The Roman empire radically affected geographical conceptions, evoking new ways of describing the earth and of constructing its history. This book explores the writings of three literary figures of the age--Polybius, Posidonius, and Strabo--and how they used and transformed pre-existing Greek traditions in order to describe the new world of Rome.

This book has two main and connected themes - the conception and articulation of time in the Greek world and the creation of history, especially in the context of the Greek city. Both how time is expressed and how the past is presented have often been seen as reflections of society. By looking at the construction of the past through the medium of local historiography, where we can view these issues in the relatively restricted world of individual city-states, we can gain a clearer insight into how different versions of the past and different constructions of time were offered to the community...

Focusing on the depiction of the natural world in Herodotus' Histories, this volume explores the fluid and complex network of spatial relationships that emerges from his narrative, examining its significance for the analysis of focalization in the work and for understanding the role of geography in the shaping of successive empires.