author
Strabo
A traveler, historian, and geographer from the ancient world, he left behind one of the fullest surviving portraits of how Greeks and Romans understood the places around them. His great work, the Geographica, still offers a vivid mix of maps, history, politics, and cultural observation.
3 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in Amasia in Pontus around 64 or 63 BCE, Strabo lived through the dramatic shift from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. He was a Greek writer with strong ties to the wider Mediterranean world, and his education and travels shaped the broad, curious outlook that runs through his work.
He is best known for the Geographica, a sprawling work in 17 books that gathers together what was known about lands, cities, peoples, and customs across Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa. More than a mapmaker, he wrote as someone interested in how geography connects with history, government, and everyday life.
Although much of his historical writing has been lost, the Geographica survived and became one of the most important sources for understanding the ancient world. Readers still turn to Strabo not only for facts about places, but also for the sense of wonder and inquiry that made him one of antiquity's great interpreters of the world.