The Routledge Companion to Strabo

Daniela Dueck

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317445852
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

The Routledge Companion to Strabo explores the works of Strabo of Amasia (c. 64 BCE – c. CE 24), a Greek author writing at the prime of Roman expansion and political empowerment. While his earlier historiographical composition is almost entirely lost, his major opus of the Geography includes an encyclopaedic look at the entire world known at the time: numerous ethnographic, topographic, historical, mythological, botanical, and zoological details, and much more.

This volume offers various insights to the literary and historical context of the man and his world. The Companion, in twenty-eight chapters written by an international group of scholars, examines several aspects of Strabo's personality, the political and scholarly environment in which he was active, his choices as an author, and his ideas of history and geography. This selection of ongoing Strabonian studies is an invaluable resource not just for students and scholars of Strabo himself, but also for anyone interested in ancient geography and in the world of the early Roman Empire.

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PART I

Strabo’s point of view

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1

STRABO’S PHILOSOPHY AND STOICISM

Myrto Hatzimichali

The presence of philosophy in Strabo’s Geography is threefold: firstly, Strabo presents geography as a philosophical discipline, which endows it with prestige and a tradition of illustrious predecessors. Secondly, there are echoes of philosophical ideas in the Geography, which are not explicitly advertised as such, and yet frequently bear traces of Stoic influence. The third aspect of philosophy’s presence in the Geography is the historical one: Strabo is an invaluable source of information on the careers of philosophers in the first century BCE, including teacher-pupil relationships, professional rivalries and events of great cultural importance. An indicative example is provided by his remarks on philosophers from Tarsus:

The (famous) men who have hailed from Tarsus are the Stoics Antipater and Archedemus and Nestor, and moreover two men called Athenodorus, of whom the one that was called Cordylion lived with Marcus Cato and died at his house; on the other hand, the son of Sandon, whom they call Cananites after some village, was Caesar’s teacher and gained great honor, and when he returned to his native land, already an old man, he broke up the established government which was being abused by several people including Boethus, a bad poet and bad citizen, whose power came mainly from courting the mob. [ . . . ] So much for the Stoics; but my contemporary Nestor was an Academic, the one who taught Marcellus the son of Octavia, Caesar’s sister. He too was head of government having succeeded Athenodorus and he continued to be honored both by the leading men and in the city. (14.5.14)¹

The passage also demonstrates the importance Strabo placed on the Roman connections of these intellectuals and their political involvement. It also contains an example (“my contemporary”) of his frequent first-person references that, along with the pronounced emphasis on intellectuals from his native Asia Minor, create a sense of personal involvement with the cultural tradition that he reports on.²

Geography as a philosophical discipline

These personal references and traces of self-identification are spread throughout the Geography but are significantly absent from its opening:

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I believe that the study of geography, which I now propose to investigate, is part of the philosopher’s concerns as much as any other (study). The fact that my belief is not false is obvious from many considerations. For those who first ventured to touch upon this subject were philosophers of a kind, namely Homer and Anaximander of Miletus and Hecataeus his fellow-citizen, as Eratosthenes also points out; also Democritus, Eudoxus, Dicaearchus and many others, and moreover those who came after them, Eratosthenes and Polybius and Posidonius, all of whom were philosophers. (1.1.1) (emphasis added)

As Clarke has pointed out, the traditional self-introductory prologue giving the author’s name and city of origin is replaced by what Strabo considered as most representative of himself, namely the programmatic description and definition of his geographical project in terms of philosophy.³ Instead of introducing himself, Strabo introduces his project, and opens by expressing a judgement about its nature.

The practice of enhancing one’s own field of expertise by appeal to philosophy is paralleled in comparable strategies employed by other scientists. A striking text, which could be the proem of the second book of the Geographoumena of Artemidorus of Ephesus, is preserved in the “Artemidorus papyrus” (dated by a number of scholars to the early first century CE). The author pursues an elaborate analogy whereby the philosopher operates in the manner of a geographer, “spreading his soul” across all cognitive territory like the geographer surveys all known lands. Thus, geography can claim methodological affinity and comparable value with philosophy, which is called “most divine” in a Platonic echo (Phdr. 239b4).⁴ An alternative tactic is to treat philosophy as the necessary intellectual background to one’s own science, by claiming that the latter can only be properly mastered by those with philosophical training. Such a tactic is exemplified, for instance, by Vitruvius with respect to architecture (De arch. 1.1.3; 1.1.7–10) and by Galen with respect to medicine, in his work entitled The Best Doctor Is Also a Philosopher (Med. Phil. I 60–3 Kühn).⁵

Strabo’s approach in his prologue contains elements from both of these tactics, but he seeks to present geography as a philosophical concern, presumably one of several, not as a separate field of analogous intellectual standing with philosophy, nor as a science for which philosophical training is a prerequisite. This amounts to a very broad conception of philosophy, indicated also by the first argument he offers in support of the view that geography should be treated as part of the philosopher’s business. This first argument is an appeal to tradition: earlier expounders of geographical themes, Strabo claims, are agreed to have been philosophers. They are divided into three groups: firstly, the ancient pioneers (Homer, Anaximander and Hecataeus) had been “philosophers of a kind”, and it was Eratosthenes who drew attention to this fact. Strabo is careful not to characterize outright the early predecessors as geographers either, but as men who “ventured to touch upon” geography. The second group, which includes representatives of a “middle” period, is broader and Strabo does not offer a full list, finishing with “and many others”. The last group is fixed in number and contains Strabo’s most respected forerunners, with the title “philosophers” closely attached to them. The more detailed elaboration⁶ of this first argument consists mainly of a lengthy vindication of Homer’s geographical expertise in order to justify his inclusion as the inventor of geography (1.1.2–10 cf. archêgetês, “founder”, at 1.1.2).⁷

The appeal to philosophy as a very broad educational ideal, capturing the privileged wisdom of scientists, historians and poets alike,⁸ is in the background on many occasions where Strabo makes explicit use of the word philosophia and its cognates. This wisdom includes educational and consultative functions that go far beyond the mainstream tradition of Greek philosophy:⁹ the Druids in Gaul are practising moral philosophy (4.4.4); Egyptian priests and Chaldaean astronomers are also philosophers (16.1.6; 17.1.3; 17.1.46), while different types of philosophers may be found among Indian wise men (15.1.70; cf. 15.1.59). It is interesting that the views of these groups are often reported as responses to Greek concerns (see for example 4.4.4 for the Druids’ opinion on the immortality of the soul).

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These references can illuminate Strabo’s programmatic claim about geography’s status as a philosophical discipline, showing that it rests first and foremost upon a broad and inclusive conception of philosophy. This conception is fully compatible with his portrait of the geographer/philosopher as a “man who surveys the divine and the human” and “cares about the art of living and happiness”. Occasionally, however, the range of pursuits that fit under its banner can be a source of tension that drives a wedge between the geographer and the philosopher. This occurs when the stress is placed on geography’s requirement for political utility, while philosophical knowledge includes optional investigations that go beyond the geographer’s remit. For example, after listing certain types of detailed celestial observations he states:

But there are certain things that the reader should not concern himself with at all, unless for the sake of philosophical contemplation; and others that he should accept on trust, even if he does not see the cause. For this is a matter for the philosopher, whereas the statesman does not have enough free time for this sort of thing, or not always. (1.1.21; cf. 1.1.14)

This is followed by remarks on the basic astronomical knowledge that the reader does need to have (he must have observed a globe, the position of the tropics, etc.) in an attempt to strike a fine-tuned balance between practical and theoretical pursuits.

Strabo and Stoicism

We may now turn to examine in more detail the other two arguments through which Strabo introduces the common concerns of geography and philosophy, following the list of philosophical forerunners:

Moreover, wide learning, through which alone it is possible to undertake this work successfully, is the characteristic of no one other than the man who surveys the divine and the human; and philosophy, as they say, is the knowledge of these very things. At the same time, the benefit which is manifold and concerns, on the one hand, politics and the activities of commanders and, on the other, knowledge about the heavens and about animals, plants and fruits found in land and sea, and about other things which can be seen in each place, is indicative of the same sort of man, the one who cares about the art of living and happiness. (1.1.1, following directly from the section quoted above)

Strabo links geography and philosophy by virtue of the fact that they both involve wide learning, which characterizes those who display an active interest in all things divine and human. In this expression we may detect the first trace of Stoic influence in Strabo’s work, because it is repeated in the proem of Aëtius’ doxography¹⁰ (hence we can take the subject of “as they say” to be the Stoics):

The Stoics said that wisdom is scientific knowledge of the divine and the human, and that philosophy is the practice of a fitting expertise.¹¹ Virtue singly and at its highest is what is fitting, and virtues, at their most generic, are three – the physical one, the ethical one, and the logical one. (Aët. I, Pr.2)¹²

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Strabo ignored the distinction drawn by the Stoics between wisdom, which is a state of knowledge, and philosophy, which is an activity, the practice of a suitable/useful pursuit. He also introduce...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• The Routledge Companion to Strabo
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I Strabo’s Point of View
• Part II the Geography the Inhabited World and Its Parts
• Part III the Historiographic Work(S)
• Part IV Reception
• Index of References to Strabo’s Geography
• Index of Ancient Sources
• Index of Ancient Place Names and Nations
• Index of Ancient Personal Names