The Road More Traveled

The Onomasticon by Eusebius of Caesarea, Palestine in the Fourth Century A.D.

Translated by G.S.P. Freeman-Grenville, indexed by Rupert L. Chapman III, edited and introduced by Joan E. Taylor (Jerusalem: Carta, 2003), 206 pp. + 8 maps. $44.95

She had traveled to ancient Palestine to tour the holy places, and now, after three years, she was ready to head home. In 384 C.E., Egeria announced her departure from Jerusalem: “I had seen all the places which were the object of my pilgrimage,” she wrote in her famous diary/travelogue, which would spawn a horde of pilgrims in the next two centuries.¹ As her guidebook, she had carried a Latin translation of Eusebius’s Onomasticon, written almost a hundred years earlier.

Whether this was the intended purpose of Eusebius’s Onomasticon remains a question.