We do not know much about Strabo of Amasia. In his extant voluminous Geography, he is reluctant to surrender details regarding his personal life, even basic information such as his full name and his residential abode as an adult. Nevertheless, there is a generally accepted outline of the man's profile.

Strabo was born in Amasia, Pontus, in about 64 bce. He received a traditional Hellenistic education from the best Asian teachers at the time. As a young adult he accompanied Aelius Gallus, the Roman governor of Egypt, on his mission and later spent some years in Rome. During his earlier career Strabo composed a historiographical work now mostly lost, which was intended to survey world events as a sequel to Polybius' History. Later he concentrated on the massive endeavour of describing the entire oikoumene, producing the seventeen-book work we hold now as the Geography. He died sometime after 23 ce.

Strabo refers to his Geography as a kolossourgia, a ‘kolossos of a work’ (1.1.23). A kolossos is a statue of huge proportions and the point of the comparison, as Strabo tells us, is scale. Just as a colossal statue produces in the mind of the observer an overall impression that does not depend on a detailed representation in all its parts, so Strabo intends his Geography to represent the world as a whole, rather than individual regions in microcosm.

When and where was this kolossourgia composed? On these questions the contributors to this volume did not get over-exercised.