The Earliest States of Eastern Europe

The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration

For citation: Ilyshechkina, Ekaterina V. Miraculous Scythia of Gaius Iulius Solinus // Drevneishie gosudarstva Vostochnoi Evropy (The Earliest States of Eastern Europe). 2023: The Black Sea Region in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Problems of Historical Geography / Editor of the volume A.V. Podossinov. Мoscow: GAUGN-Press, 2023. S. 451–470.

DOI: 10.32608/1560-1382-2023-44-451-470

Abstract: The lost ethno-geographic information of Hellenistic tradition and of the earlier one on the northern Black Sea and neighboring territories are partially preserved due to the compilations emerged in the epoque of the Roman Empire. Thus, “Collectanea rerum memorabilium”, the work by Gaius Julius Solinus, (the 3^rd cent.), despite its “secondary” information, is a promising source for the researchers of the northern Black Sea’s ethno-geography. The article discusses Solinus’s information on peoples and tribes dwelling in the region of the northern Black Sea in antiquity, as well as other descriptions (mostly concerning hydronyms, local fauna and customs and the mode of life of Scythian tribes) drawing attention to the features of Solinus’s world picture. Solinus’s compilation’s chief sources were works by Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder. Exposing their texts, Solinus used rhetorical techniques and added paradoxography’s excursions to his predecessors’ information, i.e., inserted unusual facts and curious natural phenomena. Obviously, such a description should have made Solinus’s ethno-geographical stuff more attractive to ancient readers and contribute to “a popularization” of the science of ancient oikoumene, i.e., serve didactic targets. If mirabilia in ancient literature are used from the early times, “the miraculous examples” in the work by Solinus are put to the forefront. So, one can speak of his proximity to the literature of ancient paradoxographers. Conventional requirements of sophistics do not exclude the use of Solinus’s work as a historical source containing true facts and details, which not only remove complications in understanding of Solinus’s ethno-geographic map, but also add some evidence of history and culture of the northern Black Sea region in antiquity.

Keywords:

Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder, Gaius Julius Solinus, ethno-geography of the northern Black Sea, mirabilia

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