Hi there, you're listening to the Hellenistic Age podcast. Episode 52, Mapping the Oikumene, explores an exploration of the Hellenistic world.

The ancient Greeks always expressed a fascination for the things which lay beyond the

periphery of the inhabited world, places where reality and fantasy mixed, and the blank

spaces of the map were marked with here be dragons. These same

motivations would drive the likes of Ibn Batuta, Ferdinand Magellan, and countless other

peoples and groups, whether for God, glory, or gold, or some combination of the three. Throughout

history, the Mediterranean was the pond around which the Greeks encircled, settling in colonies and

on trade-roads like frogs and lilypads. But the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander

the Great would for the first time provide the Greeks with unprecedented access to the lands of Asia

and Africa. The successors of Alexander were now faced with the prospect of having to explore

these new territories, as much of their kingdoms now lay with the prospect of having to explore these new territories,

as much of their kingdoms now lay outside of the previous conception of the inhabited world,

the Oikumené. At the same time, the increased connectivity permitted those daring enough to set out

for new opportunities to do so. Survellers, diplomats, traders, generals, all would set out on voyages and expeditions to help

chart the uncharted and redraw the map as they knew it. In this episode, we are going to

discuss the exploration of the Hellenistic world, tracing the development of the Oikumene as an idea,

and primarily by focusing on the figures and expeditions who expanded the Greek's understanding

of the world beyond their own. The Greek conception of the world had been rapidly changing

up to the time of the Hellenistic period, at least among thinkers and scholars. The general framework

of a singular landmass surrounded by a vast body of water known as ocean, lying flat upon a circular

disc like a compass, had already been challenged by the 5th century BC. It was understood that the

earth itself was spherical in shape, but early cartographers presented the inhabited world,

...