CHAPTER XII.
STRABO.
Strabo and the Augustan Age—His Geography a Summary of the Knowledge
then existing—Strabo's Life, Teachers, and Places of Residence-Extent
of his Travels—Almost Limited to Asia Minor, Egypt, and Central
Italy—Advantages which he Derived from them—His Philosophical
Opinions—Stoic Tenets—His Political Opinions—Imperial Sympathies—
Strabo's Historical Work—Date of Composition of his Geography—W&tt
where it was written—Readers for whom it was intended—Its Compre-
hensiveness—Subjects Incidentally introduced—Predominance of His-
torical Geography—Influence of a Land on its Inhabitants—Artistic
Treatment of the Subject—Methods of lightening the Narrative—Neglect
of Strabo's Work in Antiquity—Admiration of it in the Middle Ages-
Modern Estimates—Limits of Strabo's Survey, in Europe, Asia, and
Africa—Contents of the Geography—The Introduction—Remarks on
Mathematical, Physical, and Historical Geography—Spain, Gaul, and
Britain—Italy and Sicily—Northern and Eastern Europe—Greece-
Veneration for Homer as a Geographical Authority—Northern and Central
Asia—Asia Minor—Southern Asia—Egypt and the Rest of Africa.
IT may be regarded as a piece of extraordinary good fortune
st«bo and that ^e most w^w^t work on geography which
the Augustan was produced in antiquity should have coincided
ge' in date with the Augustan age. The knowledge
of the world which the ancients possessed had then almost
reached its furthest Kmits, while the interest which had been
awakened by Greek enquirers in the scientific side of the subject
had not yet been neutralised, as it was destined soon to be, by
utilitarian views of geographical study. At various preceding
periods, as we have seen, the different branches of the enquiry
had occupied, each in its turn, the most prominent position. In
the latter half of the third century before Christ, mathematical
geography reached its culminating point at Alexandria under
Eratosthenes. The following century saw the rise of historical
geography under Roman influences in the hands of Polybius.