The knowledge of the edges of the world in Strabo’s work as a result of Roman conquests: some reflections based on Str. 1.2.1 and 2.5.12

During the first century BC, the most remote regions of the oikoumene were directly known thanks to the Roman military expeditions. Strabo, who had the intention to describe the whole world following Augustus’ ideology, received and accepted a lot of this recent information unknown to the previous historiographers, above all Polybius and Posidonius. I pay attention firstly to which improvement he brings to the previous knowledge in regions newly discovered, secondly which way he presents the inhabitants of these areas. In order to answer the questions, the focus is especially on Northern Europe, among the regions announced as new discoveries by the author at the beginning of his work.