The title mentions choice. It is important to realise that in describing a scene, writers are not merely mechanical mouthpieces for untidy reality. Conscious or not, their choice of what to include in the picture they paint feeds the reader a highly stylised representation of reality. Or rather, a re-presentation, for writers construct these pictures, as we shall see, from within the discourse of previous written texts and visual portraits. The choice of which elements of a landscape to emphasise and which to ignore is never neutral. The title, too, mentions political visions. The idea that men can be...
of the "infinitum" amount of material and what to leave out. On the other side of the coin, Pliny can use his encyclopaedia to work out his own political and cultural identity, using the miraculae of the world as a standard which throws Roman mores and cultural identity into different and provocative perspectives. In choosing what to mention and what to leave out, writers are not so much mapping their own political visions onto the landscapes they describe as actually creating a landscape, an arena in which they can explore the problematic cultural identity of themselves and their readers.