Common Sense Geography nelle iscrizioni greche di età ellenistica. Rappresentazione e definizione dello spazio geografico

The article considers the usefulness of the concept of "common sense geography" (first proposed by Geus & Thiering 2012) in studying Greek interstate arbitrations attested on epigraphic records of the early Hellenistic age (third-second cent. BCE). The corpus of inscriptions I have selected display a similar pattern in describing the geographical space: a very detailed description of the borders between the different communities with natural and artificial markers placed along the route; a similar terminology in defining the route; the use of foreign judges – sometimes up to 600 individuals! – to settle the dispute; a few inscriptions attest the presence of land-surveyors, but the legal power is always retained by the judges. In general, the disputes on borders in the early Hellenistic age are always settled through a shared geographical knowledge of the territory, almost always lacking land-surveying instruments and graphical representations of places: the definition of geographical space is entrusted exclusively to the written word, which also has legal value.