Strabo (Ca. 58 Bc–ca. Ad 24)

Strabo, born in Amaseia, was a Greek historian and philosopher and one of the most important ancient geographers. As the author of Geographica, a 17-volume treatise that has come down to the present almost complete and is a fundamental source of information on the history of geography and cartography of that period, he [Page 2697]played an important role in the development of early geography.

The treatise offered a historical-anthropological frame and aimed to be a useful cultural instrument for Strabo's rulers. Strabo wrote it not only on the basis of the work of his predecessors (e.g., Anaximander, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus) and taking into account the epic poems attributed to Homer but also incorporating his own ideas and personal observations. Strabo founded his knowledge not only on abstract concepts but also on the concrete experiences gained through his travels and the relations he built with different populations and their cultures, approaching area studies in a sense that could be defined as an early form of “geopolitics” and “human geography.”

According to Strabo, geographic studies cannot neglect philosophy, mathematics, geometry, or astronomy and cannot retreat from natural, historical, and economical aspects in the analysis of a region. Explaining the links that exist between a people and their natural environment, he underlined, for instance, the importance of the sea in the evolution of civilization, particularly as can be seen in the case of Greece.

Strabo gives an interesting description of the known world of the time, imagining the inhabited portion of the Earth to be less wide than that considered by Eratosthenes and different from that pictured by the Greek sailor and geographer Pytheas. Strabo set the northernmost edge of the ecumene (the world's habitable zones) on the parallel through Ireland, beyond which there was a perpetually frozen region. He set its southern limit at the parallel crossing Ethiopia and its western and eastern limits at the Pillars of Hercules and the mountains of Northern India, respectively. Evocative descriptions are provided regarding the shapes of lands such as the Peloponnese, which he said looked like a leaf, and Mesopotamia, which he compared with a boat seen from its side. Among the many subjects dealt with in his writing are the Mediterranean Sea and the populations living on the lands washed by it, the source and the delta of the Nile River, and the geography of Germania and its tribes.