CHAPTER 8

GEOGRAPHY IN THE AUGUSTAN PERIOD

On 10 August 30 BC, Kleopatra VII committed suicide, and after a brief and theoretical rule by her son, Kaisarion, the last Hellenistic dynasty was conquered by Rome, and Egypt became a province. The Seleukids had come to an end 30 years earlier, through the efforts of Pompey the Great and under the authority of the same legislation that had taken him to the Caucasus. Rome now controlled the entire Mediterranean littoral with the exception of northwest Africa and parts of the Levant between Syria and Egypt, which were under the rule of indigenous petty dynasts such as Herod the Great in Judaea. The victor over Kleopatra—Octavian—emerged as Augustus in 27 BC, the First Citizen, or, in modern diction, emperor, and ruled for the next 41 years, creating a dynasty that would last for another half a century, establishing the Roman empire that continued until late antiquity. The extensive Roman territory—from the English Channel to Upper Egypt and interior Anatolia—was highly varied, both ethnically and politically. One of Augustus' main goals was to insure a peaceful empire, and while his primary efforts were military and cultural, new geographical information was steadily gathered.

Egypt and Aithiopia

Egypt was well known. Roman commanders engaged the Aithiopians in the 20s BC, and the geographer Strabo participated in a peaceful journey up the Nile as far as the First Cataract, which he exhaustively documented.¹ These expeditions added detail to the toponymic map of the Nile and to understanding of Aithiopian culture, but at this time there was no further exploration on the river beyond what the Ptolemaic explorers had achieved 250 years previously.

Juba II of Mauretania

West of the Roman province of Africa (modern Tunisia) was a large unorganized territory known as Mauretania (modern Algeria and Morocco). Since the fall of Carthage it had been ruled by indigenous kings, but the last of these had died in 31 BC and thus one of Augustus' priorities was to create a strong pro-Roman government in the region, in part because there were already Roman merchants there. The area was not seen as being ready for direct Roman control but Augustus had a solid pair of candidates as rulers. Juba II had dynastic connections to Mauretania and had been living in Rome since his father, Juba I of Numidia, had been killed in the civil war against Julius Caesar. His wife, Kleopatra Selene, had an even more distinguished lineage as the sole surviving child of Kleopatra VII and Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), and thus was the only living member of the Ptolemaic dynasty. In 25 BC, the royal couple established themselves at their capital of Iol, renamed Caesarea (modern Cherchel in Algeria).

Juba was a scholar and explorer of note.² He had grown up in Rome and had already published a history and other works. When he arrived in Mauretania he immediately began an intensive examination of his kingdom. Kleopatra Selene, with her access to the remnants of the Ptolemaic court, helped implement his research. Their territories were on the geographical and cultural margins of the Greco-Roman world, part of the Carthaginian sphere that had been essentially off limits until 146 BC, and which had received little study since the explorations of Polybios. Juba's goal as a scholar was to learn as much as possible about his kingdom.

A primary interest was the source of the Nile. Since the early third century BC it had been suggested that this might be in northwest Africa, and Juba's explorers mapped out its theoretical route from the Atlas mountains across the Sahara to the known course of the river in Aithiopia.³ This connected the great rivers of northwest Africa through a series of oases and watercourses to the Nile, and also joined Juba's kingdom with Kleopatra Selene's ancestral territories, a fine example of politically correct geographical theory. Anyone today seeing the river gorges of modern Morocco, such as the Ziz, can appreciate the idea that one or more of these was connected to the Nile. The idea also depended on a point of view popular at the time: that the sources of all major rivers were north of their mouths,⁴ a view that was valid for most of the known ones. The Nile would be a conspicuous exception unless it originated in Mauretania. Moreover, there was the assumption that the river ran underground for many miles, and the knowledge that known rivers in west Africa had characteristics similar to the Nile, especially in terms of fauna, a hydrological theory originally advanced by Onesikritos in comparing the Indus and Nile.⁵ Even though theorizing a river course with lengthy underground sections may be self-defeating, this became the common view of the route of the upper Nile for many years.⁶ The central African mountains where the Nile actually originated had been known since the fourth century BC, but in a shadowy fashion, yet even after they were specifically located around AD 100,⁷ Juba's theory continued to be accepted, and it was not until John Hanning Speke discovered the actual central African source of the river in 1862 that thoughts of a northwest African origin were abandoned.⁸ Regardless of the validity of his point of view, Juba added much new information about the rivers of northwest Africa, the Sahara oases, and the actual Nile itself in Aithiopia.

Juba's other major discovery was the Canary Islands. They were visible from the coast, and probably had been known since Carthaginian times, but details are lacking, and there was no complete survey of the group until that of the king. He allegedly named them after the dogs found on one island: the extant name, Canaria, is from Pliny's Latin, but Juba wrote in Greek, and his name may have been Kynika. This approximates that of an ethnic group in west Africa, the Kynetians, so the name may have actually had an ethnic origin. Juba catalogued all the islands in the group, giving them descriptive names, none of which has survived into modern times except Canaria.⁹

Juba published his research in a treatise titled Libyka (using the ancient name for the entire continent), which survives today in 36 fragments, most of which are in the Natural History of Pliny. Pliny's use of Latin can cause problems in interpretation, especially understanding the many toponyms. There is also a fair amount of unattributed material in Book 17 of Strabo's Geography: Strabo and Juba probably knew one other, and the former in all likelihood received unpublished information. Many of the fragments of Libyka are about natural history rather than geography, including the most complete extant account of the north African elephant, now extinct.

Libyka also contained a description of the coast of east Africa, which lists peoples from the Mossylitian Promontory (almost certainly Cape Guardafui in Somalia, the easternmost point of the continent) down the coast.¹⁰ The ethnyms are for the most part otherwise unknown except for the Zanganai, 1875 miles south of the Mossylitian Promontory, remindful of Zanzibar, which is in the proper area. The original source of the material is perhaps Agatharchides of Knidos—although this is not certain—but Juba's report was probably the most detailed to date about the farther areas of the east African coast.

In late 2 BC, or early the following year, Augustus' grandson, Gaius Caesar, embarked on a major expedition to Arabia.¹¹ Juba was asked to join as one of Gaius' scholarly advisors. Gaius and his entourage sailed to Gaza on the southern Levantine coast, moved inland to the Nabataean capital of Petra, and eventually went as far as Aila (at modern Aqaba). He may not have entered the Arabian peninsula itself, but the political context of the journey—to stabilize the region in the uncertain period after the death of Herod the Great—was accomplished, and much was indirectly learned about the peninsula, especially from sources in Gaza and Petra.

Arabia had long been a mysterious and shadowy region, whose reputation was enhanced by being the source of rich aromatics.¹² The first attempts to understand it topographically dated from the period of Alexander, yet his explorers failed to cover the entire coast of the peninsula. In the 20s BC, Aelius Gallus, Prefect of Egypt, made an expedition into its western regions, motivated by a desire on the part of Augustus to learn more about the area and to gain direct access to the aromatic-producing Sabaeans, thereby eliminating the Nabataean middlemen at Gaza and Petra.¹³ Yet Gallus' journey was a disaster due to his inability to understand the rugged and barren terrain and his entanglement in a virtual civil war among the Nabataeans. He landed at White Village (Leuke Kome), near the northern end of the Red Sea on the west coast of Arabia,¹⁴ and spent several months in a difficult and futile journey toward the aromatic territory in the south, eventually retreating (with great loss of life) across the Red Sea to Mussel Harbor. Strabo, who was on Gallus' general staff but did not participate in the expedition, nevertheless reported on it thoroughly, making some attempt to attribute its failure to the meddling of the Nabataean royal minister, Syllaios. Nevertheless Strabo was hardly able to hide the fact that Gallus was actually to blame. Despite its inability to achieve its political or economic goals, the journey added details about the topography of western Arabia.

At some time after the era of Alexander the remaining coast of Arabia—that from the mouth of the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea—had been explored. The first report on the coast of the entire peninsula is by Juba, using material that he gathered while on Gaius Caesar's expedition. The account, in the style of a periplous, was preserved by Pliny, and begins at the town of Charax, a trading center founded by Alexander at the head of the Persian Gulf.¹⁵ Juba probably visited here, and it was the home of another geographical scholar, Isidoros, who was also one of Gaius' advisors.¹⁶ Isidoros is remembered for his Parthian Stations, a list of places and distances from Zeugma, a crossing point on the Euphrates, to Alexandria in Arachosia, which is the earliest extant detailed account of the route east. He also wrote about the Arabian peninsula, and may have been Juba's source for his own periplous around the coast, perhaps ultimately based on sailors' data from Charax.¹⁷

The result of Juba's research on the Arabian peninsula was his On Arabia, published in the early first century AD. It was the most complete account of the peninsula to date, although he probably never visited it and relied on material from merchants and sailors at Gaza, Petra, and Charax. The caravan route from the aromatic territory in the southwest to Gaza is outlined, with a detailed report on the process of harvesting frankincense and myrrh.¹⁸ There is also a description of the sailing route east to India, but here Juba had to rely largely on the reports of Nearchos and Onesikritos, with minimal updating.¹⁹

On Arabia and Libyka can be considered as a unit, collectively describing the entire southern coast of the oikoumene from the Pillars of Herakles to India, thus closing the long-existing gap on the Arabian coast. Juba, remembering Eudoxos of Kyzikos, may also have wondered about the feasibility of reaching India and its wealth by going around Africa: he even believed that the Atlantic Ocean began at the Mossylitian Promontory on the Somali coast and that it was an easy sail from there to Gadeira.²⁰ Augustus also was interested in the Indian trade, and made intensive use of the Red Sea/Indian sailing route discovered by Eudoxos, which had never been fully exploited by the Ptolemies. In the first decade of the Augustan period, this trade was already several times what it had been in the last years of the Ptolemies.²¹ Yet Juba never implemented his own trade route to India, and it would have been politically incorrect to do so, but 1,500 years later Vasco da Gama proved its viability when he traveled to India from Portugal and brought eastern trade around Africa to Europe.

Northern Europe

Greek knowledge of northern Europe was limited, with little data from beyond the Alps (which themselves had hardly been penetrated) or the Istros (modern Danube), except along the coast of the Black Sea. Pytheas' information on the Baltic was largely forgotten by Roman times, and the amber routes across the continent provided hardly any topographical detail. Only the northwest—the Gallic territory—was understood, through the efforts of Poseidonios and Caesar, but east of the Rhenos (modern Rhine) and north of the Istros there remained into the Augustan period a large number of unexplored and immense forests. Their existence had been known since the time of Eratosthenes but they had not been penetrated.²² Yet the indigenous peoples of these northern regions could be a threat to Rome, as had happened in the early fourth century BC when Rome had been destroyed by the Gauls. Augustus believed that the Alps and the regions to their north had to be secured.²³ His stepsons, Tiberius (the future emperor) and Drusus, moved into the mountains in 16 BC, eventually reaching the body of water now known as Lake Constance or the Bodensee. Strabo, the earliest source, described it in detail but failed to provide its name, which suggests that Tiberius did not have one in his report. Several are documented by later authors: Venetus, Acronus, or Brigantinus—this last surviving in the modern lakeside Austrian town of Bregenz—probably representing different names attached to different parts by different peoples.²⁴ It was known that the Rhenos (modern Rhine) originated in this region—it actually flows through the lake—and Tiberius learned that he was near the source of the Istros and visited it. It was allegedly one day's travel from the lake, which would be more accurate about the river itself than its source, today defined where several tributaries come together at Donaueschingen to create the Danube, another 15 miles up the river from where Tiberius probably approached it. Nevertheless it is clear that he had the distinction of discovering the headwaters of the longest river in Europe.

The upper part of the Istros was called the Danuvius, which eventually became the name for the entire river.²⁵ It is not uncommon for long rivers to have different names along their course, as rarely does one person know its entire length.²⁶ The name is first documented by Caesar (as Danubus) and Diodoros (as Danoubios); neither knew that it was the same as the Istros, and Diodoros thought it flowed into the Ocean, perhaps a confusion with the Rhine or Albis (modern Elbe).²⁷ Strabo was the first to connect the Danube (which he called the Danouios) and the Istros,²⁸ with the change of name occurring at “the cataracts,” the modern Iron Gates on the Romanian/Serbian border. Strabo was writing only a few years after Tiberius' campaign, and was the earliest to report on the entire length of the river, with the middle portions defined by Tiberius and others during the last years of Augustus. These expeditions also determined the means of access from the head of the Adriatic (at Tergeste, modern Trieste) to the river, as well as details about the river systems of modern Slovenia and Serbia.

The territory north of the Danube and east of the Rhine was also important to Roman frontier policy. Caesar had gone across the Rhine briefly in the 50s BC, constructing a bridge (which he described in detail). He spent 18 days east of the river engaging the Sugambrians, since they were harboring raiders who had come west. Later he crossed again, for similar reasons, building another bridge: both were probably in the vicinity of modern Koblenz.²⁹ Like his raid into Britain, these incursions provided little topographical detail.

In 12 BC Augustus decided to move across the Rhine and advance the Roman frontier to the Albis (modern Elbe). His stepson Drusus reached the river in 9 BC after a difficult march through marshy country and dense forests totally unlike anything known in the Mediterranean world.³⁰ Strabo's report that the Rhine and Elbe were 3,000 stadia apart—about twice the maximum distance—demonstrates the circuitous path of the Roman advance. The rivers of Germany became known during Drusus' campaign, such as the Bisourgis or Visurgis (modern Weser), the Loupias or Lupia (modern Lippe), and Salas (modern Saale), near to which Drusus fell from his horse, dying after 30 days.³¹ The Vistula is first mentioned half a century later;³² whether this was information gathered by Drusus or his successors is unknown. The citation may even be a remnant from the days of Pytheas, or traders' information. Drusus also became the first Roman to sail on the North Sea, at the mouth of the Amasis (modern Ems) River and the island of Byrchanis (probably modern Borkum, the westernmost of the East Frisian Islands). After Drusus' death other Roman commanders, including Augustus himself, spent the next 20 years making expeditions east of the Rhine.³³ There is no evidence that anything was known about the territory east of the Elbe except by hearsay, and the region between it and the Rhine was never secure, although there was extensive trade between Italy and Germany for many years thereafter.³⁴ In AD 9 the loss of three legions under L. Quinctilius Varus resulted in the eventual Roman abandonment of any interest beyond the Rhine.³⁵ Because of this, geographical writers such as Strabo, Tacitus, and Ptolemy could not present a coherent view of this region: as Tacitus wrote, the Albis had become no more than a name.³⁶ Inconsistencies of interpretation lasted until the end of antiquity, including the location of Scandinavia, which may have been known to Pytheas but which remained only an uncertainly placed toponym.³⁷

The Far East

Relatively little was added to any understanding of the eastern parts of the world during the Augustan period. Pompey the Great and Theophanes had explored the Caucasus, and Isidoros of Charax was able to produce an itinerary of the route to Arachosia, perhaps taking advantage of the peaceful conditions between Rome and Parthia after 20 BC. The allied king of Kappadokia, Archelaos, the third of the scholarly advisors of Gaius Caesar during his Arabian trip and the most senior of the kings (one of the last survivors of the era of Kleopatra VII and Antony), was Augustus' primary informant on affairs of the east. Like Juba, he was also a scholar, and wrote a work on Alexander the Great that probably updated the route to India, with a view toward Roman policy.³⁸ He was described as a “chorographer,” a word devised by Strabo to mean a topographical scholar,³⁹ but unfortunately only two fragments survive of Archelaos' treatise, one ethnographic and the other on natural history,⁴⁰ so his role in refining geographical understanding remains unknown.

Most of the information used by Archelaos and Roman officials probably came from merchants, since there were no Roman expeditions to the far east. There were two main routes east (and many branches): the traditional Silk Route, toward the north, and the one described in Isidoros' Parthian Stations, which was essentially that followed by Alexander. They joined and diverged in Baktria. Frequent mention of the Silk People—as well as Baktrians and Indians—by the Augustan poets demonstrates that the routes to the exotic east had entered popular culture.⁴¹ Vergil, in a long geographical passage in the Georgics largely designed to demonstrate the superiority of Italy over the rest of the world, briefly described how it was believed that the Silk People (Seres) produced silk.⁴² This is the first actual connection between the people and the product itself: to Megasthenes, Seres was merely an ethnym, which, to be sure, later critics have reasonably assumed to refer to silk producers.⁴³ Silk was as yet little known: Vergil believed that the raw product was a leaf that was combed into silk (“foliis depectant tenuia Seres”). It is not until the second century AD that there is an actual description of the silk-making process.⁴⁴

These mercantile connections between the Roman world and the east—120 ships a year on the Red Sea/India run in the 20s BC⁴⁵—resulted in embassies from the remote east to the Roman world. Chinese and Romans probably did not come face to face until the second century AD, but Augustus could claim that Indians often came to him, and they had never before been seen by a Roman commander.⁴⁶ In 25 BC he received an Indian deputation while he was resident in Tarraco (modern Tarragona) in Iberia, about which little is known.⁴⁷ Five years later a delegation came to him at Antioch in Syria, which Nikolaos of Damascus (who may have been present) described in detail.⁴⁸ The ambassadors were sent from Poros, who styled himself as ruler of 600 kings (he sent a letter in Greek to Augustus), and who offered friendship and free passage through his territory. He sent numerous gifts, including a man without arms named Hermas, whom Strabo saw at some time. The gifts included exotic fauna of a type probably never before seen in the Mediterranean world. Poros' reason for sending the embassy is unknown beyond the obvious: India and Rome were engaged in extensive trade, and there might have been a value in establishing relations at the highest level. Augustus' response has not survived, and India remained a land of exoticism and myth in the Roman imagination, a subject for poets and imperial posturing.⁴⁹

Marcus Agrippa and his Map

M. Vipsanius Agrippa, the longtime friend and primary advisor of Augustus, traveled over much of the Roman world, especially during the last decade of his life, from 23 to 12 BC. During those years he visited Gaul, the Rhine, and Iberia, and made several trips to the eastern Mediterranean.⁵⁰ He had a reputation as a diligent geographer,⁵¹ but little is known about his writings. His primary contribution to geography was the creation of a map of the inhabited world (not merely limited to Roman territory), which was completed by Augustus after Agrippa's death and set up in the Porticus Vipsania in Rome.⁵² Agrippa seems to have written a commentary to go along with it, although this is merely assumed from the diction of Pliny, and is by no means certain. Pliny's primary interest in the map (or its commentary) was measurements, and thus there is a lack of detail in terms of exactly what it depicted, and how it was presented. Nevertheless the various citations demonstrate that it covered a wide area: including Britain, Germany, Iberia, the complete Black Sea coast, the Caspian, India, Aithiopia, and Lixos and Hanno's Chariot of the Gods on the African coast of the Atlantic.⁵³ It also included a peculiar swath from the Danube to the Vistula, 1,200 miles long and 396 wide, which cannot easily be explained, but which seems to represent, in some way, a trade corridor. The citations by Pliny are more frustrating than informative, but making the map involved a prodigious amount of research, incorporating such obscure sources as Pytheas and Hanno: in fact, probably every possible geographical account available in Rome during the latter first century BC. The map may have been based on, and updated from, one started by Julius Caesar just before his death.⁵⁴

It is unfortunate that so little is known about the map and its possible commentary, as the wide range of toponyms preserved in Pliny's sparse references demonstrates that it covered remote areas only slightly known. Information from it probably pervades the geographical part of Pliny's Natural History without attribution, especially noticeable with his seemingly irrelevant use of “above” and “below,” showing that he was looking at a map on a wall.⁵⁵ But nothing has survived from the physical map itself, or the building in which it was located.

Perhaps connected in some way was a source Strabo used several times: the Chorographer (no other name is provided) or a describer of territory, a word that Strabo may have invented.⁵⁶ The Chorographer was quoted for Italy and Sicily, and used miles, so was Roman, or at least romanized, but there has been no agreement as to who this writer was.⁵⁷ Moreover, Vitruvius, Strabo's older contemporary, wrote about “the sources of rivers painted or written on chorographies of the world,” another enigmatic reference (and the first use of “chorographia” in Latin).⁵⁸ Whether this refers to Agrippa's map and possible commentary remains unknown: Vitruvius' use of the plural suggests that maps of the world were a common feature in Augustan Rome.

Strabo of Amaseia

The culmination of ancient geographical scholarship is the 17-book Geography of Strabo of Amaseia, completed in the 20s AD. Without the survival of this work, almost nothing would be known about either the history of ancient geography through the Augustan period, or the state of knowledge of the discipline at that time: the numerous citations of the Geography in the present work demonstrate its importance. It is the only treatise of its type to survive from antiquity.⁵⁹ Strabo was born in the 60s BC, a member of the aristocratic elite of the kingdom of Pontos in northern Anatolia. His family had long been in the service of Pontic royalty, especially Mithridates V and VI, which gave Strabo access to extensive internal information about the history and geography of Anatolia and the Black Sea region during the last two centuries BC. With the collapse of the kingdom of Mithridates VI and the arrival of the Romans, the family moved to Nysa in Karia, an important cultural center, where Strabo associated with the leading intellectuals of the era and was trained primarily as a Homeric scholar, a point of view that was to pervade much of the Geography.⁶⁰ He then went to Rome and, eventually, Alexandria, where he lived for many years, part of which was on the staff of the prefect Aelius Gallus in the 20s BC. He traveled extensively during his long life; although he never went west of Italy, he was thoroughly acquainted with everywhere else in the Roman and Pontic world. A strong interest in mining and quarrying—discussed more than 100 times in the Geography and including a command of the technical vocabulary—suggests a possible professional career. In his later years he became part of the circle around Pythodoris of Pontos, queen of his ancestral region since the end of the first century BC—one of several women of talent and ability profiled in the Geography—and lived either in his home town of Amaseia or her nearby capital of Caesarea.⁶¹ The latest datable citation in the Geography is the death of Juba II of Mauretania in AD 23 or 24, and presumably Strabo died shortly thereafter.

The Geography is a complex treatise, one of the longest surviving from antiquity, covering a wide variety of topics beyond the purely geographical, including Homeric criticism, cultic history, biography, autobiography, and linguistics. Before starting the work, Strabo had written a general history (beginning in the second century BC where Polybios had ended) and an account of Alexander the Great, portions of which ended up in the Geography. There also may have been works on Homeric criticism and cultic history, which are themselves reflected in the geographical treatise. This complex origin, and the sheer length of the Geography, as well as a gestation period of 50 years, means that it can be inconsistent and difficult to read. The vocabulary is often unique, as is common in Hellenistic scholarly treatises, a difficulty enhanced by Strabo's frequent quotation of lost works whose own diction was unusual. The range of material used is astonishing: simply put, the entire extent of Greek literature from Homer (cited more than 700 times) to his own contemporaries, and several Roman sources (unlike many Greek scholars working in the Roman world, Strabo was fluent in Latin). Were it not for the Geography there would be almost nothing known about the geographical writings of Ephoros, Eratosthenes, Hipparchos, Polybios, or Poseidonios. This is not without pitfalls, however, since these authors by and large can only be seen through Strabo's eyes, and that of the environment of the early Roman Empire. In addition, the treatise is a rich collection of citations from lost works by familiar authors such as Aeschylus, Pindar, and Aristotle.

In its 17 books the Geography makes a circuit of the oikoumene, beginning (in the fashion of Hekataios of Miletos) with the Iberian peninsula. Introductory to this, however, are two books on the history of geography: it is here that the modern reader learns about Pytheas' journey north, Eratosthenes' grid of the oikoumene, Hipparchos' criticism of his methods, the strange career of Eudoxos of Kyzikos, and Poseidonios' On the Ocean. The 15 remaining books are the geographical account proper, with many historical and cultural digressions. Strabo preserved some of the earliest extant material on Alexander the Great, and many of the surviving fragments of Megasthenes' Indika. His attempts to locate the sites of Troy and Nestor's Pylos are early examples of the discipline of topographical research.

A work this long, and completed during half a century of great changes in the Roman world, can at times lose sight of its overall goal, which may actually have changed as Strabo's writing progressed. In fact, there seems to have been a dual purpose, one for Romans and one for Greeks. There was a desire to demonstrate the present state of the inhabited world under Augustan control—not without some criticisms of policy—perhaps for a Greek audience.⁶² Romans would hardly need to know about the history and topography of Rome, but might wish to learn more about Anatolia, which, according to Strabo, was the true heart of the civilized world, since it was the location of Troy, the birthplace of Homer, and the home of a steady stream of famous people since that time (more than 200 are catalogued). Greeks, however, would want to know more about Italy and the western Mediterranean, the latter a region that relatively few Greeks might visit. All this territory was now under a common political umbrella but was diverse ethnically and geographically, and a knowledge of the whole would be valuable to all. Strabo stressed the importance of geography to the educated person of power:

Thus the manifest usefulness [of geography] for political activities and for those of commanders, as well as the understanding of the heavens and things on the earth and sea (animals, plants, and fruits, whatever is to be seen in each place), assumes the same type of man as the one who gives consideration to the art of life and happiness,⁶³

a view that betrays the Stoic quality of much of Strabo's education. His emphasis on the importance of geography for the political and military elite was certainly a practical concern in the Augustan world, and perhaps went back to his own family's connection with the erudite Mithridates VI of Pontos, and Strabo's association both with the equally scholarly Juba II of Mauretania and the geographically challenged Aelius Gallus.

Oddly, this most important of geographical and cultural works barely survived. Strabo probably never published it, since it was unknown to assiduous and astute scholars such as Pliny, Plutarch, and Ptolemy. It only seems to have emerged in the second century AD, perhaps with the sole copy making its way to a library in Byzantion, but even then it did not become widely known until Byzantine times. Despite the tenuous nature of its current existence, the importance of the Geography to the understanding of the classical world cannot be overestimated, and the present work would have been impossible without it.