A traveler and student, Strabo learned from some of the ancient world’s best teachers, and quickly became a respected scholar himself. When he wasn’t writing or studying in Rome, he traveled to Egypt, Kush, Tuscany, Ethiopia, and Asia Minor. If he couldn’t experience something firsthand, he learned about it from those who had. With such a wealth of education and experience, Strabo had the tools to understand geography like no one before him. His work diverged from the mathematical approach used by his predecessors. He preferred a descriptive approach for people more interested in anthropology. The fruits of his labors, The Geography, provides modern readers with a valuable perspective on the ancient world.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, scholars questioned the reliability of another Roman geographer, Pausanias, and his Description of Greece. Along with geography, he included descriptions of Greek culture, lore, and art. Pausianas demonstrated the value of firsthand experience when, nearly two millenia after he wrote about his travels, archaeologists used his writings to guide their excavation of historical Greek sites.
This collection contains the complete texts in their Loeb Classical Library editions. Each text is included in its original Greek, with an English translation for easy side-by-side comparison. Logos’ language tools help you to go deeper into the Greek text and explore the geographers’ elegant language. Use the dictionary lookup tool to examine difficult Greek words and find every appearance of the same word in your library. Students of history, anthropology, and geography will enjoy these works and appreciate their significance.