A geography of the known world in seventeen books — from Spain to India, from Britain to Ethiopia. Strabo combines physical geography with history, ethnography, and political description. The most comprehensive ancient geographical work to survive.
Start ReadingIntroduction to geography as a discipline. Strabo defends the utility of geography for statesmen and generals. Criticism of Eratosthenes and earlier geographers.
Mathematical and physical geography. The shape of the earth, the zones, ocean currents, and the effects of climate on human settlement.
Iberia (Spain and Portugal). Its peoples, resources, and the Roman conquest. The mines, the rivers, and the Pillars of Heracles.
Gaul, Britain, and the Alps. Celtic peoples, their customs, and the geography of north-western Europe. Caesar's campaigns as geographic data.
Italy. From the Alps to the straits of Messina. Rome, Campania, the Apennines, and the islands of the western Mediterranean.
Southern Italy, Sicily, and the remaining Italian regions. A detailed survey of the peninsula Strabo knew best.
Northern Greece: Epirus, Macedonia, Thessaly, and the route south. The great Macedonian centres: Pella, Thessalonica, and Amphipolis.
Central Greece and the Peloponnese. Athens, Corinth, Sparta, Olympia, and the sacred sites of the Greek world.
The remaining Peloponnese, the Aegean islands, and Crete. A systematic survey of the Greek maritime world.
The islands of the Aegean and the coast of Asia Minor. Rhodes, Samos, Miletus, and Ephesus. Greek culture at its easternmost reach.
The Black Sea coast, the Caucasus, and Central Asia as far as India. Strabo draws on Alexander's explorers and later travellers.
Asia Minor: the interior regions. Cappadocia, Pontus, Galatia, and the peoples of Anatolia under Roman rule.
Western Asia Minor. Ionia, Lydia, Caria, and the great cities of the Aegean coast.
Southern and eastern Asia Minor. Pamphylia, Cilicia, Cyprus. The edge of the Greco-Roman world meets the Semitic east.
The Levant and Mesopotamia. Syria, Phoenicia, Judaea, and the Euphrates. The meeting point of Greek, Roman, and eastern civilisations.
Persia, Media, and the eastern lands. Strabo describes territories known mainly through Alexander's campaigns and Seleucid reports.
Egypt, Ethiopia, and North Africa. The Nile, Alexandria, the pyramids, and the Sahara. Strabo's personal travels inform much of this final book.