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Strabo's Geographica

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Strabo's Geographica, the only surviving work from the ancient world that describes the entire world known to the Greeks and Romans.

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 Cambridge

Maria Pretzler
Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at Swansea University

Benet Salway
Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at UCL

Producer: Thomas Morris.

Available now

48 minutes

Last on

Thu 10 Apr 2014 21:30

LINKS AND FURTHER READING

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READING LIST:

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Katherine Clarke, Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Constructions of the Roman World (Oxford University Press, 1999)

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Daniela Dueck, Strabo of Amasia: A Greek Man of Letters in Augustan Rome (Routledge, 2000)

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Daniela Dueck, Geography in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2012)

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D. Dueck, H. Lindsay & S. Pothecary, Strabo’s Cultural Geography: The Making of a Kolossourgia (Cambridge University Press, 2005)

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Eratosthenes (trans. Duane W. Roller), Eratosthenes’ Geography (Princeton University

Press, 2010)

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Nicholas Nicastro, Circumference: Eratosthenes and the Ancient Quest to Measure the Globe (St Martin's Press, 2008)

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C. Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (University of Michigan Press, 1991)

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Maria Pretzler, Pausanias: Travel Writing in Ancient Greece (Duckworth, 2007)

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J. S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought: Geography, Exploration and Fiction (Princeton University Press, 1992)

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Strabo (trans. Duane W. Roller), The Geography of Strabo: An English Translation, with Introduction and Notes (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)

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Strabo (trans. H. L. Jones), Geography (Loeb Classical Library, 8 vols, Harvard University Press, 1917-1930)

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Richard J. A. Talbert (ed.), Ancient Perspectives: Maps and Their Place in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome (Chicago University Press, 2012)

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Credits

Role Contributor
Presenter Melvyn Bragg
Interviewed Guest Paul Cartledge
Interviewed Guest Maria Pretzler
Interviewed Guest Benet Salway
Producer Thomas Morris

Broadcasts

  • Thu 10 Apr 2014 09:00
  • Thu 10 Apr 2014 21:30

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