Strabo of Amaseia was a historian and geographer who wrote in Greek in the age of Augustus and Tiberius. He left two major works known by name: the Historika Hypomnemata (Historical Sketches), a history in forty-seven books, and the Geographika (Geography) in seventeen books. The first is lost apart from a few quotations and a fragment of papyrus; the second has survived almost entire and has long been read as the most comprehensive ancient work to gather the Mediterranean world, from Europe to India and from the Black Sea to Ethiopia, into a single account. For Amasya its importance is of a special kind: Strabo calls the city of his birth "my fatherland" and describes it, in the Pontic section of Book XII, in a detail found in no other ancient author. His life, family and travels are told at length in Strabo: The Geographer of Amaseia Who Wrote the World.

Life

Strabo was born in 64 or 63 BC at Amaseia, the old royal city of Pontus, into a family that on his mother's side had served the kings of Pontus. He studied with Aristodemus at Nysa in Caria and, in Rome, with Tyrannion of Amisos, the Peripatetic Xenarchus and the Stoic Athenodorus; after 44 BC he lived for many years in Rome, and around 25 BC he travelled up the Nile as far as Philae with Aelius Gallus, prefect of Egypt. Since the latest datable event in his work is the death of King Juba II of Mauretania, he is held to have died some time after AD 23. Where he spent his last years is disputed: some scholars place him in Rome, others in his native Amaseia.

Works

Historika Hypomnemata (Historical Sketches)

Strabo's first major work was a history in Greek prose, generally thought to have been written in Rome around 20 BC. Its title and purpose are known from his own words. In the introduction to the Geographika, defining geography, like history, as knowledge useful to statesmen and rulers, he refers to his earlier book as follows:

διόπερ ἡμεῖς πεποιηκότες ὑπομνήματα ἱστορικὰ χρήσιμα, ὡς ὑπολαμβάνομεν, εἰς τὴν ἠθικὴν καὶ πολιτικὴν φιλοσοφίαν, ἔγνωμεν προσθεῖναι καὶ τήνδε τὴν σύνταξιν· ὁμοειδὴς γὰρ καὶ αὕτη, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς αὐτοὺς ἄνδρας, καὶ μάλιστα τοὺς ἐν ταῖς ὑπεροχαῖς.

In English: "For this reason, having written our Historical Sketches, which we believe are useful for moral and political philosophy, we decided to add the present work to them; for it is of the same kind, addressed to the same men, and above all to those in high positions." In the same passage Strabo likens the method of the two works: just as history records the great deeds in the lives of famous men and passes over trivial details, geography should leave aside what is small and obscure and dwell on what is great and memorable, and he compares his own book to a "colossal work" of sculpture that should be judged as a whole rather than in its details.

The only concrete clue to the structure of the work lies in a sentence on Parthian customs. Describing the Parthians in Book XI, he says: "εἰρηκότες δὲ πολλὰ περὶ τῶν Παρθικῶν νομίμων ἐν τῇ ἕκτῃ τῶν ἱστορικῶν ὑπομνημάτων βίβλῳ, δευτέρᾳ δὲ τῶν μετὰ Πολύβιον, παραλείψομεν ἐνταῦθα" (since we have said much about Parthian customs in the sixth book of the Historical Sketches, that is, the second of those following Polybius, we pass over them here). From this it appears that the main body of the work was a continuation beginning where Polybius left off, that is, in 146 BC, when Rome destroyed Corinth and Carthage, and that this body was preceded by four introductory books; the last point is an inference from the book numbers. The Loeb translator Horace Leonard Jones states that the work comprised forty-seven books in all. Where the narrative ended is uncertain; it is thought to have come down to the Battle of Actium or to the death of Caesar.

The work is lost. What remains are Strabo's own references, a few passages quoted by later authors and a fragment of papyrus kept in the collection of the University of Milan. What can be said of its contents is therefore limited to the subjects that Strabo passes over in the Geographika with a note that he has treated them in his history. The weight of the loss is clearer when one recalls that Strabo knew the last days of the Pontic kingdom from family memory: a history telling the Mithridatic wars and Pompey's settlement of Pontus through the eyes of a man of Amaseia was very probably among these books, though this is only a conjecture drawn from the scope of the work.

Geographika (Geography)

Strabo's masterpiece is the Geographika in seventeen books. It is written in Greek prose and describes the known world country by country and region by region. Its date is disputed. Jones, on internal evidence, argues that most of the work was written around 7 BC and revised later; the mention in Book XIII of Sardis and other cities damaged by earthquake being restored with the help of Tiberius, "the present emperor", and the reference in Book XVII to Juba's death as a recent event show that the final revision was made in the reign of Tiberius. Where it was written is also unclear. The Italian historian Ettore Pais argued that the material was collected at Alexandria and Rome but that the actual writing and later retouching were done far from Rome, at Amaseia; Jones reports this view but reminds the reader in a footnote that Strabo may have been living in Rome at his death. The preface to the English translation of 1854-1857 likewise names Amaseia as Strabo's "usual place of residence".

The arrangement of the work proceeds, in Strabo's own order, from west to east. The contents of the books are, in brief, as follows:

Books I and II: These deal with the definition and method of geography. Strabo argues that geography is the concern of the philosopher, counts Homer as the first geographer, and discusses and criticises one by one the views of Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Posidonius and Polybius. At the end of Book II he sets out his own picture of the world: the shape and size of the inhabited earth, the climatic zones, how a map ought to be drawn and the limits of his own travels.

Book III: This is devoted to Iberia (Spain and Portugal). The fertility and mines of Turdetania in the valley of the Baetis (Guadalquivir), the peoples of the Atlantic coast, the Mediterranean coast and the interior, and Gadeira (Cádiz) and the Balearic islands are treated in turn.

Book IV: This describes Gaul beyond the Alps (Narbonensis, Aquitania, the region of Lugdunum and the land of the Belgae), Britain and the islands of the ocean; the book closes with the Alps and the Alpine peoples.

Books V and VI: These are devoted to Italy. Book V starts from the foot of the Alps and covers the Po plain, Liguria, Etruria, Umbria, the country of the Sabines, Latium, the city of Rome and Campania. Book VI describes southern Italy, Sicily and the coasts of Apulia, and ends with an assessment of the causes that raised Rome to its great power.

Book VII: This describes the rest of Europe, that is, Germania beyond the Rhine, the Cimbri, the Getae along the Danube, the northern shores of the Black Sea, Illyria, Pannonia, Thrace and Epirus. The end of the book is lost; the final part, devoted to Macedonia and Thrace, is known only from fragments compiled from abridgements (epitomes) made in the Byzantine period.

Books VIII, IX and X: These are devoted to Greece. Book VIII describes the Peloponnese (Elis, Messenia, Laconia, the Argolid, Corinth, Achaea and Arcadia); Book IX, Attica with a long praise of Athens, followed by Boeotia, Phocis, Locris and Thessaly; Book X, Euboea, Aetolia and Acarnania together with Crete and the Aegean islands. In these books Strabo dwells at length on the question of where the places named in Homer lie today.

Book XI: Here the work passes to Asia. Starting from the river Tanais (Don), it covers the peoples of the Caucasus, Caucasian Iberia and Albania, the stories told about the Amazons, the lands around the Caspian Sea, Hyrcania, Parthia and Bactria, Media and Armenia.

Book XII: This describes the interior and northern parts of Anatolia: Cappadocia, Pontus, Paphlagonia, Bithynia, Galatia, Lycaonia, Pisidia, Mysia and Phrygia. The description of Amaseia is in the Pontic section of this book. The beginning of the book is missing.

Book XIII: Starting south of the Propontis (Sea of Marmara), this describes the Troad, the debate over Troy, Lesbos, the Aeolian coast, the kingdom of Pergamon and Lydia.

Book XIV: This describes Ionia (Ephesus, Miletus, Smyrna), Caria, Rhodes, the coasts of Lycia, Pamphylia and Cilicia, and Cyprus; Anatolia thus becomes, across three books, one of the regions to which the work gives most space.

Book XV: This describes India, Ariana west of the Indus, and Persis. These lands, which Strabo never saw, are reported from the accounts of writers who took part in Alexander's campaign, and details resting on hearsay take up no small part of the book.

Book XVI: This describes Assyria and Babylon, Mesopotamia, Syria, Phoenicia and Judaea, Arabia and the coasts of the Red Sea.

Book XVII: This describes Egypt and Africa. The description of Alexandria, the journey along the Nile, the pyramids and the Ethiopian frontier are in this book; the work ends with the coasts of Libya, Carthage and Mauretania.

The work was little known in its own time. The preface to the English translation of 1854-1857 notes that Strabo's name was unknown to his contemporaries and passed over in silence by later writers on the subject; the fact that the work was in Greek and its sheer size played a part in this. It continued to be read and copied in Byzantium, and the text known today derives from those copies. Western Europe first came to know it through a Latin translation issued in Rome around 1469; the first printed Greek text appeared in Venice in 1516, and Isaac Casaubon prepared the first critical edition in 1587. One of the Greek texts in frequent use today is the edition August Meineke published in the Teubner series at Leipzig in 1877. In English, the translation by H. C. Hamilton and W. Falconer, published in London between 1854 and 1857, and that of Horace Leonard Jones in the Loeb Classical Library are widely read. Books XII, XIII and XIV, devoted to Anatolia, were brought into Turkish in 1987 in the translation of Adnan Pekman.

Amasya in His Works

What Strabo wrote about Amaseia is the most detailed local testimony to the city surviving from antiquity, and all of it is in the third chapter of Book XII of the Geographika. He first names the city while describing the rivers that water the plain of Themiscyra. Having said that the Iris (Yeşilırmak) passes through Comana and the plain of Dazimonitis, turns north before Gaziura and receives the Scylax (Çekerek), he continues:

καὶ παρʼ αὐτὸ τὸ τῆς Ἀμασείας ἐνεχθεὶς τεῖχος, τῆς ἡμετέρας πατρίδος, πόλεως ἐρυμνοτάτης, εἰς τὴν Φανάροιαν πρόεισιν· ἐνταῦθα δὲ συμβαλὼν ὁ Λύκος αὐτῷ τὰς ἀρχὰς ἐξ Ἀρμενίας ἔχων γίνεται καὶ αὐτὸς Ἶρις.

In English: "... and, flowing right past the walls of Amaseia, our fatherland, a city very strongly fortified, it proceeds into Phanaroea. There the Lycus (Kelkit), which has its sources in Armenia, joins it and itself becomes the Iris." Strabo's words "our fatherland" (hēmetera patris) mark one of the few places in the whole work where he states his origin so plainly.

The principal description of the city is at XII.3.39. The Greek text of the passage is given below:

ἡ δʼ ἡμετέρα πόλις κεῖται μὲν ἐν φάραγγι βαθείᾳ καὶ μεγάλῃ, διʼ ἧς ὁ Ἶρις φέρεται ποταμός, κατεσκεύασται δὲ θαυμαστῶς προνοίᾳ τε καὶ φύσει, πόλεως τε ἅμα καὶ φρουρίου παρέχεσθαι χρείαν δυναμένη· πέτρα γὰρ ὑψηλὴ καὶ περίκρημνος κατερρωγυῖα ἐπὶ τὸν ποταμόν, τῇ μὲν ἔχουσα τὸ τεῖχος ἐπὶ τῷ χείλει τοῦ ποταμοῦ καθʼ ὃ ἡ πόλις συνῴκισται, τῇ δʼ ἀνατρέχον ἑκατέρωθεν ἐπὶ τὰς κορυφάς· δύο δʼ εἰσὶ συμφυεῖς ἀλλήλαις πεπυργωμέναι παγκάλως· ἐν δὲ τῷ περιβόλῳ τούτῳ βασίλειά τʼ ἐστὶ καὶ μνήματα βασιλέων· αἱ κορυφαὶ δʼ ἔχουσιν αὐχένα παντάπασι στενόν, πέντε ἢ ἓξ σταδίων ἑκατέρωθεν τὸ ὕψος ἀπὸ τῆς ποταμίας ἀναβαίνοντι καὶ τῶν προαστείων· ἀπὸ δὲ τοῦ αὐχένος ἐπὶ τὰς κορυφὰς ἄλλη σταδιαία λείπεται πρόσβασις ὀξεῖα καὶ πάσης βίας κρείττων· ἔχει δὲ καὶ ὑδρεῖα ἐντὸς ἀναφαίρετα, συρίγγων τετμημένων δυεῖν, τῆς μὲν ἐπὶ τὸν ποταμὸν τῆς δʼ ἐπὶ τὸν αὐχένα· ἐπέζευκται δὲ γέφυρα τῷ ποταμῷ μία μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς πόλεως ἐπὶ τὸ προάστειον, ἄλλη δʼ ἀπὸ τοῦ προαστείου πρὸς τὴν ἔξω χώραν· κατὰ γὰρ τὴν γέφυραν ταύτην ἀπολήγει τὸ ὄρος τὸ τῆς πέτρας ὑπερκείμενον. αὐλὼν δʼ ἐστὶν ἀπὸ τοῦ ποταμοῦ διήκων οὐ πλατὺς τὸ πρῶτον τελέως, ἔπειτα πλατύνεται καὶ ποιεῖ τὸ Χιλιόκωμον καλούμενον πεδίον· εἶθʼ ἡ Διακοπηνὴ καὶ ἡ Πιμωλισηνὴ χώρα πᾶσα εὐδαίμων μέχρι τοῦ Ἅλυος. ταῦτα μὲν τὰ ἀρκτικὰ μέρη τῆς τῶν Ἀμασέων χώρας, μῆκος ὅσον πεντακοσίων σταδίων· ἔπειθʼ ἑξῆς ἡ λοιπὴ πολὺ ταύτης ἐπιμηκεστέρα μέχρι τοῦ Βαβανόμου καὶ τῆς Ξιμήνης, ἥπερ καὶ αὐτὴ καθήκει μέχρι πρὸς τὸν Ἅλυν· τοῦτο μὲν δὴ τὸ μῆκος, πλάτος δὲ τὸ ἀπὸ τῶν ἄρκτων πρὸς νότον ἐπί τε τὴν Ζηλῖτιν καὶ τὴν μεγάλην Καππαδοκίαν μέχρι τῶν Τροκμῶν. εἰσὶ δʼ ἐν τῇ Ξιμήνῃ ἅλαι ὀρυκτῶν ἁλῶν, ἀφʼ ὧν εἰκάζουσιν εἰρῆσθαι Ἅλυν τὸν ποταμόν. ἔστι δὲ καὶ ἐρύματα πλείω κατεσκαμμένα ἐν τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ χώρᾳ καὶ ἔρημος γῆ πολλὴ διὰ τὸν Μιθριδατικὸν πόλεμον. ἔστι μέντοι πᾶσα μὲν εὔδενδρος, ἡ δʼ ἱππόβοτος καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις θρέμμασι πρόσφορος· ἅπασα δʼ οἰκήσιμος καλῶς. ἐδόθη δὲ καὶ ἡ Ἀμάσεια βασιλεῦσι, νῦν δʼ ἐπαρχία ἐστί.

In English: "Our city lies in a deep and large gorge through which the river Iris flows. It has been wonderfully arranged both by human foresight and by nature, and can serve at once as a city and as a fortress. For a high rock, sheer on every side, drops steeply to the river. On one side, where the city has been built, a wall runs along the river bank; on the other, walls run up on both sides to the summits. The summits are two, naturally joined to each other, and very handsomely furnished with towers. Within this circuit are both the palace and the tombs of the kings. The neck joining the summits is altogether narrow; for one going up from the river bank and the suburbs it is five or six stadia high on either side. From the neck to the summits there remains a further ascent of one stadium, steep and proof against any assault. Inside the rock there are also water supplies that cannot be cut off: two tunnels have been hewn, one towards the river and the other towards the neck. Two bridges span the river, one from the city to the suburb, the other from the suburb to the land outside, for the mountain that rises above the rock ends at this bridge. From the river a valley extends; at first it is not at all wide, then it widens and forms the plain called Chiliocomum. Then come Diacopene and Pimolisene, a land wholly fertile as far as the Halys (Kızılırmak). These are the northern parts of the country of the Amaseians, about five hundred stadia in length. After them comes the rest, much longer than this, reaching to Babanomus and Ximene, which itself extends to the Halys. That is the length; the breadth runs from north to south, to Zelitis and Greater Cappadocia, as far as the Trocmi. In Ximene there are diggings of rock salt (halai), from which it is conjectured that the river Halys took its name. In our country there are many fortresses that were demolished and much land left deserted because of the Mithridatic War. Yet the whole of it is well wooded, part of it suited to the rearing of horses and other animals, and all of it well fitted for settlement. Amaseia too was given to kings, but it is now a province."

This text is the oldest written description of the Harşena rock, the royal tombs, the palace on the acropolis, the water tunnels cut into the rock and the bridges over the Yeşilırmak. Chiliocomum is identified with present-day Suluova, Diacopene with the area of Gümüşhacıköy and Pimolisene with the region of Osmancık. The last sentence records that the city returned to Roman rule after Antony had left Amaseia to local kings, and it also gives a hint about the date at which this part of the work was written.

Strabo names the territory of Amaseia once more when listing the borders of Phazemonitis (the area of Vezirköprü and Merzifon). After saying that the region is closed on the north by Gazelonitis and the territory of Amisos, on the west by the Halys and on the east by Phanaroea, he adds: "τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν ἡ ἡμετέρα χώρα ἡ τῶν Ἀμασέων, πολὺ πασῶν πλείστη καὶ ἀρίστη" (the remaining side is bounded by our country, that of the Amaseians, by far the largest and best of all). In the same chapter he also describes the hot springs of the Phazemonitae, extremely good for the health, the lake of Stiphane and the deserted fortress of Icizari on its shore.

His homeland came to Strabo's mind in Egypt as well. In Book XVII he reports the story that lentil-shaped stones found in the heaps of chippings before the pyramids were the petrified remains of the workmen's food, and answers it with an observation of his own: "καὶ γὰρ οἴκοι παρʼ ἡμῖν λόφος ἐστὶν ἐν πεδίῳ παραμήκης, οὗτος δʼ ἐστὶ μεστὸς ψήφων φακοειδῶν λίθου πωρείας" (for at home, in our country, there is a long hill in a plain, and it is full of lentil-shaped pebbles of porous stone). This sentence, thought to refer to the fossils known today as nummulites, shows that Strabo also knew the country around Amaseia as ground he had walked and seen.

The Comana section (XII.3.33), where he tells his family history, is also indirectly tied to Amaseia. In recounting his mother's great-grandfather Dorylaus the tactician, the second Dorylaus who received the high priesthood of Comana from Mithridates VI, and his maternal grandfather who handed over fifteen fortresses to Lucullus against the king, Strabo relates the internal reckonings of the last generation of the Pontic kingdom from a family memory. These lines also explain why the Pontic sections of his work are so detailed.

Influence and Assessment in the Sources

The Geographika is valuable both as the widest surviving compendium of ancient geography and as a source that preserves the views of writers whose works are lost, such as Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Posidonius and Polybius. Because Strabo presents his own observations by debating them with these writers, the work is also a critical history of Hellenistic geographical science. For scholars of Amasya it is the only contemporary text describing the topography and land of the Pontic royal capital and its passage to Roman rule; European travellers who came to the city in the nineteenth century identified the royal tombs and the remains of the citadel by comparing them with Strabo's description.

Strabo also took an early place in Amasya's local historiography. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, listing the city's old epithets in the first volume of his Amasya Tarihi, says that it took the name "Medînetü'l-Hükemâ" (city of the sages) because "Strabo, the famous inventor of so important a science as geography" grew up here. In the same volume, describing the royal tombs, he quotes Charles Texier's remark that "of the histories of the site of Amasya, the most perfect is that of Strabo". In the second volume he gives in Turkish Georges Perrot's quotation from Strabo and introduces Strabo as follows:

Amasyalı İstrabon, Yedinci Mihridâd ile Üçüncü Farnâk'a yetişmiş ve Roma imparatoru Ogustus devrinde Roma'da vefât etmişdir. İstrabon felsefe-i kadîme, edebiyât, târîh, coğrafya ve riyâzât ulûmunda gâyet mâhir bir hakîm-i kadîm olup coğrâfiyyûnun pîri ve coğrafya ilminin mûcidi olmak üzere meşhûrdur.

In English: "Strabo of Amasya lived in the time of the Seventh Mithridates and the Third Pharnaces and died in Rome in the reign of the Roman emperor Augustus. A sage of antiquity highly skilled in ancient philosophy, literature, history, geography and mathematics, he is famous as the master of geographers and the founder of the science of geography." Hüsâmeddin's numbering of the kings does not match the order accepted today, nor does his date of death match the internal evidence of the work; since Augustus died in AD 14 and Strabo mentions an event of AD 23, his death must fall in the reign of Tiberius. In the same place Hüsâmeddin notes that of the bridges Strabo describes only the Alçak Köprü remained, and that it too had sunk into the riverbed and a new bridge had been built on top of it.

The fortunes of Strabo's two works were very different. The history book that he himself considered useful for moral and political philosophy was lost; his geography, copied over the centuries, came down to us and formed the foundation of what is known about Pontus and Amaseia. His statue on the bank of the Yeşilırmak in Amasya and the accounts that so often name the city show how this second work, and above all the description at XII.3.39, has settled into the city's identity.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources