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An ongoing dispute among geographers concerned the Caspian Sea. Herodotus (1.203; cf. Aristotle de Meteor. 362b11 for later agreement) said it was landlocked, because he preferred the evidence of explorers’ reports over Milesian theories of the encircling Ocean (Romm 1992: 34–35). Strabo, being a staunch Stoic, prioritized Homeric veracity and so argued for the older view: that the Caspian connected to Ocean (2.5.31, 11.1.5, 6.1–2 and 11.6.3: Homer and Hesiod better than Ctesias, Herodotus, and Hellanicus; cf. Romm 1992: 42–43, 192). Thus he could describe sea trade between India, Babylon, and the Caspian (11.5.8), even though the entrance to this northern “gulf” lay in the uninhabited world (11.6.1–2). This theory had the advantage of a neat geometry with the other three gulfs, which were also long with narrow entrances – the Mediterranean, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf – having a nice symmetric balance with the Persian Gulf (Strabo 2.5.18; cf. Roseman 2005: 36).

Geographical discrepancies also arose from the use of source material dating to different periods, and the descriptions of Phoenicia and neighboring regions inland are one important example. The Greeks called the inland area north of Judaea and south of the Libanus (Lebanon) mountains Koile Syria, or “Hollow Syria.” Ctesias (FGrH 688 F1b), Pseudo-Skylax (§104.3 (Shipley)), and Hecataeus of Abdera (FGrH 264 F25) used the term, which, as Strabo (16.2.21) explains, refers specifically to the valley between the Libanus and Anti-Libanus mountains (cf. Murphy 2004: 152 on Pliny HN 5.77). Yet Koile Syria’s borders changed when it was contested by the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms, and for Polybius (5.80.3) it stretched as far south as Raphia (cf. Strabo 16.2.21 for the larger borders; cf. also Pomponius Mela §62 for variable names). Political changes generated shifts in geography, and texts such as Strabo’s (16.2.2) record the Hellenistic and Roman geographical situations over time, showing how borders and city names changed (Safrai 2005). Sartre has even argued that Koile Syria existed only in geographers’ imaginations and not the real world (1988). Strabo’s description of the Syrian region (16.2.4–10) is a chronological and ethnological hotch-potch of foundation legends, local verdure and riverine traffic, Hellenistic royal affairs, tales of robbers and rebels, and Parthian and Roman encounters.