Strabo

“ STRABO (born c. 63 B.C.) , Greek geographer and historian, was born at Amasia in Pontus, a city which had been much Hellenized, and was the royal residence of the kings of Pontus. We know nothing of his father's family, but several of his mother's relatives held important posts under Mithradates V. and VI. Some were of Hellenic, others of Asiatic origin, but Strabo himself was by language and education thoroughly Greek. ”

“ In the hey-day of her youth she might have been fitted to throw a sort of sunshine, or rather torchlight, on a military carouse; but now, when poor Strabo, a man well to do in the world, looking for peace, had fallen under her arts, he found he had surrendered his freedom to a malignant, profligate woman, whose passions made her better company for evil spirits than for an invalided soldier. ”

“ It was truly exalted, not only by its antiquity, situation, population and thriving trade, but by the nobler pursuits of science and literature, which so flourished there, that according to Strabo it was worthy to be ranked with Athens and Alexandria; and we know that Rome itself owed its most celebrated professors to Tarsus.” (Witsius. § 1, ¶ iv.)
The testimony of Strabo is found in his Geography, book XIV. Cellarius (Geog. Ant.) is very full on the geography of Cilicia, and may be advantageously consulted. Conder’s Modern Traveler (Syria and Asia Minor 2.) ”

“ As becomes a writer who is primarily geographer and historian rather than astronomer, Strabo shows a much keener interest in the habitable portions of the globe than in the globe as a whole. He assures us that this habitable portion of the earth is a great island, "since wherever men have approached the termination of the land, the sea, which we designate ocean, has been met with, and reason assures us of the similarity of this place which our senses have not been tempted to survey." ”

“ It is plain that Strabo had a good idea of the nature of gravity, because he does not distinguish in any way an upper or a lower hemisphere, and declares that the quadrilateral on which the habitable world is situated may be any one of the four formed in this way. ”

“ We cannot do better than briefly to follow Strabo in his estimates and criticisms of the work of his predecessors, taking note thus of the point of view from which he himself looked out upon the world. We shall thus gain a clear idea as to the state of scientific geography towards the close of the classical epoch.
"If the scientific investigation of any subject be the proper avocation of the philosopher," says Strabo, "geography, the science of which we propose to treat, is certainly entitled to a high place ”

“ In the text, μέχρι ὄρους, “to a mountain.” Coraÿ changes the last word to the name of a people, Οὔρων, but Strabo does not appear to have been acquainted with them; Groskurd, to ὀρῶν. The translation adopts this correction, with the addition of the article, which, as Kramer observes, is wanting if we follow Groskurd.
[389] Groskurd proposes τειχῶν, “walls,” in place of, τιμῶν, “prices.”
[390] Κώδων, “a bell,” or gong, or trumpet?
[391] The orguia was equal to four cubits, or six feet one inch.
[392] Men who slept on their ears. See b. i. c. ii. § 35. ”

“ Strabo tells us that the many-storied houses were loftier than those of Rome. In the Roman period the population overflowed its bounds and occupied a strip of the opposite mainland, including the ancient Palsetyrus. Pliny gives to the whole city, con tinental and insular, a compass of 19 Roman miles; but this account must be received with caution. In Strabo's time the island was still the city, and Palaetyrus on the mainland was 30 stadia off, while modern research indicates an extensive line of suburbs rather than one mainland city that can be definitely identified with Palaetyrus. ”

“ Major Rennell has observed, that the difference which will generally be found between the measurements of Eratosthenes and Strabo, and those which appear in modern geography, will be that which exists between the measure of a direct line, drawn from one place to another, and that of the road distance between them. “Nothing can speak more strongly to this point,” (says the well-informed and intelligent writer here quoted,) “than the circumstance of Strabo’s giving the number of stades in Nearchus’s [260] coasting navigation for the lengths of the coasts of Persia and Caramania [9] .” ”

“ Strabo and Ptolemy indeed place them off the coast of Spain; but Diodorus Siculus and Pliny give them a situation, which, considering the vague and erroneous ideas the antients possessed of the geography of this part of the world, corresponds pretty nearly with the southern part of Britain. According to Strabo, the Phoenicians first brought tin from the Cassiterides, which they sold to the Greeks, but kept (as was usual with them) the trade entirely to themselves, and were utterly silent respecting the place from which they brought it. ”

“ One of the greatest writers on ancient geography was Strabo, whose ideas we will now give an account of. He seems to have been a disciple of Hipparchus in astronomy, though he criticises and contradicts him several times in his geography. He had a just idea of the sphericity of the earth; but considered it as the centre of the universe, and immovable. He takes pains to prove that there is only [Pg 253] one inhabited earth—not in this refuting the notion that the moon and stars might have inhabitants, for these he considered to be insignificant meteors nourished by the exhalations of the ocean ”

“ The sister-summit of La Croce is equally unproductive of classical relics.
We must therefore conclude that Strabo was mistaken. And why not? His accounts of many parts of the Roman world are surprisingly accurate, but, according to Professor Pais, "of Italy Strabo seems to have known merely the road which leads from Brindisi to Rome, the road between Rome and Naples and Pozzuoli, and the coast of Etruria between Rome and Populonia." ”

“ Strabo had much to tell us concerning zones, which, following Posidonius, he believes to have been first described by Parmenides. We may note, however, that other traditions assert that both Thales and Pythagoras had divided the earth into zones. The number of zones accepted by Strabo is five, and he criticises Polybius for making the number six. The five zones accepted by Strabo are as follows: the uninhabitable torrid zone lying in the region of the equator; a zone on either side of this extending to the tropic ”

“ The possibility of navigating from the extremity of Europe to the eastern shores of Asia is clearly asserted by the Stagirite, and in the two celebrated passages of Strabo. Aristotle does not suppose the distance to be very great, and draws an ingenious argument in favor of his supposition from the geography of animals. Strabo sees no obstacle to passing from Iberia to India, except the immense extent of the Atlantic Ocean. It is to be remembered that Strabo, as well as Eratosthenes, extend the appellation of Atlantic Sea to every part of the ocean.—Humboldt's Géog. du Nouveau Continent. ”

“ There is nor snow, nor long winter, nor even a shower, but every day the ocean sends forth the gently blowing breezes of the west wind to refresh men.” Odyssey iv. 563.
10 The Isles of the Blest are the same as the Fortunate Isles of other geographers. It is clear from Strabo’s description that he alludes to the Canary Islands; but as it is certain that Homer had never heard of these, it is probable that the passages adduced by Strabo have reference to the Elysian Fields of Baïa in Campania.
11 The Maurusia of the Greeks (the Mauritania of the Latins) is now known as Algiers and Fez in Africa. ”

“ Its small size prevented it from containing any such general description of separate countries as Strabo rightly conceived to fall within the scope of the geographer. " Strabo indeed appears to be^ the first who conceived a complete geographical treatise as comprising the four divisions of mathematical, physical, political and historical geography, and he endeavoured, however imperfectly, to keep all these objects in view." The incidental historical notices, which are often of great value and interest, are all his own. ”

“ If Pliny has observed anything like order in his recital of nations and places, the Heraclea here mentioned cannot be that spoken of by Strabo, but must have been distant nearly 1000 miles from it.
275 This was a tribe, apparently of Scythian origin, settled in Margiana, on the left bank of the Oxus. Strabo says that they worshipped the earth, and forbore to sacrifice or slay any female; but that they put to death their fellow-creatures as soon as they had passed their seventieth year, it being the privilege of the next of kin to eat the flesh of the deceased person. ”

“ Groskurd corrects the text, and translates, “the inhabitants also are small.”
[902] The translation follows the proposed correction of the text by Kramer.
[903] ταῖς συμβολαῖς. The passage presents a great difficulty, because Strabo has before asserted that Meroë is surrounded by these rivers, and that their union takes place below, that is, to the north, and not to the south of the city and island; and this notion corresponds with all the ancients have said on the subject. I declare, without hesitation, that I do not understand my author. Letronne. ”

“ In the first book of his cosmography, Strabo says that the ocean encompasses the whole earth; that in the east it washes the shores of India, and in the west those of Mauritania and Spain; and that if it were not for the vast magnitude of the Atlantic, men might easily sail in a short time from the one to the other upon the same parallel; and he repeats the same opinion in his second book. Pliny, in the Second Book of his Natural History, Chap. iii. says that the ocean surrounds all the earth, and extends from east to west between India and Cadiz. ”

“ We think with Mazochi (Prodrom. ad Heracl. pseph. diatrib. 2, cap. 7, sect. 2) that, by the above word, Strabo probably expressed that, at the time when he wrote, Tarentum, Rheggio, and Naples were the only cities founded by the Greeks in Italy, which, although become Roman, retained the language, laws, and usages of their mother country.
2084 It has been well observed by Cramer in his Ancient Italy, that Strabo confused this Petilia of the Leucani with another better known of the Bruttii, the foundation of which was attributed to Philoctetes. ”

“ Strabo was a writer of great learning, and diligent research; but he has drawn his information, in this instance, not from the best source. We can hardly suppose him to have been unacquainted with the writings of Theophrastus, and it may be wondered that, upon such a subject, he should not have had recourse to this authority. The passage alluded to is in the fifteenth book of his Geography, and to this purpose :* * Among other things, India produces also many extraordinary trees, of “ which there is one species that has branches bending downwards, and leaves not less than a shield. ”

“ The western part of this strip of land is known as the Island of Tendra, because it is separated by a cut. The eastern part of the strip is called Djarilgatch. The entire length of the tongue of land is 800 Olympic stadia, the two extremities are a little farther from the mainland than Strabo says, and the isthmus is about 50 Olympic stadia broad. D’Anville has run this isthmus through the tongue of land, and jutting out into the sea, so as to form a cape, which he also calls Tendra, and which would answer to the Tamyraca of Strabo. ”

“ The description of places belongs to Strabo, whose work was accepted as the text-book of the science till the fifteenth century, for in his day the Roman empire had been well surveyed. He maintained that the earth is spherical, and established the terms longitude and latitude, which Eratosthenes had introduced, and computed the earth to be one hundred and eighty thousand stadia in circumference, and a degree to be five hundred stadia in length, or sixty-two and a-half Roman miles. ”

“ Crates was of Cilicia, which was regarded as a part of Syria.
216 This is a very favourite axiom with Strabo, notwithstanding he too often forgets it himself.
217 The Phrygians were considered to be more timid than any other people, and consequently the hares of their country more timid than those of any other. We see then a two-fold hyperbole in the expression that a man is more timid than a Phrygian hare.
218 Alcæus of Mitylene in the island of Lesbos, the earliest of the Æolian lyric poets, began to flourish in the forty-second Olympiad (B. C. 610) . ”

“ Nor was even Ptolemy the originator of this prolonged system. One hundred and fifty years before him was the Greek geographer Strabo, who gave descriptions of countries and peoples, fixing his localities usually by itinerary distances; and to this work of Strabo's, Ptolemy added a century and a half of progress, and determined 72 his localities by astronomical observation. The work of Pomponius Mela, the Roman geographer who wrote probably somewhat later than Strabo, is regarded as no improvement on that of his predecessor. ”

“ Newton, than those which, built into the castle wall, have for four centuries, at least, been exposed to the corroding action of the sea-breezes.
We take next Cnidus, at the S.W. end of Asia Minor, and, after Halicarnassus, the most celebrated city of Caria. The description of its position by Strabo and Pausanias coincides exactly with the observations of modern travellers. Thus, Strabo speaks of its two ports, one of which can be closed; and of an island (now Cape Krio) in front of the city, lofty, in the form of a theatre, and joined by a causeway to the mainland ”