In Our Time - Strabo's Geographica

Episode Date: April 10, 2014

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Strabo's Geographica. Written almost exactly two thousand years ago by a Greek scholar living in Rome, the Geographica is an ambitious attempt to describe the entire world known to the Romans and Greeks at that time. Strabo seems to have based his book on accounts of distant lands given to him by contemporary travellers and imperial administrators, and on earlier works of scholarship by other Greek writers. One of the earliest systematic works of geography, Strabo's book offers a revealing insight into the state of ancient scholarship, and remained influential for many centuries after the author's death. With:Paul Cartledge AG Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of CambridgeMaria Pretzler Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at Swansea UniversityBenet Salway Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at UCLProducer: Thomas Morris.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time, for more details about In Our Time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, one of the earliest known examples of a foreigner complaining about the British weather can be found in a book written 2,000 years ago by the Greek scholar Strabo. In Britain, writes Strabo, it's more rainy than snowy, and on days of clear sky, fog prevails for so long at a time that throughout the whole day, the sun is to be seen for only three or four hours around about midday. That passage comes from the Geographica,

one of the first and most important works of ancient geography. It describes almost the entire world known to Greek and Roman scholars at the time, from Britain to Egypt and India. It's one of the few lengthy works of the period to survive in its entirety and reveals that Greek geographers were surprisingly sophisticated in their knowledge and methods. With me to discuss Strabo's Geographica are Paul Cartilage, A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge.

Maria Pretzler, Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at Swansea University. And Menace Solway, Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at UCL. Paul Cartlidge, Stravo was born in Pontus in what we now call Turkey, around 64 BC. Could you give us somehow idea what the Greek and Roman world was like at that time? Yes, he was born in retrospect, what the Germans called the Zeitwenda. That's to say the time from what we call BC or BC and AD and CE, he spanned that junction. He wouldn't have known that because that chronographic system wasn't introduced until the 6th century AD. But nevertheless, he lived at an extraordinarily exciting time,

though he came from a relative backwater in, as you say, what's today, Turkey, just south of the Black Sea. He was part of the biggest thing in the West. We're of course forgetting China for the moment, namely the Roman Empire. And the time that he was born was when the Roman Empire was achieving its largest extent. It had started off in Italy and then spread out Sicily, Sardinians on. But in his own lifetime, and actually just about the time he was born, Rome expanded to include what is now Western Turkey, Central Western Turkey, Syria, the Middle East. and then shortly after his birth, within about 30 years, Roman Empire included Egypt,

and then it went even further, west and east, and this was a time when the Romans were themselves very conscious that they were becoming the masters of what they called modestly the Orbis Terrarum, the orb of all the lands. So if you think global today, this was the ancient equivalent of, of globalisation. What do we know about the background and life of Strabo himself? We actually know very little indeed.

And what we do know, we know only from his own work. We guess that he was born round about 60. It might be 64. As you said, it could be 63-62, which actually is just about the time that Augustus, the man who becomes called Augustus, the first Roman emperor, was born. And very interestingly, their lives actually over lack

and in a way sort of track each other quite closely. Apart from that, we don't actually know his full name. Strabo means squinty in Greek, squintide. It's not a very polite term. But we do actually know... It sounds good, you've spoiled it now. We do know some Romans who had that as their cognome in their last name. And so it's because the Greek and Roman worlds were coming together.

It's often something people forget, but the eastern half of the Roman Empire was Greek-speaking, So I'm a professor of Greek culture. Well, my remit doesn't stop before the Romans. The Romans were also themselves Greek. So Straber was born in the 60s, and at some point in his life, he went first of all to Rome, and later on he went to Alexandria. These are the two political and cultural capitals of the ancient world.

He was extremely well placed, in other words, to have a sense of what the entire world was, somewhat like. How far he travelled. We can perhaps come to this is another issue. But he is part of the great Greek presence which is in the Roman Empire from the very beginning and that near roundabout.

We've got Galen in medicine, we've got Ptolemy and astronomy, and they're intruding, they're intruding, they're dominating a lot of Roman culture. Well, famously Horace, another contemporary, said that captive Greece took its fierce captive conqueror and introduced the arts. and of course he was talking primarily about literature but also about visual arts

but Strabo, Dionysius from Halicarnas's other intellectuals went to Rome but they did their research very often in Alexandria because that had a larger, a deeper collection of Greek texts remember they were Greeks

but they were writing not just for Greeks but also for Romans Maria Pretzler the geographica describes most of the world as Paul has said known to the Romans and Greeks. How much troubling did Strabo himself do? Probably not as much as

he wants us to think. In the early books, this is in Book 2, where he tries to establish... We must say there are 17 books. There are 17 books. So the first two books are introduction in a way, and he also tries to establish his credentials. Why is he the person to

write this work? And at one point in Book 2, he actually says, I have traveled very widely, And generally, compared to other people who've written works like this, I've seen a wider span of the world. He claims to have been from Armenia to Etruria, so Tuscany, really, and in the north from the Black Sea to the mountains of Ethiopia, as he says.

And that essentially spans the world. Now, it's not actually true that he's travelled all that much. This is, in a way, a trope, if you write about geography but also about history, you need to say that you've seen a lot for yourself. Polybius introduces this, a man who really has troubled a lot, I have to say. So Strabo did see a few places. We can usually tell from his work what he describes from autopsy and what he describes from hearsay, from other books and so on.

So he knows pretty large parts of Asia Minor, of course, so Turkey nowadays. Of course, the place he comes from, Pontus, which is close to the North Coast, the Black Sea coast of Turkey and then part of Western Asia Minor around Ephesus places like that he clearly was in Italy I mean he knows Rome and there are lots of references to that

they're also references to events in Rome and as Paul has already said I mean he probably stayed in Rome for quite some time and he's clearly been to part of Tuscany probably also Campania and he... Has you been further west?

No not further west he sort of says he hints that he has seen Sardinia, but how far that's true, it's hard to tell, but probably not further west, actually. And then in the south, I mean, he clearly stayed a while in Alexandria and then also went up to Nile.

How much geographical scholarship existed at the time that he was writing? Quite a lot, particularly in Alexandria. There's a really big tradition. Now, the interesting thing I think about Strabo is that his work isn't just universal in terms of geography, going all the way from Britain to India,

but also in terms of how you write about geography. So there are different ways of doing it, and different scholars have done different things with geography. So first is the real theory of geography, where you basically try and work out how to draw a map of the world. And this goes back to 6th century Asia Minor, Hecatias, and so on. And then again was developed very much in Alexandria after Alexander. Eratosthenes is perhaps most important scholar there.

So that's one thing. Then the next thing you need to do is you fill the map with places that are accurately placed. Remember, they didn't obviously know how to determine longitude. Latitude works quite well. And that again starts with lists of places. Those go back all the way to the Iliad where all the participating places are listed geographically. We get seafarers lists of places around coasts and so on. And this culminates, really in map making a bit later than Strabo. And then finally, cultural geography. Now you've got your map, you've got the place names in it, and now you're starting to describe what happens there. What is the culture

there, what animals and plants might you find, what climate, very important for Greeks, the myth. How do you define these places by what their past is and how that past relates to Greek myth? And all that comes together in Strabo in one big work. Menon-Solwa, he seems to spend

as far as we know, and Paul pointed this out earlier on, much of his, a great deal of his life in Rome. Why did he go there, and what influence did that have on his work? Well, he comes to Rome as part of a sort of general hoovering up of many Greek intellectuals into the Roman orbit. Rome is now the financial, the power centre. So if you like, there's a brain drain in some ways from the Greek East to the West

and to Rome is the centre. We don't know how long he spent in terms of continuous periods in Rome, but we know certainly, as Paul said, that he went there on a number of occasions over his life. And what's interesting is that the Rome he saw will have changed a lot between his first time he went when he was about 19, 20, in about 44 BC. So we're here in the period of the murder of Caesar.

He certainly lives in interesting times. to when the later events he talks about towards in the last decade of the centuries BC, beginning of the centuries AD, by which time Rome will have gone from really in architectural terms somewhat of a backwater to somebody coming from the Greek East to sort of coming along, acquiring some of the grand public buildings that we now as tourists associate with Rome,

he would have seen the birth of that, the early days of that. It's a bit like coming to London, perhaps, in the 18th century, and seeing George in London spread out over the West End, coming here on visits with decades separating them sometimes. But he comes really, probably to begin with, to seek learning. He talks about his grammatical teacher, Tyrannion, who would come to Rome involuntarily, as a political hostage, but then makes a living off the Roman aristocracy

because one of the things to be a rounded, educated Roman in the first century BC was to master Greek as a language and master Greek culture. So they needed these Greeks to give them that edge. Before the Geographic are 17 volumes, as I was being mentioned, Strabo wrote an even longer book known as Historical Sketches, more than 40 volumes, which has been lost. Do we know anything about it? We know a little bit about his historical works.

As you say, we know there's one called the historical sketches. There's also possibly a separate work called after Polybius. And there's a disagreement in scholars as to whether there are two historical works or one historical work. But in either case... Polybius was a historian who died about 60 years before Strabo was born, as I remember. and Strabo is supposed to have written a continuation of his history, bringing it up to his present. And all that's lost, which is a bit of a shame. Yes, so he's taking history from where Polybius left it.

Polybius like Strabo being a Greek who'd come into close contact with the Romans himself as one of these initially involuntary visitors as a political hostage, but stays on in Roman circles and writes a history that ends, if you like, at the first high point of Roman conquest in 146, 145 BC, the conquest of Carthage and of Corinth, that establishes Rome as the master of the Mediterranean, at least the western and central Mediterranean. What the narrative given by Strabo did was to bring that down to his present day and probably ending very soon after the conquest of Egypt, which Paul referred to, at which point Rome has now conquered the entire Greek world, or nearly the entire Greek world, brought it under certainly political domination. And so that brings you from Rome as the major player to really Rome as the

sole power. Paul Gardledge, have we any idea why he wrote the geographica and who he wrote it for? You mean, other than for his own pleasure, as it were, but, well, he does make clear that he's writing not just for very, very specialised geographical experts, people who are mathematically inclined. On the other hand, obviously... Why mathematically? Well, because of the drawing of maps, latitude, longitude, the angles of the sun, the seasons, there's not that, I mean, Maria will correct me, but there's not a huge amount of that. Others had written, if you like, mathematical geography.

Whereas he writes more what we call geographical history or sociological geography. It's a hybrid genre, but you won't get a lot of terrifically technical stuff. You and I, or at least you probably could understand this, but I find that sort of scientific mathematical geography very, very baffling. So he's writing for, obviously, if he thinks he's going to be read, people who can read, well, that knocks out probably 80% of the Greek or Roman world. At least, he's on the other hand also hoping, I think, to have to make a difference, to have an effect.

And so, as I said in my original remarks, the Roman world is expanding, what Strabo wants is to enable his readers to get a sense of the geography of this new unit, this new political unit. And in some sense, he's speaking about power indirectly. In other words, he's wanting people to get a sense of what the terrains within which people are now having to operate are like so that they operate. better. He is aiming to be practical, not purely informative in a sense of entertaining. So if I was to sum it up, he's writing for what sort of readers that I write for intelligent general readers as opposed to merely people such as himself in high intellectuals. Maria Prattia, put your hand up, but while you're thinking of what to interject, can I also feed a question in? Can you give us an idea? When you say what you want, then I'll ask you another question. I mean, just the sort of thing that Strebo actually, I mean, this is absolutely right,

but he says quite explicitly that geography is specifically important for generals and politicians. So he is actually also thinking of what the Romans are probably still doing. I mean, he's seen the Romans still conquering. I mean, we now think of Egypt somehow as a stop. I mean, there is still expansion. But that I think you couldn't see from his point of view. So the idea is also, let's know more about geography in order. to know how to conquer, what to conquer

and what we are going to find there. And that goes back to... Sorry, just to... I mean, there's a direct connection there. Maria, can you give us some idea of the structure of these 17 books? Yes, I mean, it is, of course, quite difficult if you imagine you're living in a world where maps probably

exist, but probably rather as very scientific method rather than something that everyone knows about. And they are not familiar with the satellite's eye view that we are when they think Mediterranean, I'm not sure whether they have that image in their head that we probably do with Italy sticking into it from the north and so on.

So what they did, and there's a long tradition of this, is that the Mediterranean is described as what's called a peripus. It means sailing around. And you usually start, and this goes probably back to the sixth century, at least. You start in Spain, go all around the north coast of the Mediterranean, all the way to Syria, and then come back via the African coast. and you describe what's along it. Now what he's doing is he sort of subjects the whole world

to this tour around the Mediterranean. So in the way, even India is part of that tour. So what he's doing is not in Spain. Then adding Gaul goes up to Britain, comes back. Then Italy, up to Germany, all the way around the Danube to the Black Sea. Then Greece and the Balkans, of course, Asia Minor. And then there are two big. detours. Northern Asia Minor all the way past the Caspian Sea and all the way to what he calls

Bactria. We probably think of Afghanistan, perhaps this is the closest. Tartikistan, those sort of area, Central Asia. Then he comes back, does the western coast of Asia Minor. Troy is a place that interests him for far too long, I think, and all the large cities of Western Asia Minor, Pugam and Ephesus and so on. And then he goes to Cyprus, Syria, and then there is another detour. And then he goes all the way to India and does Persia, comes back, and then we are by now already in book 15

of 17. So then very quickly he does Syria, then there's a very good discussion of Egypt, which he knows fairly well. And then the last book is essentially Libya, so that's the whole coast of Africa, and then he comes back to Gibraltar. Does he

mention at any stage? I know that others did, that it's very difficult to represent the globe, which they saw the Earth as a globe then, on a flat surface? Yes, this is certainly an issue. I mean, I think this is something that, I mean, the mathematical types that Paul was mentioned tried to solve. We certainly have earlier calculations of this. I think where we really see this come into its own is Ptolemy's map, which is of course not a map, but an instruction as to how to draw the map. And there we can see it very well. but they were certainly discussing the ideas of parallels,

but also how many degrees of the globe you actually see. In the end, I mean, they were aware. They are basically seeing a quarter of it. They're seeing 190 degrees of the northern hemisphere. And they knew this, and this was quite clear. There were big discussions of what happens in the bits that we don't see. And they even roughly had the right size for the globe, because they're at Ostonies calculated the circumference of the Earth

and got it almost right. I mean, don't look at this. mathematics too well because there are all sorts of errors in it, but they happen to work out. And it's extremely accurate compared to what we know nowadays. So they have a notion of that. And then once you've got the bigger map, so what, what Ptholomey comes up with is essentially a kind of, well, it's not quite a rectangle because it's obviously narrower at the top. But it is very difficult. I mean, map protection, I mean, this is something that still preoccupied them in the early modern period.

and Mercator sort of sorted it out but ask various people, not everyone is satisfied even with how we protect maps now. Can I turn to Bennett Solway? Before we talk more about the world, can we go back to those first two books of his way? He discusses the discipline of geography and can you tell us what he said there

and how it defines what ancient scholars understood about how to look at the world? Yes. Well, for him, geography is certainly a part of the general philosophy, philosophia, which in our modern terms includes science as well as sort of theoretical ethical discussion. And he goes on after describing geography's proper place within philosophy to describe previous geographers. And here he includes, to our minds, perhaps rather surprisingly Homer, though Paul and Maria have already alluded to this.

really here in a sense he is being retrieving Homer for the contemporary Greek world after there's been somewhat of a backlash after Eratosthenes against Homer as being too poetic and not rigorous Homer's about 8-ish 800 years before him

but the work would be well known and he spends a great deal of time with Homer can you just develop that why is he so keen to draw information from Homer I think because Homer is, in a sense, almost becoming a foundation text for... The Iliad and the Orlusset. Yeah, sorry. Particularly the auditors.

Yes, exactly. The two great epic poems ascribed to Homer have become a foundation text for Greek education and Greek culture across the entire Greek world, not just old Greece and Asia Minor. And this gives a common identity, a common platform. and giving them an identity within this new larger world, the Roman world that they're now in, but something which they can look back to as being before preceding the Roman world, it reconfirms the superiority of Greek culture right back into what would have been prehistory in Roman terms, as far as he is concerned. And can you just give us some instances of what he takes,

what specifically he takes from Homer? Well, one of the things that he does is to demonstrate that Homer knew, even when he's not explicit, about the far reaches of the Oikumini. This is the inhabited world that Maria has talked about, the quarter of the globe. So even though Homer doesn't talk about or allude to the globe as being a sphere, as is now accepted by all the scientific geographers, Heratosny's particularly, he says that that doesn't matter. That doesn't undermine Homer because he did. managed to demonstrate that he knew the limits of the Oikubeney, so we've got the Indians to the Far East, and Spain to the far west,

and Ethiopia to the south, and the Scissians to the north. So in other words, Homer knew the world that I will now describe in the geography. He's already there. So he retrieves Homer's reputation in terms of his breadth of knowledge. Can I just pitch in saying that in the 20s, when one of the times that he would have been in Rome, probably, Virgil is writing his Ineid for Augustus, and therefore absolutely the heart of the imperial project. And of course, Homer in the Iliad mentions Ineus.

And of course, Virgil and the Roman aristocracy made a great deal about Eniastas as being their founder. So it's a very good example of how Greeks and Romans are borrowing from each other, but remaking their world. and Strabo comes from a relatively provincial background, but by going to Rome, he's absolutely at the centre of the universe, the intellectual as well as the physical universe. Venice told us quite a bit about Homer. Can you fill us in on any other major sources? Yeah, well, he refers to, I think, I can be corrected,

but something like 200 different individuals are named by Strabo as people he has presumably read or heard of, and sometimes it's not clear whether what he writes is actually a transcription of one or other of these, as opposed to his own making it up as he goes along. But there were about half a dozen major sources from among those 200. We've mentioned Homer. I think he has something like 700 references to Homer. The next big guy is, of course, Eratosthenes, one of my favorite ancient Greeks,

because he was nicknamed Beta. Why? Because though he covered the waterfront, he was. was not alpha, i.e. the absolute top dog in any one of the many disciplines that he practiced. He was librarian of the great library at Alexandria. He wrote a work called geography, and in fact he probably coined the very word, Geographia, which means writing or description of the earth, the world. And he was therefore the second major source. After Eratosthenes, who functioned in the third century BC, we have Polybius. We've mentioned him.

a Greek who traveled a lot and he wrote about the way in which the Romans conquered the Greek world in the second century, late third middle second century BC. After that it gets a little more complex but at any rate one of the major sources of our man

Strabo was Poseidonius writing in the first century BC and he came from Apomere in Syria he's a Greek but he came from Greek Syria and the interest for Strabo I think was twofold, partly intellectual, but partly also spiritual, because Poseidonius was a stoic.

And we think that Strabo, too, was a stoic. Can I go to, back to Maria Prater again, which sections of the Geographic are the most vivid? Can you give us a couple of examples, please? I see... Most vivid and accurate. Let's put the two together. Right, yeah, I think the

most vivid ones are the sections, I mean, usually, I think, generally acknowledged, where we have a notion that he's been there. I mean, for example he gives us the best description of ancient Alexandria we've got left I mean they were probably other ones but they are all gone

and we've got his description which is very vivid and tells us a lot about the city in his own time but generally it's often quite interesting you get a glimpse of something that he could have done but usually doesn't

I work mostly on mainland grace and he's not very interested in grace at all very interesting hardly anything about Athens almost dismissive. No, probably not. I mean, he wasn't even there. But he stopped buying Corinth at some point, probably just on the way

from Asia Minor, landing in one of the harbours of Corinth and then the ship gets dragged across or you take another ship on the eastern side to go on to Italy. And he actually took the time to climb the Aquacorynthos, theacopolis of Corinth. And it's an amazing description where he really

brings together to geography. You get the feeling there's a geographer on a very good viewpoint because from there you can understand the geography of Greece because you've got the east north of Corinth in front of you, the Peloponnese on one side, mainland Greece with all its mountains, Panasos and so on, in front of you. And he describes it all and really shows his geographical understanding. And so he gets very fascinating whenever he's actually seen a place, but unfortunately hasn't seen all that many.

Can we, Bennett, Ransalway, can you say a little about Britain as we happen to be here at this time and his description of Britain and before you start did he owe much to Caesar to Deo de la Gallico? Yes he certainly knew of that work

and seems to have exploited it for mainland continental Gaul and also it covers of course his expeditions into Britain and he described those in his sort of historical section as part of his description of Britain so yes he's certainly

exploiting that knowledge that he'll have got in Rome of Britain It's not autopsy. It's at second hand. And that really goes for everything he says about anything further west than the Italian peninsula.

And the description of Britain is actually a very good sort of case study of his regional descriptions in microcosm. What interested you? Can you just pick out two or three things? Let's see if we've changed much. You've already mentioned the weather, which he does list.

That's really a sort of rather trivial and poorly. What else? Well, he starts. off with each of his regional descriptions by giving some idea of the shape, because as Maria said, we can't imagine that everyone had in their mind's eye the satellite view of the Mediterranean or the world beyond at all. So he starts off by saying that Britain is basically a triangle, which is, for Great Britain, the island, that's a reasonable sort of generalisation. And he did that also for Spain, for instance, looks a bit like an oxhide. So this is a sort of

established practice. And then he gives measurements, basic dimension. What does he say it happens in this place that was then? Well, the inhabitants are in their habits rather like the continental Celts, but they're a bit more primitive and less civilised. And fundamentally that comes down to whether they live in settled communities or not. And his picture of Britain, which does not tie up with our archaeological picture of Britain, it has to be said, his picture of Britain is largely a wooded, hilly landscape in which there are sort of nomadic pastoralists who live a sort of slash and bird. culture, moving from clearing to clearing where they live in, as he says, round huts. Now, the round huts may be true, but we do know of proto-urban centres in first century BC,

Britain. So his picture is not accurate and up to date. It's very vivid and entertaining to read, but certainly not from contemporary autopsy. And he says they're quite good at exporting stuff, but you mustn't take them over, because we're never going to pay enough taxes. I didn't think we'll get into that, that's sort of BC today, we're not going to do that. Okay. Paul, the Greek explorer Pythias, Pythias?

Pithias. Can you tell us about him and Strabo's attitude to his work? He's another hero of mine like Eratosthenes. He is the Christopher Columbus of the ancient Greek world because he discovered what might have been called by him pretaniki

as opposed to Bretaniki with understood land, but the land of the Breton. and he travelled in the last quarter probably of the 4th century BC came from what's today Marseillea which was founded by Greeks from originally what's now Turkey in about 600 BC so instead of going east he went west out of the pillars of Hercules as they were called turned right went up British as north as we said yes up went north through the Bay of Biscay up to be hit the south east corner of Britain along

south of England, then up between England and Ireland, Wales, of course, Ireland up to, and then he mentions a place called Thuley. And this comes out in Latin as Tully, in Latin Ultima Tully, the furthest Tully. Now, what was Tully? Was it Iceland, or was it merely one of the Shetlands? At any rate, all very circumstantial. He describes phenomena meteorological that are very specific to that area. accurately. However, however, where does Strabo hear about this? He hears about it in Eretoconies.

And Eretoconies didn't believe that Pythias had done this, and Straybo didn't believe that Ampheus had done this. And therefore, actually, it was even the case when Julius Caesar, as Bennett mentioned, invaded, or at least landed in Britain twice, 55, 54 BC, people didn't believe that there really was such a place. because there was an ocean surrounding the inhabited world and there was presumably nothing inhabited beyond the inhabited world therefore Britain couldn't exist by logic but anyway he proved it existed

but already Pius had proved it and so it's one of the disappointing features to me of Straybo that he was so poor in realising that Pivius really had discovered Britain two and a half millennia later or ever it was over two million years

Pius is getting his due and from you, Paul. He's had a whole book. So we're all right. He's had a whole book written about him. In each other niche of Pinasas he finds himself, he's tickled pink this morning. Maria Prater, can you tell us

the limits of the world of Strabo? Let's just cut to the chest. What did you say, for example, about India? Yes, I think this is actually important to mention in the context of what we've just heard, because we have to understand why Strabo is so we to be skeptical about people who write about the ages of the earth. Now, India is our best example because that's always been...

I mean, this goes back a long way, certainly the early 5th century. India is the place of the fabulous. And generally, the further you go... This 5th century, BC. BC. Now, generally, the further you go towards the edges of the world on all sides, the more fabulous things get. You get monsters, you get people who aren't quite human,

so people with dog heads and various other things. And feet they can use as umbrellas. Yes, absolutely. That's placed in India. And all this starts, I mean, it starts with what the Greeks actually heard about India. So the first books about India came back from people who were actually employed by the Persians. And in the early 5th century, there was Silax who was asked to go down the Indus River and then find out the way back to Arabia.

On the sea, there was a physician at the... the court of the Persian king Cetis, they wrote the first information. Then, of course, a lot more comes back after Alexander, because people had actually seen the place, Greeks who could write about it. But the interesting thing is that by the time Alexander's channels came back and wrote about India,

these fabulous stories had been so established, probably written for entertainment, rather than as a real geographical account, that they kept creeping back. So people would really been there, and Nearchos, the naval commander of Alexander, would sail down the Indus. But nevertheless, there are strange peoples

and old animals and so on, gold-dicking ants, and all sorts of other things, simply because Greeks almost expected to find things like this there. So the problem now that happens is that Strebo is faced with a whole bulk of literature. Some of it is true and very exotic, because India is quite different from the Mediterranean, and some of it is not true. and he constantly has to make the call

and he doesn't always make the call accurately and it's the same with pity as on the other side of the earth I think. Bennett, Betsoe. So he's a Greek-speaking scholar in Rome. He seems to, Rome and Al-Zania, because of the great libraries and because of the patronage seem to be in his home, which, as Paul

pointed out, 200 sources to start with. But did he have in any way a political perspective on the world? Was he trying to please Augustus, the first emperor? I will I will show you your empire in words and I might get promoted.

Well, I would say that he probably occupies a middle ground between those Greeks working in August and Rome who we know are really quite craven towards Roman political power, such as Diodorus. But, and on the other hand, those who go too far in their free speaking, which is Timajnese of Alexandria,

who falls out and is banned from the palace of Augustus, for saying bad things about the new patrons. With Strabo, we have someone who is describing the size of the new Roman world and clearly sees the Greek world as part of this world, but still the Romans are not us, they are them. There is an us and them and the us are not the Romans. They are the wider Greek world and not the Romans. That brings the question of audience which Maria talked about.

he wants to include generals and statesmen, the political man is a term he uses. Now, obviously, in a sense, in our minds, as Maria says, we can rather exaggerate the extent to which we imagine that this is the end of history, sort of Francis Fukuyama type, that Rome is the destiny and there will be no other option, because the world in which Strabbe lives is not yet always directly politically part of a Roman province, so that his own hometown, Amasea Amassia in Pontus, during his lifetime, starts off as part of the kingdom of Pontus. Now that is broken up by Pompey, partly becoming a province, but other parts becoming independent satellite states, which are under Roman control but are still quasi-independent. And I think the Greek-speaking elites of that sort of place, like his own hometown, are part of the audience he's aiming at.

Paul, Paul Cottage, several classical texts Let's take Galen, for instance, Greek texts sailed into the Renaissance. They went through the great Arab culture to be added to as well as just translated, just, I mean as well as translated. Was there any evidence that that happened with Strabo? Strabo, the post-history of Strabo,

his text is extremely strange. The great next scientific work in the Roman world after the death of all, Augustus was by the elder Pliny, man who died in the eruption of Vesuvius, he wanted to get very close to Vesuvius, and overwhelmed by the ashes, he doesn't mention Strabbe.

Plutarch, early second century AD biographer, would have found it very useful in his biography of Julius Caesar or whatever to refer to Strabo. He doesn't. Ptolemy whom Maria mentioned, this is Claudius Ptolemy, based in Alexandria, later second century

AD, geographer, scientific, as well as human geographer doesn't mention Strabo. The first mention of Strabo, the first clear understanding that Strabo was in existence as a text, doesn't come before the early third century AD. I mean, really strange. Then we go forward another three, four centuries, he first gets a real outing in a work of the sixth century C.E. AD by Stephanus, who is based in one of the other great capitals

of the old ancient world, namely Byzantium, which is Constantinople by this time. And then, well, one leaps forward again. He's mentioned in the 15th century by George Gemistos Plethon, probably through an Italian traveller called Syriaca vancona. Now, in that same century, Pope Nicholas V, commissions a translation of Strabo. So we're in the High Renaissance, and it's that translation which allegedly Columbus read

and then thought he could get to India, setting out westwards from Italy, rather than eastern south. If I may just go on to say, by the time we're in the 16th century, we have the first proper edition by Isaac Kazabon, and therefore after that he's in print, he's a text that's commented,

and he's bound to survive to the future unless there's a nuclear holocaust. Maria Britsa, how do you account for this history of his history that Paul just outlined? It's difficult to tell, because we've got plenty of authors from the Roman period for whom we don't have any quotations later on. I think one issue is that it became more and more fashion

after Strabo, particularly in the second century AD, it becomes more of my fashion to only refer back to classical authors, so 5th, 4th century BC and authors that are earlier like Homer. And so in a way, it wasn't always necessary to cite these people. So it's quite difficult to see a need. are plenty of very good authors who don't receive any quotations at all. So the story that Paul is telling is not unique at all and sometimes very surprising. So it is difficult to tell, but I think fashion is an issue.

Also, he doesn't quite write the kind of Greek that they really liked reading in the second century AD, which is classical Athenian Greek. And so that's another issue. Many authors from the Hellenistic period and the early Roman period, so first century BCID were simply not preserved because of this. Finally, Minnesota, apart from setting Columbus off on his travel in the wrong direction, as Paul was talking about, can you point out briskly one or two influences you might have had after the 16th century?

What contemporary? What some influence you? Well, I suppose for you, 16th century today is contemporary. We're running out of time. Yes. I mean, his influence is. in the ancient world is in fact,

if you pick on something that Maria says, may be seen in Josephus writing in the first century AD who does quote him a number of times and I think he picks up the message to the Greek world that you, Rome is big,

it's too big to defeat. I'm got to go. We've got to go. We've got to go. I'm really sorry. Maria Prezor, thank you. Paul Cadledge, Benet Solway. Next week we're talking about

Doomsday. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Right, well, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Did you enjoy that? Yes, I really did. Thank you. You introduced one of my great heroes, Syriacophonca.

He is the most amazing person, I have to say. Who's then? Syriakovankona. He was a man who knew the Pope at the time. He knew the last Byzantine Emperor and probably also the Ultimans. He was a trader. he writes the first description of Greece before, well, the last and first description before it shuts down

because it's taken over the Ottomans. He makes amazing drawings of all sorts of monuments. Without him, there are lots of ancient inscriptions we would know because you copied the Latin ones and Greek ones, taught himself Greek. He is a good picture for another in our time. I think seriously that will be a program that you really want to make. It would be a very interesting subject.

Yeah, I mean, seriously, because he brings together the Byzantines, the Ottomans and the Western world the Pope's attempts of trying to keep that conquest at bay and he was probably involved in that politically he's culturally amazing yes you want to make a programme up with you. I was thinking about the books

though you're talking about books I think maybe should have mentioned these are roles of papyrus aren't oh yes yes physically we didn't talk about physical form it's true yeah have been any of any of any of the other extant editions of these 17 volumes in Papyrus I'm afraid not

We only have codex. Isn't there a palimpses? There is a codex. Yeah, it's a book style. Not a volume. Essentially the text was on it and washed off and something else written over it. So, yeah, we're very lucky on this one, I guess.

But no, I mean, there's very little in preparer scrolls. I mean, I've always found that if I want to know how a scroll is being read, you have to go to a synagogue because there they can actually tell you how hard it is to find passages in it and how big these scrolls are. 17 books are essentially a bookshelf full of books. You have to think that some of these large works are called library,

like Diadores' Library of History. It is a library. It would fill this wall in shelves with the skulls. I'm not going to measure it out. What do you think, Paul, how broads the wall? It's about 12 feet. 10 to 12 feet. Yeah, I mean three, four, me, three.

You imagine some sort of pigeon holes. It's just bigger than your average prison cell, is really? You imagine pigeon holes, and the scrolls stuck into them. End on. End on with labels hanging down? I think the longest surviving is 22 feet. It's Plato's Timeas. If you can imagine, 22 feet.

And you've scroll yourself along it. Yes. So most people in films, you always see people have one bit of the skull holding with the up and then down. But actually, you hold them sideways. You scroll over. So it's written in columns,

and you have one column open at even time and then scroll yourself along. But actually memory is what, you know. It's a bit like a lot of Chinese painting, isn't it? They do the long scroll. They show the journey along a scroll like that. Yes.

Roll it out. I suppose that's the only way to do it if you've got to roll up the scroll. Yeah. That's very much how it works, yeah. Did we miss out anything damaging, Bennett? Oh, no. I mean, the point I was trying to finish on and didn't manage to get across. I asked too big a question too late.

You threw me a real gougly on the post-16th century history of the text. Well, Paul had taken this from the 0 to the 15th century. You mean, who's he influenced? Has anyone said stradler? This is the right. No. No.

I don't think so. I mean, I think one thing you could say, I mean, post-16th century, but what you get in early geography, when you read any kind of texts, 17th century actually, about Africa, about Asia and so on. Very often what they do is,

describe the coasts according to up-to-date information because they've got that and then they fill in the centre with Strabo. And that still happens. I mean a lot of it in the 17th century if you read your accounts. Even of parts of the Mediterranean, they know the coasts very well and the place names are in Italian. And then you go inland and describe it even on maps. The inland place names are ancient Greek and come from Strabo and Pozzanias and various other people. It's used for infill in a sense where information is not on. Because the ultimate are there and you can. We might be getting a cup of tea now, so thanks very much again.

I feel we must just let Bennett finish his point because he didn't was able to make it then either, I don't think. Oh, right. Sorry, my point was... Opportunity not. Yes. Joseph is who we know. He's one of the few people who does quote him in extensor.

Mentions him by name and actually quotes him in extensor. Here, the speech that's given to Agrippa before the Jewish revolt, which is a warning about the science. of the Roman Empire, which is, you might defeat the Romans here, but they're all, essentially, if you read Straybe, you'd know how big

the Roman Empire is, there are always going to be more Romans to replace the ones that you defeat now. Is this directly the Hellenized Jewish local ruler? Yes, the local ruler, who's the king of Claudius. Absolutely. Okay. So, I mean, that's quite interesting. I mean, is he big, I always thought he was actually quoting from the history, but it is actually

the geography. Because I knew there are references to the history in places. In the speech, there isn't a direct quotation. at all. But it's the evocation of the inhabited world. It's as if a grip at has registered. Thank you very much. Coffee. Coffee. Yes. There are many more Radio 4 arts and discussion programmes to download for free.

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