Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time for more details about In Our Time

and for our terms of use, please go to bbc.co.uk slash radio for.

I hope you enjoy the program.

Hello, one of the earliest known examples of a foreigner complaining about the British

weather can be found in a book written 2,000 years ago by the Greek-scholars Strabo.

In Britain, right Strabo, it's more rainy than snowy and on days of clear sky fog prevails

for so long at a time that throughout the whole day the sun is to be seen for only three

or four hours around about midday.

That passage comes from the geographical, one of the first and most important works of

ancient geography.

It describes almost the entire world known to Greek and Roman scholars at the time from

Britain to Egypt and India.

It's one of the few lengthy works of the period to survive in its entirety and reveals

that Greek geographers were surprisingly sophisticated in their knowledge and methods.

The submitted discussed Strabo's geographical are Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventus professor

of Greek culture at the University of Cambridge, Maria Pretzler, senior lecturer in ancient

history at Swansea University and Mendelssohn, senior lecturer in ancient history at UCL.

Paul Cartledge, Strabo is born in Pontus in what we now call Turkey around 64 BC.

Could you give us somehow idea what the Greek and Roman world was like at that time?

Yes, he was born at a, in retrospect, what the Germans called the Side Venda, that's

to say the time from what we call BC or BCE and AD and CE, he spanned that junction.

He wouldn't have known that because that chronographic system wasn't introduced until

...