AS HERODOTUS SAYS: DIRECT AND INDIRECT USE OF HERODOTUS’S HISTORIES IN STRABO’S GEOGRAPHY

This paper aims to show that the geographer Strabo used the historian Herodotus directly in his Geography and valued his geographical knowledge more than previously thought. The paper examines nineteen instances where Strabo explicitly quotes Herodotus, which suggests these may be direct quotations and indicates Strabo had direct access to Herodotus’ Histories when composing these passages. This is confirmed primarily through direct quotations that Strabo designates with ὡς Ἡρόδοτός φησι(ν) (“as Herodotus says”) and similar expressions. There is a reason to believe that in most such instances Strabo directly used and quoted Herodotus rather than relying on intermediary sources. Most of the instances analyzed here refer to geographical and ethnographic matters, with a focus on rivers. A significant number of these instances, as many as ten, pertain to Book 1 of Herodotus’s Histories, which suggests that Strabo frequently consulted this particular book.