In the ancient Greco-Roman world the boundaries between genres of prose literature remained fluid and blurred. This was especially true of the twin disciplines of geography and history and of cultural-geographical and historical works of literature. Recent research has correctly tended to question whether history and geography ever were regarded as sharply demarcated disciplines in terms of their main subject matter, methods, and typical representatives (Prontera 1984b; Marincola 1997: 12-19; 1999; Clarke 1999a). The first part of this chapter will therefore address the close relationship between geography and history. Reflections on the relationship between geography and history are in no way tangential only to a peripheral area of ancient historiography; in fact they lead directly to an appreciation of how its best Greco-Roman representatives conceptualized their task. The widespread assumption that there were in the ancient world two disciplines, strictly separated from one another, history and geography, as well as other genres of geographical and historiographical writings, has been demonstrated, upon closer examination, to result from a projection of modern conditions into the past. This anachronistic conception arose as a consequence of institutional (schools, universities, academia) and scientific development, and the progressive differentiation of the subjects of history and geography in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with respect to the Greco-Roman world. The current interdisciplinary subject of‘‘historical geography’’ is more similar to the proximal, symbiotic relationship of ancient geography and history (Olshausen 1991; Baker 1992, 2003; Warnecke 1999: 225-230).
The second part of this chapter presents a summary overview of both the development of the two main directions in ancient geography and its most prominent representatives. Apart from the thorough study of historical-geographical writings, it has proven necessary since early times for good geographers to collect information while undertaking extensive journeys through as many parts of the world as possible, and to write about the problems inherent in their subject based on their own experience. ‘‘Primary research’’ is therefore another methodological link between ancient geographers and historians (Lasserre 1984: 9-26). The colorful multiplicity of intermingled forms of history and geography in Greek and Latin literature would be even more impressive if the circumstances surrounding the transmission of geographic works had favored their survival. Unfortunately, however, only titles or a few fragments have survived of the countless works on certain cities, peoples, and countries, especially from the Hellenistic period and the early empire, the epochs in which ancient cultural geography experienced its developmental zenith.
World History
