Strabo (c.64 BC - c.24 AD)
Strabo was a Greek historian, philosopher and geographer of special importance. He traveled the Roman world; Asia Minor, Greece, Rome and Italy, Egypt, North Africa and throughout the European provinces recording information as he went. He was an advocate of Roman Imperialism and an accomplished historian, but unfortunately his 47 books pertaining directly to history have been lost. Because of this, Strabo is most well known for his large extensive work, Geographia.
This 17 volume collection of geographic data of the ancient world is mostly intact, with only part of the seventh book not surviving. Of the books, two are introductory and contain concepts on the history of geography, eight cover Europe, six on Asia, and one on Africa, which focuses mainly on Egypt. Unfortunately Strabo disregarded much of Herodotus' work, which was recorded first hand in various parts of the world, and he relies greatly on the epics of Homer. While this forces some of his collection to be challenged, it still provides one of the greatest sources of geography from the ancient perspective.
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Did you know...
The Greek researcher and storyteller Herodotus of Halicarnassus (5th century BC) was the world's first historian.
