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Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1Egeon's son and his servant, once grown, want to try to find their twins. They leave on the search, and after they are gone for a period of time, Egeon sets out in his turn to find them: Five summers have 1 spent in farthest Greece, Roaming clean through the bounds of Asia, And coasting homeward, came to Ephesus, —Act I, scene i, lines 132-34 "Greece" had a broader meaning in ancient times than it has today, and "Asia" a narrower one. Greece (or "Hellas" as the Greeks, or Hellenes, themselves called it) was the collection of the thousand cities of Greek-speaking people, whether those cities were located on the Greek peninsula proper or elsewhere. From Massilia (the modern Marseilles) on the west, to Seleucia on the Tigris River on the east, all is "Greece." Egeon had thus been searching not just Greece proper but wherever the Greek tongue was spoken. As for Asia, this term was applied in Roman times (and in the New Testament, for instance) not to the entire Asian continent in the modern sense, but to the western half of Asia Minor only, the territory of the kingdom of Pergamum actually ...» |
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