SOURCE: An introduction to Selections from Strabo, Clarendon Press, 1893, 1-53.

In the following essay, Tozer provides an overview of Strabo, his life and death, teachers and influences, political views, travels, and the Geography—discussing its intended audience, style, and critical reception.

On Strabo’s Life and Works.

As the events of Strabo’s life are almost entirely unnoticed by other writers, we are obliged, in endeavouring to trace them, to have recourse to statements incidentally introduced into his Geography. He was born at Amasia in Pontus, of which place … he has left us a succinct but graphic description in his Twelfth Book (Extract No. 58). That city—the remarkable position of which, and its rock-hewn sepulchres, ‘the tombs of the kings,’ as they were called, excite the admiration of the modern traveller—was at one time the residence of the sovereigns of Pontus, and became a considerable centre of...