[5]
But though Ephorus is such, still he is better than others. And Polybius1 himself, who praises him so earnestly, and says concerning the Greek histories that Eudoxus2 indeed gave a good account, but Ephorus gave the best account of the foundings of cities, kinships, migrations, and original founders, "but I," he says, “shall show the facts as they now are, as regards both the position of places and the distances between them; for this is the most appropriate function of Chorography.”3But assuredly you, Polybius, who introduce "popular notions"4 concerning distances, not only in dealing with places outside of Greece, but also when treating Greece itself, must also submit to an accounting, not only to Poseidonius,5 and to Apollodorus, but to several others as well. One should therefore pardon me as well, and not be vexed, if I make any mistakes when I borrow from such writers most of my historical material, but should rather be content if in the majority of cases I improve upon the accounts given by others, or if I add such facts as have elsewhere, owing to lack of knowledge, been left untold.
Strabo. ed. H. L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.