Strabo’s Geography is an encyclopedic description of the ancient world as it appeared to a contemporary observer in the early Roman empire. Information about taming elephants, collecting saffron, producing asphalt, and practicing yoga is found alongside accounts of prostitution, volcanic activity, religious festivals, and obscure eastern dynasties—all set against the shifting backdrop of political power in the first century CE. Traveling around the Mediterranean, Strabo gathered knowledge of places and people, supplementing his firsthand experiences with an immense amount of reading to create a sweeping chronicle that attempts to answer the implicit questions “Who are we?” and “Where do we come from?” Sarah Pothecary’s new translation of Strabo’s complete Geography makes this important work more accessible, relevant, and enjoyable than ever before.
Conveying the informal, lively, and almost journalistic style of Strabo’s Greek, this translation connects the ancient and modern worlds by providing modern names and maps for places mentioned in the text, a generous page layout, and marginal notes, allowing readers to appreciate Strabo’s work directly and immediately. The result mimics what Strabo was doing two thousand years ago—relating the rapidly changing present of his original readers to their own ancient past.
A remarkably modern translation of a revealing window on the ancient world, this is essential reading for anyone interested in how we look at both antiquity and the world today.
Sarah Pothecary is an independent classics scholar who earned a BA at the University of Oxford and a PhD at the University of Toronto. She has written extensively about Strabo’s life and work and is a coeditor of Strabo’s Cultural Geography.
"Innovative . . . . Ms. Pothecary’s lived-in world feels both familiar and fresh, poetically charged and crisply defined."—Dominic Green, Wall Street Journal
"Stupendous. . . .A modern miracle for the modern world: everything you need to make sense of Strabo, before your very eyes!"—Peter Jones, Classics for All
"[An] elegant translation. . . . Sarah Pothecary is Strabo's rescuer."—Peter Stothard, Times Literary Supplement
“Strabo understood that geography is the basis for all human knowledge. Sarah Pothecary, through her translation, provides a window into Strabo’s mind and his world, allowing us to understand our own better.”—Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China
“Pothecary’s translation of Strabo’s Geography is an important milestone. Providing commentary in an original and illuminating format, she keeps the ancient text in focus and presents it in a fresh, reader-friendly way. In her hands, even Strabo’s most convoluted expressions become part of a pleasant intellectual journey.”—Daniela Dueck, author of Illiterate Geography in Classical Athens and Rome
“Strabo’s Geography is a storehouse of information about the entire Greek and Roman world during the reign of Augustus, but its material was arranged idiosyncratically by Strabo and not much improved by most modern attempts to organize it. Sarah Pothecary’s masterful edition has overcome the work’s many difficulties, providing effective navigation and at last rendering it accessible.”—Robert B. Strassler, series editor of The Landmark Ancient Histories
“Pothecary’s translation is sparkling and witty, bringing Strabo to life for the twenty-first century. This is scholarship at its best—authoritative, accessible, and a delight to read.”—Naoíse Mac Sweeney, author of The West: A New History of an Old Idea
