affinity. We need to keep in mind the option that the author was neither Christian nor pagan – inasmuch as such religious affiliations existed in any monolithic way, at all – but belonged to the possibly very sizable portion of the population for whom it was expedient (or sufficient) to remain respectful of all cults and wisdom traditions. The author’s enthusiasm and loyalty seems to be devoted to the flow of goods, services and local specialities in the imperial network, into which the presence of the emperor(s) created notes of particularly heightened intensity. Yet I might want to hold back from decisively judging the writer’s identity as that of a ‘merchant-geographer’; it might be better to understand the network aspects of Expositio as an ‘archival’ ordering principle which was reinforced by contemporary texts – and possibly even by maps.