Representing Empire: Monuments and the Creation of Roman Space

Abstract

Abstract Borges’ short story ‘Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ tells of a series of chance finds which lead to the discovery of a new planet. First, the uncovering of the only copy of Volume XLVI of the Anglo-American Cyclopaedia to have 921 pages instead of the usual 917, the extra four pages detailing the topography and history of an unknown country called Uqbar. Then, the appearance of A First Encyclopaedia of Tlon. Vol. XI. Hlaer to Jangr, with no indication of the date or place of publication. The planet Tlon, of which Uqbar is one of the countries, provides the scholars of Borges’ story with a whole new world to dissect, a new history to write, a new geography to map. And despite the fact that, as we learn at the end, Tlon and Uqbar are entirely the invention of a millionaire called Ezra Buckley, the fiction of the Orbis Tertius supplants the reality of the hitherto known world.