Lectures on Ancient Ethnography and Geography, Comprising

Britain (or more accurately, Great Britain) is the name of the largest of the British Isles, which lie off the northwest coast of continental Europe. The name is probably Celtic and derives from a word meaning 'white'; this is usually assumed to be a reference to the famous white Cliffs of Dover, which any new arrival to the country by sea can hardly... [continue reading]

A country in northern Greece, Macedon (or Macedonia) was first inhabited by the Mackednoi tribe who, according to Herodotus, were the first to call themselves 'Hellenes’ (later applied to all Greeks) and who gave the land their name. For centuries the Mackednoi had little to do with southern Greece. Even after the Persian invasion of 480 (during... [continue reading]

Greece is a country in southeastern Europe, known in Greek as Hellas, and consisting of a mainland and an archipelago of islands. Greece is the birthplace of Western Philosophy (Plato), Literature (Homer), Mathematics (Pythagoras), History (Herodotus), Drama (Sophocles and Aristophanes), the Olympic Games, and Democracy and Science (these last two most notably... [continue reading]

When people spoke of Africa in ancient times, they generally meant the northern coast of Africa, and more specifically the coast west of Egypt (Cyrenaica and the Maghreb). The ancients vaguely knew of the existance of sub-Saharan Africa, but were unaware of its geography. Despite its location in Africa, Egypt never expanded westwards. The expanse of... [continue reading]

The Italian Peninsula or Apennine Peninsula is one of the three peninsulas of Southern Europe (the other two being the Iberian Peninsula and Balkan Peninsula), spanning 1,000 km from the Po Valley in the north to the central Mediterranean Sea in the south. The peninsula is bordered by the Tyrrhenian Sea on the west, the Ionian Sea on the south, and the Adriatic... [continue reading]