Born 64 BC
Died after 21 AD
Strabo was a Greek geographer and historian. His written geography is an encyclopedic chronicle and consists of political, economic, social, cultural, and geographic descriptions covering almost all of Europe and the Mediterranean: Britain and Ireland, the Iberian Peninsula, Gaul, Germania, the Alps, Italy, Greece, Northern Black Sea region, Anatolia, Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa. Strabo's Geography is the only existing work covering the whole range of peoples and countries known to both Greeks and Romans during the reign of Augustus (27 BC–14 AD).
It is not known precisely when this work was written, though comments within the work itself place the finished version within the reign of Emperor Tiberius. Some place its first drafts around 7 BC, others around AD 17 or 18. The latest passage to which a date can be assigned is his reference to the death in AD 23 of Juba II, king of Maurousia (Mauretania), who is said to have died "just recently". On the presumption that "recently" means within a year, Strabo stopped writing that year or the next (AD 24), at which time he is thought to have died.
He was influenced by Homer, Hecataeus and Aristotle. The first of Strabo's major works, Historical Sketches (Historica hypomnemata), written while he was in Rome (20 BC), is nearly completely lost. Meant to cover the history of the known world from the conquest of Greece by the Romans, Strabo quotes it himself and other classical authors mention that it existed, although the only surviving document is a fragment of papyrus now in the possession of the University of Milan.