The Geographica (, Geōgraphiká; or , "Strabo's 17 Books on Geographical Topics") or Geography, is an encyclopedia of geographical knowledge, consisting of 17 books, written in Greek in the late first century BC, or early first century AD, and attributed to Strabo, an educated citizen of the Roman Empire of Greek descent. There is a fragmentary palimpsest dating to the fifth century. The earliest manuscripts of books 1–9 date to the tenth century, with a thirteenth-century manuscript containing the entire text.Strabo, and Duane W Roller. The Geography of Strabo. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. 51
Title of the work
Strabo refers to his Geography within it by several names: geōgraphia, "description of the earth"Book 3 chapter 1 section 1 1st sentence, page C136. chōrographia, "description of the land" periēgēsis, "an outline"Book 3 chapter 4 section 5 last sentence, page C158. periodos gēs, "circuit of the earth"Book 6 chapter 1 section 2, page C253. periodeia tēs chōrās, "circuit of the land"Book 9 chapter 5 section 14, page C435. Said said:Book 2 chapter 5 section 17, page C120, Jones translation.It is the sea more than anything else that defines the contours of the land (geōgraphei) 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 (chorographikos pinax) is filled.
Ascribed date
The date of Geographica is a large topic, perhaps because Strabo worked on it along with his History for most of his adult life. He traveled extensively, undoubtedly gathering notes, and made extended visits to Rome and Alexandria.
Strabo did not date his work and determining this has been a matter of scholarly study since the Renaissance. The earliest attempts were in the 16th and 17th centuries (such as the 1549 Basel edition and the 1571 Heidelberg edition) however the first serious attempt was by Johannes Fabricus in 1717.
Strabo visited Rome in 44 BC at age 19 or 20 apparently for purposes of education. He studied under various persons, including Tyrannion, a captive educated Greek and private tutor, who instructed Cicero's two sons. Cicero says:Ad. Att. 2. 6. 1.The geographical work I had planned is a big undertaking...if I take Tyrannion's views too... If one presumes that Strabo acquired the motivation for writing geography during his education, the latter must have been complete by the time of his next visit to Rome in 35 BC at 29 years old. He may have been gathering notes but the earliest indication that he must have been preparing them is his extended visit to Alexandria 25–20 BC. In 20 he was 44 years old. His "numerous excerpts" from "the works of his predecessors" are most likely to have been noted at the library there.Sterrett, Loeb Edition, pages xxii–xxiii. Whether these hypothetical notes first found their way into his history and then into his geography or were simply ported along as notes remains unknown.
Most of the events of the life of Augustus mentioned by Strabo occurred 31–7 BC with a gap 6 BC – 14 AD, which can be interpreted as an interval after first publication in 7 BC.Sterrett, Loeb Edition, page xxvii. Then in 19 AD a specific reference dates a passage: he said that the Carni and Norici had been at peace since they were "stopped ... from their riotous incursions ...."Strabo 4.6.9 by Drusus 33 years ago, which was 15 BC, dating the passage to the summer 19 AD.Dueck page 146 on Strabo Book 4, Chapter 6, Book 9, page C206. The latest event mentioned is the death of Juba at no later than 23 AD, when Strabo was in his 80s. These events can be interpreted as a second edition unless he saved all his notes and wrote the book entirely after the age of 80. Dueck concludes that the Geography was written between AD 18–24.
Composition Strabo is his own best proponent of his principles of composition:Book I sections 22–23.In short, this book of mine should be ... useful alike to the statesman and to the public at large – as was my work on History. ... And so, after I had written my Historical Sketches ... I determined to write the present treatise also; for this work is based on the same plan, and is addressed to the same class of readers, and particularly to men of exalted stations in life. ... in this work also I must leave untouched what is petty and inconspicuous, and devote my attention to what is noble and great, and to what contains the practically useful, or memorable, or entertaining. ... For it, too, is a colossal work, in that it deals with the facts about large things only, and wholes ....
Content An outline of the encyclopedia follows, with links to the appropriate Wikipedia article.
Book I – definition and history of geography Pages C1 through C67, Loeb Volume I pages 3–249.
Chapter 1 – description of geography and this encyclopedia
Book Section Description I.1 1 Geography is a branch of philosophy. 2 Homer is the founder of geography. 3 The Ocean. 4 The Elysian Plain. 5 The Isles of the Blessed. 6 The Aethiopians, Definition of the Arctic Circle 7–9 Tides of the Ocean. Earth is an island. 10 The Mediterranean, the land of the Cimmerians, the Ister. 11 Anaximander and Hecataeus. 12 Hipparchus and the climata. 13 The antipodes. 14–19 The ecumene. Geography requires encyclopedic knowledge of celestial, terrestrial and maritime features as well as natural history and mathematics and is of strategic interest. 20 Earth is a sphere with surface curved by the law of gravity, that bodies move to the center. 21 Knowledge of geometry is required to understand geography. 22–23 The purpose and plan of the encyclopedia.
Chapter 2 – contributors to geography
Book Section Description I.2 1 Contributions of the Romans and Parthians to geography 2–3 Critique of Eratosthenes 4–40 Critique of Homer's and the other poets' geography and various writers' view of it, especially Eratosthenes'.
Chapter 3 – physical geography
Book Section Description I.3 1–2 Critiques of Eratosthenes' sources: Damastes, Euhemerus. 3 Critiques of Eratosthenes' geology, shape of the Earth. 4–7 Fossils, formation of the seas. 8–9 Silting. 10 Volcanic action. 11–12 Currents. 13–15 More on the formation of the seas. 16–20 Island-building, earthquakes 21 Human migration. 22–23 Hyperboreans, Hypernotians
Chapter 4 – political geography
Book Section Description I.4 1 Heaven is spherical corresponding to Earth's sphericity. 2–6 Distances along lines of latitude and longitude to various peoples and places. 7–8 The three continents: Europe, Asia, Libya. 9 Recommends Alexander the Great's division of people into good or bad rather than the traditional Greek barbarians and Greeks.
Book II – mathematics of geography Pages C67 through C136, Loeb Volume I pages 252–521.
Chapter 1 – distances between parallels and meridians
Book Section Description II.1 1–3 Relates Eratosthenes' description of the Tropic of Cancer, which was based on Patrocles. 4–5 Critiques Hipparchus' criticism of Patrocles, which was based on Deimachus and Megasthenes. Points out that Eratosthenes used the Library of Alexandria. 6–8 Critique of Patrocles. 9 Fabrications of the geographers concerning India. 10–41 Calculations of distances between parallels and meridians passing through various places in the habitable world, according to various geographers: Hipparchus, Eratosthenes, Pytheas, Deimachus.
Chapter 2 – the five zones
Book Section Description II.2 1 Introduces the work Oceans by Poseidonius. 2–3 Critiques Poseidonius, who criticises Parmenides and Aristotle on the widths and locations of the five zones.
Chapter 3 – distribution of plants, animals, civilizations
Book Section Description II.3 1–3 Critiques the six zones of Polybius. 4 Describes African voyages: the circumnavigation by an expedition sent by Necho II, another by Magus; to India by Eudoxus of Cyzicus. 5 Adventures and misadventures of Eudoxus. Attacks the credibility of Pytheas, Euhemerus, Antiphanes. 6 Poseidonius' theory of Atlantis; attributes migration of Cimbri to inundation. 7 Attributes the distribution of plants, animals and civilizations to chance (suntuchia) rather than to zones (which was Poseidonius' theory). 8 Example of random racial distribution: Ethiopians were in both Asia (India) and Libya (Africa). Strabo says his school avoids such causal connections.
Chapter 4 – criticisms of Polybius' and Eratosthenes' maps
Book Section Description II.4 1–2 Polybius' critique of Pytheas. 3 Strabo's criticisms of Polybius' European distances. 4 Strabo's criticisms of Polybius' critique of the distances of Eratosthenes. 5–6 Strabo's corrections to various geographers' descriptions of the locations of the Tanaïs, the Tyras, the Borysthenes and the Hypanis. 7 Strabo criticises Polybius' length of the inhabited world. 8 Strabo criticises Polybius' and Eratosthenes' physical divisions of Europe.
Chapter 5 – Strabo's view of the ecumene
Book Section Description II.5 1 Representation of a spherical surface as a plane requires the geographer to be a mathematician. 2 The celestial sphere, gravity, the Earth's axis and the poles, stellar paths, equator, tropics, arctic circles, ecliptic, zodiac. 3 The five zones, terrestrial and celestial, the hemispheres, the ocean. 4 The gnomon, latitude, longitude, circumference of the Earth. 5–6 The inhabited world is an island shaped like a truncated cone, in a spherical quadrilateral formed between the equator, the arctic circle and a great circle passing through the poles. The island is 70,000 stadia long by 30,000 stadia wide. 7 Hipparchus says the equator is 252,000 stadia long; the great circle distance from equator to pole is 63,000 stadia. 8 Strabo does not believe Pytheas that Thule is farthest north at the Arctic Circle. He thinks no one is north of Ierne. He believes the Romans scorned to invade Britain as being worthless. 9 The length and width of the inhabited world are 70,000 and 30,000 stadia respectively. 10 Strabo recommends representing the Earth on a globe of no less than 10 feet in diameter or on a plane map of at least 7 feet. 11–12 Strabo says he personally travelled from Armenia to Tyrrhenia and from the Euxine Sea to the frontiers of Ethiopia. He and all other geographers receive information mostly by hearsay. He went up the Nile river with his friend Aelius Gallus, prefect of Egypt, to the edge of Ethiopia and Syene. 13–16 The known limits of the Earth are Meroe in the Nile river, Ierne, the Sacred Promontory beyond the Pillars of Hercules and east of Bactriana. 17–18 The sea determines the contours of the land. The four largest internal seas are the Caspian sea, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. 19–25 Mediterranean Sea. 26 The continents are Europe, Libya, Asia. Europe develops excellence in men and government and has contributed the most to the others. 27–33 States the locations of the countries of the three continents. 34 Division of the circumference of the Earth, which is 252,000 stadia, by 360 gives 700 stadia per section. 35–43 Equator, Tropic circle, Arctic Circle, latitude by the shadow of the gnomon and the length of the longest day.
Book III – Iberian peninsula
Chapter 1 – Vicinity of the Sacred Cape