Strabo was one of the most broad-minded of the Greek-writing geographers of the age of Augustus, and in the seventeen books of his Geographika he gathered almost the whole of the Mediterranean world into a single description. The place where he was born is Amaseia, known today as Amasya. The rocks of this city, its royal tombs and the narrow gorge of the Yeşilırmak are described in the volumes of his work devoted to Anatolia with an intimacy found in no other ancient author. The name "Strabo" means "squinty" in Latin; the Romans used the word of anyone whose eyes were crooked, and the father of Pompey too was known as "Pompeius Strabo."

Birth and Homeland

Strabo was born in 64 or 63 BC at Amaseia, one of the important cities of the region of Pontus. The sources give his year of birth as 64 BC, 63 BC or "64/63 BC"; the exact day and month are not known. The form adopted here is "64 or 63 BC." According to Pothecary's study of the name, Strabo did not adopt the three-part naming system of the Romans and remained a Greek speaker known by a single name. He was educated in Greek and wrote in Greek.

Amaseia, where he was born, was a city set at the foot of the rock of Harşena, where the Yeşilırmak (the ancient Iris) passes through a narrow gorge. Firm evidence indicates that the city was founded in the Hellenistic period by the Pontic king Mithridates I Ktistes and made the capital of the kingdom; it kept the title of metropolis for about a century, until around 183 BC, when Pharnaces I took Sinope. On coins struck in the Hellenistic period the name of the city appears as AMASSIAS. By the time Strabo was born Amaseia was no longer the capital, but traces of the royal era were everywhere: tombs cut into the rock, the remains of the palace and towers on the acropolis, water tunnels bored into the stone. The city had been taken by Lucullus in 70 BC and had then come under Roman rule through the arrangements of Pompey.

His Family: Dorylaos, Moaphernes and the Kings of Pontus

Strabo's family was wealthy and close to politics. We learn this best from his own words, for in the passage on Comana in Book XII (12.3.33) he tells the family history in some detail. He writes that the tactician Dorylaos, of whom he had spoken before, was his mother's grandfather. There was also a second Dorylaos, the son of Philetairos, who had received the greatest honors from Eupator (Mithridates VI), and in particular the priesthood of the temple at Comana. But he was caught trying to cause the kingdom to revolt to the Romans, and when he was overthrown the family fell into disrepute with him.

Long afterwards, just before the dissolution of the kingdom, "Moaphernes, my mother's uncle" came into distinction; but Moaphernes and his relatives fell again into misfortune together with the kingdom. Only some of them had left the kingdom beforehand. One of these was Strabo's maternal grandfather. He had seen that the king's cause was going badly in the war with Lucullus, and he was also angered at the king for having recently put to death his own cousin Tibios and Tibios' son Theophilos. To avenge them and himself he took pledges from Lucullus and caused fifteen garrisons to revolt against the king. "Great promises" were made in return, but when Pompey, who succeeded Lucullus in the conduct of the war, took over, he regarded as enemies all who had in any way favored Lucullus, because of the hatred that had arisen between the two men; and when he had finished the war and returned home, he prevented the Senate from ratifying the honors Lucullus had promised to certain people of Pontus. Strabo reports Pompey's reasoning: it would be unjust, he said, that when one man had brought the war to a successful end, the prizes and the distribution of the rewards should be placed in the hands of another.

Here the modern accounts part ways. Some give the man who handed the fortresses to the Romans as a paternal grandfather, whereas in Strabo's own text he is the maternal grandfather. A Turkish study based on a translation gives his name as Aeniates and the number of fortresses surrendered as fifty. Here the account keeps strictly to Strabo's own text. That nobility came through his mother is also in agreement with the author's own words.

The mark this background left on Strabo's outlook is clear. The child of a family that had served the kings of Pontus shows, throughout the Geographika, an attitude close to the Roman order. In the assessment of Lawrence Kim, Strabo is pro-Roman from beginning to end of his work; he accepts and even praises Rome's political and military superiority, yet in other contexts he also makes a marked effort to establish Greek superiority. At Amaseia Persian culture continued even after Mithridates and Tigranes had been defeated; scholars debate how the family's support for Rome affected its standing in local society and whether Roman citizenship was granted in return. There is no document on the matter, only conjecture. In Strabo's youth the family was prosperous under Roman rule, and the young man was able to receive a distinguished education.

Childhood and Education

He had his first lessons at Nysa in Caria (today Sultanhisar, near Aydın). His teacher Aristodemos was a scholar who taught rhetoric and grammar, and is counted as a grandson of the famous Stoic philosopher Posidonius; he is reported to have headed two separate schools, at Nysa and at Rhodes. The school at Nysa was known for its interest in the interpretation of Homeric poetry, and Strabo's admiration for Homer probably arose in this circle. Aristodemos had also taught the sons of the Roman commander who took Pontus. This shows how common it was in that age for Greek intellectuals to tutor the Roman elite.

At about the age of twenty-one, in 44 BC, he went to Rome and stayed there, studying and writing, until at least 31 BC. In Peripatetic (Aristotelian) philosophy he studied with Xenarchus, a respected teacher at the court of Augustus. His grammatical training he received from Tyrannion of Amisos (Samsun). Tyrannion was a friend of Cicero and the tutor of his nephew; though a Peripatetic, he was regarded as a respected authority on geography as well, and he is thought to have had a part in Strabo's later turn to that field.

The last important influence was the Stoic philosopher Athenodorus Cananites, who had lived in Rome since 44 BC and formed ties with the Roman elite. Athenodorus was also a teacher of Augustus. In spite of his Aristotelian teachers, Strabo turned increasingly to the Stoa, and the sources say Athenodorus was decisive in this. Athenodorus passed on to him his philosophy, his learning and his connections, and gave him as well his own experience of regions of the empire that Strabo did not know. In this way Strabo completed the education in rhetoric, grammar and philosophy that was proper to Greek aristocrats. Most of his teachers were in Anatolia or of Anatolian origin; even in Rome Strabo was formed within the intellectual network of Anatolia.

His reading list included, besides Homer, writers of geography and history such as Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Posidonius, Polybius and Ephorus. He was influenced by Hecataeus and Aristotle as well. He valued Homer far more than Herodotus and tried to treat the places Homer described as real places.

His Travels

Strabo summarizes his own journeys as follows (in the translation of H. L. Jones): "Westward I have journeyed to the parts of Etruria opposite Sardinia; towards the south from the Euxine to the borders of Ethiopia; and perhaps not one of those who have written geographies has visited more places than I have between those limits." The sentence is a boast, but it is also a boundary line. Strabo does not say that he traveled the whole of the Roman Empire; he did not go to Spain, Gaul, Britain or India, and he describes those regions from what others had written. Travel for sightseeing and for scholarly research was common in that age and had been made easier by the relative peace of the Augustan period.

He went to Egypt and the land of Kush and traveled through Anatolia; in 29 BC, on his way to Corinth, where Augustus was then staying, he put in at the Aegean island of Gyaros; and about 25 BC he sailed up the Nile as far as Philae. On this journey he was accompanied by the prefect of Egypt, Aelius Gallus, who was at the time mounting a military expedition against Arabia. Some accounts give the same journeys with slightly different dates (Greece in 29 BC, Egypt in 28 BC) and add that he may have stayed at Alexandria for more than five years; there are small differences over the dates. What is certain is that Strabo saw Alexandria and Egypt and read and took notes from his predecessors in its famous library. In the last book of the Geographika he describes Alexandria as a lively port city with a developed local economy, and praises its streets, wide enough for horsemen and chariots to pass. After Philae there is almost no record of his travels until AD 17.

The Historical Commentaries

His first large work was the Historical Commentaries (Historika Hypomnemata). It was written in Rome, about 20 BC. It was a continuation of the history of Polybius, a work in forty-three books that began with the Roman conquest of Greece (146 BC, the destruction of Corinth and Carthage) and ran to the Battle of Actium or to the death of Caesar. Only a single papyrus fragment and quotations in other authors survive; some sources speak of nineteen fragments. The papyrus is kept at the University of Milan. Strabo mentions this work in his own Geography, and Plutarch and Josephus are also reported to speak of the book.

The Geographika

His masterpiece is the Geographika (Geography) in seventeen books, which has survived largely intact. The date of composition is not certain. Some studies place the first draft around 7 BC, others in AD 17 or 18. The latest datable reference in the text is his mention of the death of Juba II of Mauretania, in AD 23, as having happened "a short while ago"; from this it is understood that the final form took shape under Tiberius. The work was most probably written over many years and revised regularly but not always consistently. Strabo may have written the book at the urging of his highly placed friends in Rome.

The first two books set out what geography is, its method, and his criticism of Eratosthenes and other predecessors. Strabo argues that geography is the business of a philosopher: "The science of Geography, which I now propose to investigate, is, I think, as much as any other science, a concern of the philosopher." He regards Homer as the first geographer. He acknowledges the astronomical and mathematical efforts of Eratosthenes and Hipparchus but thinks the descriptive approach more useful, since he designed his work for statesmen and commanders, who are concerned less with numbers than with the character of countries and regions.

The order of the later books is as follows: Book III is Iberia, Book IV Gaul, Britain and the Alps, Books V and VI Italy and its islands, Book VII northern and central Europe, Books VIII-X Greece and its islands, Books XI-XVI Asia, and Book XVII Egypt and Africa. In this framework, which stretches from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the river Indus in the east, the history, rivers, mountains, livelihoods, peoples and customs of each region are described. Books XII, XIII and XIV, devoted to Anatolia, were translated into Turkish by Adnan Pekman and published in 1987 by Arkeoloji ve Sanat Yayınları; there is no Turkish translation of the whole work. The Geographika is the only surviving source that describes the Greek and Roman worlds together in the age of Augustus.

It has its faults, of course. He uses a geocentric conception of the world, underestimates the size of Africa, draws some European coasts crookedly, and for India, which he never visited, passes on legendary details such as flying reptiles and winged scorpions. The description of the flying reptile fits the Indian flying lizard of today (Draco dussumieri). The same book is one of the first texts to state that the upper and lower parts of the Danube, known as the Danouios and the Istros, are the same river. For the volcanic terrain of the Katakekaumene (the Burnt Land, around Kula) he makes observations, finding it more plausible that an underground fire whose source has now died out once burst forth than that the whole country was burned at one stroke by lightning. The geologist Charles Lyell, in his Principles of Geology, stresses the depth of Strabo's view on the rising and sinking of the earth's crust; Strabo attributes the retreat or rise of the sea to the land's sometimes rising and sometimes sinking, and cites earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and sudden swellings beneath the sea as evidence. Another value of the work is that the opinions of lost writers such as Eratosthenes and Posidonius have reached us through it.

Amaseia in His Own Words

Strabo's words about Amasya are the most valuable local testimony to ancient Amaseia. The third chapter of Book XII describes Pontus and the surroundings of Amaseia. He mentions the city first while speaking of the rivers: he writes that the Iris flows "past the very wall of Amaseia, my fatherland, a very strongly fortified city," and says "my fatherland" (patris). Before it reaches Amaseia, the Iris passes through the plain of Dazimonitis, turns north past Gaziura, receives the Scylax, and after flowing past the walls of Amaseia is joined at Phanaroea by the Lycus coming from Armenia, and reaches the Black Sea by way of Themiscyra.

The description of the city comes at 12.3.39 and is a famous passage often quoted. In the Loeb translation of H. L. Jones it reads: "My city is situated in a large deep valley, through which flows the Iris River. Both by human foresight and by nature it is an admirably devised city, since it can at the same time afford the advantage of both a city and a fortress; for it is a high and precipitous rock, which descends abruptly to the river, and has on one side the wall on the edge of the river where the city is settled and on the other the wall that runs up on either side to the peaks."

Strabo continues: these peaks are two in number, are united with one another by nature, and are "magnificently towered." Within this circuit are both the palaces and the monuments of the kings. The peaks are connected by a neck that is altogether narrow, and is five or six stadia in height on either side as one goes up from the river banks and the suburbs. From the neck to the peaks there remains another ascent of one stadium, sharp and superior to any kind of force. The rock also has reservoirs of water inside it: two tube-like channels have been hewn out, one towards the river and the other towards the neck, so that the city cannot be deprived of this water supply. It is thought that these tunnels were built for military purposes and must have been vital in supplying the city's water during sieges; the entrance of a tunnel filled with earth can still be seen today.

Strabo speaks of two bridges, one from the city to the suburbs and the other from the suburbs to the outside territory. The valley extending from the river is at first not altogether wide, but it later widens out and forms the plain called Chiliocomum (Suluova); then come the Diacopene and Pimolisene country, all of it fertile, extending to the Halys (Kızılırmak). These are the northern parts of the country of the Amaseians and are about five hundred stadia in length. The remainder of their country is much longer than this and extends to Babanomus and Ximene. In Ximene there are "halae" of rock salt, after which the river is supposed to have been called "Halys." From north to south the country extends not only to Zelitis but also to Greater Cappadocia, as far as the Trocmi. The plain of Chiliocomum was about 50 km long and 10-15 km wide; in the mountains around Diacopone (Gümüşhacıköy) there were rich silver deposits.

Elsewhere, when listing the boundaries of Phazemonitis, he says that the remaining side is bounded by "my country, that of the Amaseians, which is by far the largest and best of all." He also writes that there were several demolished strongholds in the territory of Amaseia and much deserted land because of the Mithridatic War; yet he adds that it was all well supplied with trees, that a part of it afforded pasturage for horses and was adapted to the raising of other animals, and that the whole of it was beautifully adapted to habitation.

He sums up the historical status of Amaseia in one sentence: "Amaseia was also given to kings, though it is now a province." According to scholars, this sentence refers to Antony's leaving Amaseia, together with cities such as Neapolis and Neocaesarea, to local kings in 38 BC, and to its later return to direct Roman rule. In this period, when Antony distributed Pontus among Darius, Castor and, in 37 BC, Polemon, Amaseia was one of the cities of the region called Pontus Polemoniacus. Around 3/2 BC Amaseia was attached to the Roman province of Galatia (Ramsay gives the date as 7 BC) and, as metropolis of Pontus Galaticus, presided over the provincial koinon. The titles "first of Pontus" and "neokoros" on its coins are linked to this, though Neocaesarea (Niksar) used similar titles as well. When Pontus and Cappadocia were made a single province under Vespasian, Pontus Galaticus and Pontus Polemoniacus became part of this new province. Amaseia continued to strike coins in the names of emperors from Tiberius to Severus Alexander.

One more detail is striking. Describing the lentil-shaped pieces of stone he saw in front of the pyramids in Egypt, he finds the report that they are the petrified remains of the workmen's food improbable, and says: "For at home in our country (Amaseia), there is a long hill in a plain, which abounds with pebbles of a porous stone, resembling lentils." That he thinks of the plain of Amasya even on the banks of the Nile shows that his tie to his homeland continued at the level of daily observation. In the account of Celâl Şengör the passage is cited as an example of fossil formation; Strabo is speaking here of the fossils called nummulites.

The Surroundings of Amaseia and Pontus

Book XII of Strabo describes, together with Amaseia, the geography of the surrounding Pontus. Pontus was bounded on the north by the Black Sea, on the south by Cappadocia and Lesser Armenia, on the west by Paphlagonia and on the east by Colchis. The chief rivers were the Halys, the Iris and the Thermodon. The Iris had two great tributaries: the Lycus (Kelkit) passed through the plains of Eupatoria and Cabeira, and the Scylax (Çekerek), by way of the Tersakan branch, through the plains of Chiliocomum, Phazemon and Laodikeia. Describing the well-watered plains of the Iris, Strabo writes that famine never comes down on the people there, that abundance of water offsets drought, that the mountains yield grapes, pears, apples and nuts of their own accord, and that those who go out to the forest at any time in the year get an abundant supply of food.

The plain in which Amaseia lies was called Gazakene in antiquity; Pliny the Elder too places the city "in the Gazakene region, through which the Iris flows." Amaseia is a typical example of the fortress cities founded by the kings of Pontus. The territory of the city was bounded by the Lycus, the Scylax and the Iris; it embraced a region of mild climate, fertile plains and land suited to growing grain. The city was founded at the foot of Mount Harşena, 272 meters high, in a narrow gorge running east-west, on a route of passage for the trade roads.

Among the settlements around Amaseia, Phazemonitis (the area of Vezirköprü and Merzifon) had, according to Strabo, hot springs extremely good for the health; an inscription found at Havza also confirms the thermal baths. In the region a great lake called Stephane, like a sea in size, was famous for its fish and for the pastures around it (it is the lake known today as Lake Ladik). On its shore lay the now deserted fortress of Icizari and a royal palace in ruins. The stronghold of Sagylium, built on a high and steep rock, also had inside it a reservoir of water useful to the kings in many respects. According to Strabo, Arsaces, one of the sons of King Pharnaces, was captured and slain here while attempting a revolution without permission; the stronghold was taken by Polemon and Lycomedes, but Arsaces surrendered chiefly from starvation, because on Pompey's order the wells of the reservoir had been choked up by huge rocks. Pompey had ordered the garrisons pulled down so that they should not be left useful to those who wished to flee up to them for the sake of robbery.

At Cabeira stood the palace of Mithridates VI, along with water-mills, zoological gardens, hunting grounds and mines. Eupatoria was the settlement Mithridates VI founded in his own name; according to Strabo, Pompey found it only half-finished and added to it territory and settlers, and called it Magnopolis. The people of the city had been punished by the king during the Mithridatic Wars, on the ground that they had not fought against the Romans but surrendered, and the city was turned to ruin. Zela (Zile) was a temple city south of Amaseia, built on a mound of Semiramis, and stood on the road linking the port of Amisos to Amaseia. Zela, together with Comana, was one of the three religious centers around Amaseia, and these centers kept their privileged position for a long time thanks to Rome's policy of religious tolerance.

Of the eleven politeiai established in Pontus by Pompey's Lex Pompeia (64/63 BC), seven lay around Amaseia (Neapolis, Zela, Diospolis, Nikopolis, Amaseia, Megalopolis and Eupatoria-Magnopolis), and according to Fletcher, among these settlements the only true "polis" was Amaseia. Zela, Amisos and Amaseia kept their old names after Pompey as well. Scholars differ over whether Amaseia belonged on the list of foundations: in the most widely accepted list Amaseia does not appear, while some scholars put Amaseia and Nikopolis, or Amaseia and Abonuteichos, in place of Heracleia and Tieum. Pompey also had a wide network of roads built linking the cities and had the fortresses of the Pontic kingdom demolished. The real aim of this policy was to do away with the feudal order nourished by the mountainous geography of Pontus and to secure Roman sovereignty in the region. Such was the political climate of Amasya in the age when Strabo was born: the age of the kings had ended, the Roman order had only just been established, and the old royal capital was undergoing transformation.

Royal Tombs, Zeus Stratios and What Strabo Saw

Traces of the buildings Strabo means by "the palaces and monuments of the kings" can still be seen today. The Pontic kings who died while Amaseia was the capital (Mithridates I, Ariobarzanes, Mithridates II, Mithridates III and Pharnaces I) were buried in monumental tombs cut into the rocks at the foot of the acropolis; the largest of the tombs is about 15 meters high, 8 meters wide and 6 meters deep. On the acropolis stood the palace that was the residence of the kingdom; the cisterns cut into the rock and the tunnels descending to the Iris are the archaeological counterpart of the arrangement Strabo describes.

The protecting god of Amaseia was Zeus Stratios (Zeus of the Armies). This cult had been adopted by the kings of Pontus as the official royal cult, and its origin goes back to Ahura Mazda, the protecting god of the Persian Achaemenid dynasty; the warrior kings of Pontus regarded him as the guarantor of the army and of victories. The sanctuary lay about ten kilometers east of the city, about 3 km southwest of Ebemi (Yassıçal) on the road to Phanaroea (Taşova); at the beginning of the twentieth century Franz Cumont found there remains of the enclosure wall, pottery fragments and three inscriptions mentioning Zeus Stratios. It is recorded that Mithridates VI kept a standing garrison at Amaseia, visited the sanctuary often and had an altar made for the god. It is thought that sacrifices were offered in the names of the kings and that representatives of the villages within the city's territory held festivals here at certain times of the year. The cult continued to be honored in the Roman period; on imperial coins appear images such as a festival fire, an eagle with spread wings, a tree and a quadriga.

Strabo himself does not relate all of these details. What he writes is the topography of the city, its water, its bridges and its fertile land. The place of Zeus Stratios and the dimensions of the tombs rest on modern archaeological and epigraphic work.

Last Years and Death

The end of Strabo's life is uncertain. The latest date in his work is AD 23; if the phrase "a short while ago" was written within a year, Strabo is taken to have stopped writing that year or the next (AD 24) and to have died about then. His death is therefore generally given as AD 24 (23 or 25 in some studies). In some accounts the span of his life is given as 63 BC to AD 21 or 23.

The sources differ over the place of death. Many Turkish accounts say "born in Amasya, died in Amasya" and write that he returned to his homeland after his long travels. Foreign sources leave the place of death simply as "the Roman Empire," since no more precise place is known. Some studies say his death most probably took place at his home, while mentioning the eastern Mediterranean or Naples as other possibilities. Whether the work was written in Rome, and whether Strabo finally returned to Amasya, is for this reason disputed as well. "He returned to his homeland and died there" is a common account; no firm document has been found.

His Legacy

The Geographika did not receive in its own age the attention it might have been expected to. Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy do not mention it; in the East it was used by writers such as Josephus, and in the Byzantine period it was widely read and copied. In western Europe the first Latin translation was published at Rome around 1469 (some studies give 1472); the first printed Greek edition appeared at Venice in 1516; and Isaac Casaubon prepared the first critical edition in 1587. Every scholar who studies ancient Anatolia, Pontus and Amaseia turns first to Strabo.

In Amasya Strabo's memory is kept alive by the Strabo Statue on the bank of the Yeşilırmak; photographs of it circulate widely. Information on when the statue was made and by whom could not be verified in this study. There may also be schools, streets or institutions in the city that bear Strabo's name, but since no reliable source was found for them they have not been written down. Strabo was a kind of frontier man: he descended from a Pontic line of Persian origin, he wrote in Greek and he accepted the Roman order. It was from this position that he described Amasya as well, as a city that was neither fully a kingdom nor fully a province, lying between the river and the rock.

Chronology

About 183 BC: Pharnaces I takes Sinope; the period of Amaseia as capital ends.

70 BC: Lucullus takes Amaseia.

64/63 BC: Birth at Amaseia (the sources differ); reorganization of Pontus by the Lex Pompeia.

About 44 BC: Settles in Rome.

38 BC: Antony leaves Amaseia to local kings.

31 BC: The last year in which he is known to be still in Rome.

29 BC: Puts in at the island of Gyaros on the way to Corinth.

About 25 BC: Voyage up the Nile with Aelius Gallus, as far as Philae.

About 20 BC: Writing of the Historical Commentaries.

About 7 BC: The date proposed for the first draft of the Geographika.

About 3/2 BC: Amaseia is attached to the province of Galatia and becomes the metropolis of Pontus Galaticus.

AD 23: The latest date in the text: the death of Juba II.

AD 24: The generally given year of death (the place is not certain).

About 1469: The first Latin translation of the Geographika (Rome).

1516: The first printed Greek edition (Venice).

1587: Casaubon's first critical edition.

Sources

Primary sources

  • Strabo, Geographika (Geography), Book XII, chapter 3 (paragraphs 15, 30, 33, 37-39), English translation on Thayer's LacusCurtius page, penelope.uchicago.edu. penelope.uchicago.edu
  • "Strabo", Wikipedia (English), en.wikipedia.org. en.wikipedia.org
  • "Strabon", Vikipedi (Turkish), tr.wikipedia.org. tr.wikipedia.org
  • "Amasyalı Strabon Kimdir? Coğrafyacıların Atası", Tarih Vakti, tarihvakti.com. tarihvakti.com

Academic studies

  • Kamil Doğancı - Recep Altın, "Strabon'a Göre Antikçağda Amaseia ve Çevresi", Karadeniz Araştırmaları, XV/58, Summer 2018, pp. 1-25 (DergiPark).
  • Nazan Karakaş Özür, "Strabo'nun Coğrafyası", İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Coğrafya Dergisi, issue 30, 2015, pp. 79-90 (DergiPark).

Online sources