From all this it appears that, according to the lights of knowledge at the time, a fair conception existed of geographical study along the main lines which it follows to-day. There was therefore occasion for a general review of the whole subject; and this occasion was seized by Strabo, a native of Amasia in Pontus, who was born _c._ 63 B.C., and died in the second or third decade of the following century. He was educated partly at Rome, but his language and outlook were Greek. He travelled much, as far as Etruria, the Black Sea, and the borders of Ethiopia, as well as in Asia Minor, though he knew comparatively little of Greece. His geography, which was not finally completed till towards the close of his life, was the first attempt at covering the whole geographical field--mathematical, physical, and human--and his range was thus wider than that of Eratosthenes. Strabo used the recent Roman authorities to some extent, such as Cæsar’s Commentaries (in part) and a map of the Roman Empire by M. Vipsanius Agrippa, son-in-law of Augustus, which was set up in Rome; and he also preferred the authority of Polybius to that of Pytheas, but his sources were mostly Greek. His appreciation of them was not always wise. He ranked the Homeric poems highly, but discredited Herodotus, who on some points had better information than he. He added nothing to the mathematical branch, in which Eratosthenes was his master. He thus accepted the spherical form of the earth, its dimensions as laid down by his predecessors, and its division into five zones. He recognized Hipparchus’s view that further astronomical observations were essential to precision in earth-measurement and the position of points on the surface; but it was outside his province to add to those existing. His work in the physical field, however, improved upon that of his predecessors, and his surveys of the features and products of the various lands must have been singularly valuable for reference. The apportionment of the seventeen books of his geography is not without interest as a rough guide to the distribution of available material and to the author’s outlook. He devoted two books to introductory matter, to Spain and France two, to Italy two, to northern and eastern Europe one, to Greece and adjacent lands three, to the main divisions and remoter parts of Asia one, to Asia Minor three, to India and Persia one, to Syria and Arabia one, to Egypt and the rest of Africa one.