As Clarke summarised, two main models emerged from the discussion: one attributing geography to the realm of space and history to that of time, and another associating geography to the present and history to the past. The first suggests a separation between space and time that is difficult to maintain, as ‘geography and history both require a spatial and a temporal context’ and, moreover, does not take into account the ‘experienced space’ (Clarke 1999: 4ff, esp. 6‒8; see also Merrills 2005: 8–9). The present‒past model, summarised by the sentence ‘the geography of the present day is but a thin layer that even at this moment is becoming history’ (Darby 1953: 6) is challenged by the observation that ‘just as history is not entirely concerned with the past, so it is hard to envisage a geography that deals exclusively with the present’ (Clarke 1999: 16).

The heated debate that took place on this subject in the middle of the last century was addressed by Baker in his book Geography and History, bearing the revealing subtitle Bridging the Divide (2003). The interconnections that can be established between these two disciplines are illustrated in his first figure, a diagram showing how their overlap produces the mirroring pairs of ‘history of geography’ and ‘geography of history’ on the one hand, and ‘historical geography’ (the historical dimension in geography) and ‘geographical history’ (the geographical dimension in history) on the other hand. Baker highlighted that ‘geography and history are different ways of looking at the world but they are so closely related that neither one can afford to ignore or even neglect the other’ (2003: 3). This may offer a conciliatory conclusion to a number of current discussions, but does not necessarily help in the investigation of how geography and history were related in the past, when their perception and definitions were different.

Modern geography is a complex interdisciplinary field, constructed over a long period of time by the progressive combination of physical, human, cultural, and economic components (Agnew and Livingstone 2011: 1–3). The relatively recent development of science and technologies created new directions of research that generated specific definitions (cf. Curry 2005); if some of them strictly depend on modern methods and tools, the seeds of others can be traced back to Antiquity. In this respect, we can often look back in time and follow backwards the steps that led to the development of modern disciplines, and thus gain a historical perspective linking past and present.

On the other hand, gaining a historical perspective works, by definition, only backwards, as every given moment of the past was once present, with no visibility on future developments and often with little or no awareness of the big picture. This individual, partial, and biased perception of the situation may be paired to the ‘ground-level view’. When we look back to past events, we can afford instead to rise above the current circumstances and look at them in perspective from a privileged point of view, unsurprisingly defined ‘bird’s-eye view’.

When we study ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, or any other ancient civilisation, we obviously apply a variable combination of these two points of view, using what we have learned over the centuries to reconstruct what our ancestors did and thought. Keeping a balance between the two approaches is not easy, and in fact we often make the mistake of attributing intentions ex post, especially when we move within what we today classify as the ‘scientific’ realm.

As Casey noted (1996: 35), ‘all human beings may desire to know, but they do not always desire to know in the foundationalist manner that is an obsessive concern of European civilization’. Bearing this in mind, in this book I will use the work ‘geography’ in its literal, etymological meaning of description (graphia) of the Earth (ge). To be precise, a more articulated translation of graphia would be ‘description by means of lines’, thus including both written and drawn descriptions. I will then split the geo-graphia into two descriptions, the bird’s-eye and the ground-level view. The former corresponds to the attempt to grasp the big picture and somehow harness and codify it by means of a shared reference grid. The latter corresponds to the physical and personal experience of interaction with the local landscape and environment. In other words, the former corresponds to a description of the space, the latter to the description of a place.

If we look back at ancient Greece, at the ‘origins’ of our concepts of history and geography, drawing a precise line dividing the two fields is not a simple task. As Clarke summarised, in the Hellenistic period ‘we have evidence for separate geographical and historical works (…). But the contents, organizing principles, and character of these works are often very similar’. For instance, a common problem was to establish shared reference points: just as spatial grids could be based on some physical points, the Olympiads started to act as reference dates to impose a coordinated time-system. History and geography, as we define them now, are deeply intertwined in the works of Herodotos and Polybius. Strabo wrote both a ‘Geography’ (Geographika, that survived) and a ‘History’ (Historika Hyponmemata, ‘historical sketches’, now lost); if both had survived to us, we would probably have a better idea of how the two subjects were perceived and identified in comparison with each another (Clarke 1999: 2, 11–4, 26, 344).

Some form of ‘geographical thinking’ (an awareness of the different environmental conditions into which people lived) certainly existed long before it was codified by the Greek polymath Eratosthenes in the III century BCE (Holt-Jensen 2018: 21; Geus 2018; see also Agnew and Livingstone 2011: 27 and 33–5 and Casey 1996: 20). The terms geographia and geographos (geographer) come from the verb geographeo, ‘to describe the earth’, probably by analogy with the verb geometreo, ‘to measure the earth’. Both geometria and geographia evolved into scholarly disciplines; whereas, the older kosmographia, the ‘description of the world’ (possibly the title of a now-lost work by Democritus of Abdera, dating to the V century BCE), fell into oblivion and was replaced by the more successful term geographia (Roller 2010: 1–2).

Eratosthenes, in his role of librarian at Alexandria, had access to all the most relevant sources on the known world that had been collected by that time (the III century CE), including the fresh survey of the route running along the Nile from Alexandria to Syene (modern Aswan) to Meroe (in modern Sudan). These measurements represented the basis for his calculation of the circumference of the Earth, which earned him notoriety as a mathematician; of this treatise, Peri tes anametreseos tes ges (‘On the Measurements of the Earth’), only fragments survive. He then moved to the description of what was on the Earth and wrote his Geographika by combining astronomical data with travellers’ reports, a method that was later criticised by Hipparchos and others (Roller 2010: 31 and Appendix 1).

It is interesting to note that Eratosthenes, often called the ‘Father of Geography’, was not interested in fieldwork and wrote his Geographika based on other people’s accounts; by contrast, Herodotos, commonly identified as the ‘Father of History’, based his Historiai (to be properly translated as ‘investigations’, written in the V century BCE) on his personal observations, collected during his extensive travels (Roller 2010: 17; see also Thomas 2000; Hartog 1988; Schepens 1980). In both cases, it is clear that the growing interest in the surrounding world was directly related to the increasing number and extent of travels, and to the ensuing knowledge that kept accumulating at a fast pace (Casson 1994). That the geographical knowledge was linked to the possibility of establishing contacts with local populations is indirectly testified later also by Strabo, uninterested in territories that were uninhabited (Clarke 1999: 29).

By the late Hellenistic period, Eratosthenes’ topographical data referring to the western portion of the Mediterranean were considered obsolete; and by the time Strabo wrote his Geographika (the I century CE) the westward expansion of Roman interests had greatly increased the knowledge of coasts and lands that were little known to the earlier Greek travellers, more focused on the eastern portion (e.g. Geus 2018; Roller 2010: 30–7).

Describing the surrounding world could be done at various scales and in various ways, using different tools and methods, depending on the final aims. In the II century CE, Claudios Ptolemaios, the Greek astronomer based in Alexandria, made a distinction between regional and world cartography, respectively called chorographia (literally ‘description of a country’) and geographia:

Mathematical data and geometrical calculations played a fundamental role in the progressive systematisation of the information on shape, dimensions, and distribution of the known territories (cf. Agnew and Livingstone 2011: 24–5). Travelling, however, did not necessarily rely on this type of data: moving on land and water heavily depended on objective factors such as the presence (or the absence) of roads and bridges and on the weather conditions that travellers would encounter during their journeys, as well as on the subjective, physical abilities of the travellers themselves. Travellers and sailors therefore relied on a different, intuitive, more practical geographical knowledge, which was based on commonsensical experienc...