Daniela Dueck

MEGILLOS AND RICE – A NOTE

In his description of India Strabo (after Eratosthenes) alludes to various Indian crops: in the rainy seasons (summer) the land grows flax, millet, sesame, rice and bosmoron, and in the winter – wheat, barley, pulse ‘and other edible crops with which we are unacquainted (καὶ ἄλλοι καρποὶ ἐδώδιμοι, ὧν ἡμeῖς ἄπeιροι)’ (15.1.13, C 690). Later on in his survey, Strabo briefly refers to the cultivation of rice, where he relies mainly and specifically on Aristobulus of Cassandria, one of the companions of Alexander the Great in his campaign in the East. Aristobulus composed an account of Alexanders expedition and, in all likelihood, personally witnessed most of the details included in the fragments of his lost work ( FGrHist 139). His descriptions are therefore highly valuable as reports reflecting one of the first encounters of the Greek culture with India.

Poetry and Roman technical writing: agriculture, architecture, tactics

Poetry by definition, as opposed to prose, uses primarily metre and elaborate language to deliver ideas, sights and emotions. Its essence, as Aristotle perceived it, is the imitation of life on its full range of human experience of deeds, thoughts and feelings. Its goal, however, is a matter of controversy: mere entertainment or teaching as well? This question stood at the centre of an educated debate in the Hellenistic age, which had an effect on the secondary use of poetry in new contexts. It dealt specifically with the status of poetry in relation to truth and reality. At one side of the barricade were those who held that poems had clear didactic components and that poets could serve as teachers of various themes. The most renowned authoritative poet in this context was Homer, whose epics were perceived as encyclopedic treasures of knowledge. Opposite this opinion were those who thought that poetry had only entertaining motivation and therefore could not form a reliable and serious source of information due to its inherent tendency to exaggerate and to evoke emotions by all means.4 It is on this background that the phenomenon of the secondary use of poetry in prose works becomes particularly composite. If poems are mere entertainers why do authors quote them in their more ‚serious‘ and straightforward works? And if they have didactic qualities, how and where do authors use them? These questions seem even more intriguing in regard to prose works, which rarely, if at all, relate to emotions or abstract thoughts, namely technical works.5 Such compositions do not touch on abstract ideas