Pontus (Asia Minor)
A fortress-city of Pontus in northern Asia Minor, set dramatically in a river gorge beneath the rock-cut tombs of its old kings, and chiefly remembered as the birthplace of Strabo, antiquity's greatest geographer.
12 most-discussed ideas
Amaseia through the eras
Amaseia served as an early royal capital and burial place of the Mithridatic kings of Pontus, whose tombs were carved into the cliffs above the Iris river; it lay in the home territory of Mithridates VI Eupator, Rome's most formidable eastern enemy. Into this setting Strabo was born around 64 BCE, into a prominent local family with ties to the Pontic court, just as the kingdom was being broken by the Roman general Pompey.
After Pompey's settlement of the East, Amaseia and the rest of Pontus were absorbed into Roman provincial administration. From this hometown Strabo traveled widely and composed his seventeen-book Geography, our single richest surviving account of the lands, peoples, and cities of the Roman world—making a modest provincial town the vantage point from which much of antiquity's geography was recorded.
Teachers who lived here
Works composed here
Ideas shaped here
Concepts most frequently discussed in the works composed at Amaseia. Click any to trace the idea across time and place.