Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Perfect Surveyor
- 1 The Eusynoptic Iliad: Visualizing Space and Movement in the Poem
- 2 Paths and Measures: Epic Space and the Odyssey
- 3 The World in the Hand: Anaximander, Pherecydes, and the Invention of Cartography
- 4 Map and Narrative: Herodotus's Histories
- 5 Losing the Way Home: Xenophon's Anabasis
- 6 Finding (Things at) Home: Xenophon's Oeconomicus
- Bibliography
- General Index
- Index Locorum
6 - Finding (Things at) Home: Xenophon's Oeconomicus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Perfect Surveyor
- 1 The Eusynoptic Iliad: Visualizing Space and Movement in the Poem
- 2 Paths and Measures: Epic Space and the Odyssey
- 3 The World in the Hand: Anaximander, Pherecydes, and the Invention of Cartography
- 4 Map and Narrative: Herodotus's Histories
- 5 Losing the Way Home: Xenophon's Anabasis
- 6 Finding (Things at) Home: Xenophon's Oeconomicus
- Bibliography
- General Index
- Index Locorum
Summary
Nothing about the “spatiality” of space can be theorized without using objects as its indices.
Elizabeth Grosz, Space, Time, and PerversionIt ought to be obvious that the objects that occupy our daily lives are in fact the objects of a passion.
Jean Baudrillard, “The System of Collecting”ὡς δὲ καλὸν φαίνεται, ἐπειδὰν ὑποδήματα ἐφεξῆς κέηται
How beautiful it looks, when shoes are arranged in rows …
Xenophon, Oeconomicus 8.19How could it be worthwhile to spend the last chapter of this book focusing on a Socratic dialogue that espouses the beautiful appearance of shoes arranged in rows within the ordinary setting of a house? For one thing, by looking at the small intermediary gap that occurs between objects, we gain access to a slightly different way of thinking about space. And since we opened this book by thinking about magnitude (megethos) and scale in terms of the maximum amount of space that can be seen in one view, it is appropriate in closing to rethink the notion of space from a more miniaturist vantage point. If the long, pedestrian text of Xenophon's Anabasis was characterized by an overwhelming sense of space that never opened up into a real view of home, then the perfectly ordered text of the Oeconomicus focuses on the delights of having arrived there. The divergence in perspectives between Xenophon's two works is obvious.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative , pp. 196 - 234Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010