Strabo - Delphi Complete Works of Strabo - Geography (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 61)

The Complete Works of

STRABO

(c. 63 BCc. AD 24)

Delphi Classics 2016

Version 1

By Delphi Classics, 2016

First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Delphi Classics.

Delphi Classics, 2016.

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Amasya, a city in northern Turkey and the capital of Amasya Province, in the Black Sea Region Strabos birthplace

Statue of Strabo in Amasya

Translated by H. C. Hamilton and W. Falconer

Strabo was an Asiatic Greek of Amasia in Pontus and an educated citizen of the Roman empire, who visited Rome in 44 BC at age 19 or 20, apparently for purposes of education. He studied under various teachers, including Tyrannion, a captive educated Greek and private tutor, who also instructed Ciceros two sons. Strabos sole surviving work is (Geography), an encyclopaedia of geographical knowledge, consisting of seventeen books written in Greek. It is believed Strabo began work on the text no earlier than 20 BC and he travelled extensively, gathering notes and making extended visits to Rome and Alexandria, where he most likely spent time in the famous library gathering information from their sources. Geography was first published in 7 BC, followed by a gap, resumption of work and a final edition no later than AD 23, the last year of the authors life. Strabo probably worked on Geography and his now lost work on History at the same time, as the Geography contains a considerable amount of historical information.

Strabo explains geography as being the sea more than anything else that defines the contours of the land (gegraphei) and gives it its shape, by forming gulfs, deep seas, straits and likewise isthmuses, peninsulas, and promontories; but both the rivers and the mountains assist the seas herein. It is through such natural features that we gain a clear conception of continents, nations, favourable positions of cities and all the other diversified details with which our geographical map is filled. Strabo regards his subject as ancient physical geography, rather than the more modern understanding of the term, while chorography is viewed as political geography. The two concepts are combined in the book, making a broad survey of the earth, detailing both its physical and political features.

The text begins with two introductory books, before books III and IV concern Spain and Gaul; V and VI deal with Italy and Sicily; VII with north and east Europe; VIII to X with Greek lands; XIXIV with the main regions of Asia and with Asia Minor; XV with India and Iran; XVI with Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, and Arabia; and XVII with Egypt and Africa. The subjects of the seventeen books can be defined as:

Book I definition and history of geography

Book II mathematics of geography

Book III Iberian peninsula

Book IV Gaul, Britain, Alps

Book V Italy to Campania

Book VI south Italy, Sicily

Book VII north, east and central Europe

Book VIII Greece

Book IX More on Greece

Book X Yet more on Greece, Greek islands

Book XI Russia east of the Don, the Transcaucasus, northwest Iran, Central Asia

Book XII Anatolia

Book XIII northern Aegean

Book XIV eastern Aegean

Book XV Persia, Ariana, the Indian subcontinent

Book XVI the Middle East

Book XVII North Africa

Although the work was rarely used in contemporary antiquity, a multitude of copies survived throughout the Byzantine Empire. It first appeared in Western Europe in Rome as a Latin translation issued c. 1469. The first Greek edition was published in 1516 in Venice. Isaac Casaubon, a classical scholar and editor of Greek texts, provided the first critical edition in 1587. Some thirty manuscripts of Geography or parts of it have survived, almost all of them from medieval copies of copies, though there are fragments from papyrus rolls which were probably copied out c. 100300 AD. Scholars have struggled for a century and a half to produce an accurate edition close to what Strabo originally wrote.

Though Strabo cites the antique Greek astronomers Eratosthenes and Hipparchus, acknowledging their astronomical and mathematical efforts towards geography, he claims that a descriptive approach to his task is more practical, as his works are designed for statesmen that were more anthropologically than numerically concerned with the character of countries and regions. As such, Geography provides a valuable source of information on the ancient world, especially as much of this information is corroborated by other sources.

Map of the world according to Strabo, taken from the Loeb Classical Library edition of Strabo

Map of Europe according to Strabo

Strabo as depicted in a sixteenth century engraving

At Mero, pyramids of the Kushite rulers, near Shendi, Sudan in Book II Strabo states that one of the known limits of the Earth is Meroe, near the Nile.