The Classical Accounts of India c8.s2.1

c8.s2.1

Strabo, the Greek geographer and historian, was born about 63 B.C. at Amasia in Pontus, a Hellenized city, which was the royal residence of the kings of Pontus in Asia Minor. Nothing is known of his father's family, but of his mother's relatives who held important offices under Mithradates V and VI, some were of Hellenic and others of Asiatic origin. But Strabo himself was thoroughly Greek in language and education. His Geography, which was finally revised between A.D. 17 and 23, is regarded as "the most important work on that science which antiquity has left us". It is divided into seventeen books of which the fifteenth deals with India and Persia. The following extract is based on the English translation by H. L. Jones in the Loeb Classical Library series. Some portions of it were also translated by McCrindle.