Ancient Geography: The Discovery of the World in Classical Greece and Rome

Before Columbus there was Eratosthenes: inventor of the discipline of geography as it is known today and the first person to calculate the circumference of the Earth. There was Alexander the Great: the man who sought to reach the very ends of the known world and whose empire spanned three continents, from the Ionian Sea to the Himalayas. And there was Strabo: author of the Geographica, a 17-volume encyclopaedia of geographical knowledge which expounded the definition, history and mathematics of geography, both physical and human, and charted the limits of the habitable world. These are but three of a multitude of figures whose contributions to geography and human knowledge have left an enduring and indelible legacy. In this, the first major study of ancient geography and geographers to be published in English for more than 60 years, Duane Roller offers a comprehensive account of these ancient pioneers and the frontiers that defined their world. From the Bronze Age to Late Antiquity, Roller maps the development of geographical scholarship from its incipient beginnings in the literature of Hesiod, Homer, Herodotus, and the tragedians through to the learned compendia of Posidonius and Strabo - and the scientific discoveries of Pythagoras, Eratosthenes, and Euclid that made it all possible. A vital resource for students and scholars alike, Ancient Geography: The Discovery of the World in Classical Greece and Rome is the definitive guide to how the triumphs and the errors of antiquity laid the foundations for millennia of voyaging and exploration.