Introduction

We do not know much about Strabo of Amasia. In his extant voluminous <italic>Geography</italic>, he is reluctant to surrender details regarding his personal life, even basic information such as his full name and his residential abode as an adult. Nevertheless, there is a generally accepted outline of the man's profile. Strabo was born in Amasia, Pontus, in about 64 <small-caps>bce</small-caps>. He received a traditional Hellenistic education from the best Asian teachers at the time. As a young adult he accompanied Aelius Gallus, the Roman governor of Egypt, on his mission and later spent some years in Rome. During his earlier career Strabo composed a historiographical work now mostly lost, which was intended to survey world events as a sequel to Polybius' <italic>History</italic>. Later he concentrated on the massive endeavour of describing the entire <italic>oikoumene</italic>, producing the seventeen-book work we hold now as the <italic>Geography</italic>. He died sometime after 23 <small-caps>ce</small-caps> Strabo refers to his <italic>Geography</italic> as a <italic>kolossourgia</italic>, a ‘<italic>kolossos</italic> of a work’ (1.1.23). A <italic>kolossos</italic> is a statue of huge proportions and the point of the comparison, as Strabo tells us, is scale. Just as a colossal statue produces in the mind of the observer an overall impression that does not depend on a detailed representation in all its parts, so Strabo intends his <italic>Geography</italic> to represent the world as a whole, rather than individual regions in microcosm. When and where was this <italic>kolossourgia</italic> composed? On these questions the contributors to this volume did not get over-exercised.