Geography is destiny for nations, and history the proof. The Greeks saw the physical world as an encircling environment (a word we take from the Old French viron, circuit). The Romans applied Greek ...

The compound word kolossourgia, ‘monumental composition’, is found only once in extant ancient Greek, in a ringing sentence composed by Strabo of Amaseia. He uses it to convey the scope and technique ...

Chalk up another win for the ancient Greeks. The Greek historian and geographer Strabo wrote nearly 2,000 years ago that Piraeus, a small peninsula near Athens, had once been an island--and a new ...