Journal of Late Antiquity

Abstract:

This article examines the imperial message behind Avienus's Descriptio orbis terrae, a geographical poem that revolves around the Roman relationship with the natural environment and Rome's suitability for imperial rule. Avienus constructs his poem against traditional Vergilian ideas on the relationship between agricultural toil and civilization, espoused particularly in the Georgics. I focus on one particular aspect of Avienus's literary technique, the agency that he ascribes to lands and rivers and how he uses this technique to establish relationships between individual regions and their inhabitants in order to support one of the poem's major themes: the beneficial and righteous imperial rule of Rome. I first analyze the agency of landmasses and water courses in the Descriptio and juxtapose Avienus's use of this literary technique by earlier and contemporary Latin literature, and then I examine the relationships between this active natural environment and their human inhabitants in key regions (Italy, Egypt, Germania, Parthia, and India), to show how, in Avienus's vision, Roman rule brings prosperity and civilization to the world.