古典时代变化“世界”中的热带概念

Tropic and Torrid Zone in the Ever-changing“Oikoumene”Since the Classical Antiquity

“热带”一词的古义有两层,一则天象性,二则不可居性。古典希腊哲人们曾将两种性质合一地赋予了一个语词,使得南北回归线间的地带成为“世界”之外的异域。进入希腊化时代后,经一些地理学家的修订,“世界”的边界越过了北回归线,导致原先热带的两种性质在概念外延上出现错位。不可居性热带遂从中分化而出,继续充当“世界”的他者。罗马帝国时,拉丁知识精英继承了克拉提斯的“热带—海洋”论,基本延续了希腊化后期形成的“世界”与两种热带的概念关系。及至近代早期,在地理大发现的刺激下,不可居性的热带神话逐渐消散,现代语境中的热带概念由之形成。

The ancient meanings of tropic and torrid zone are not the same“.Tropic”refers to meteorologicality,while“torrid zone”signifies uninhabitable conditions.The ancient Greek philosophers combined these two aspects into a single term“,τροπικός”,which designated the region between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn as an exotic land beyond the“oikoumene”.During the Hellenistic period,the revisions by some geographers shifted the boundary of the“oikoumene”beyond the Tropic of Cancer,causing a conceptual mismatch between the two aspects of the“τροπικός”.The notion of inhabitable conditions separated from it and came to be represented by the term“torrid zone”,continuing to exist as the“other”of the“oikoumene”.In the Roman Empire,Latin intellectuals inherited Crates of Mallus’s theory that tropic is ocean,largely maintaining the conceptual relationship between the“oikoumene”and the tropic or the torrid zone formed during the late Hellenistic period.In the early modern era,spurred by the Age of Discovery,the original meaning of the torrid zone was lost,giving rise to the modern meaning of the tropic and the torrid zone.