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Alexander the Great – and after him the Hellenistic kings and Roman generals and emperors – drove geographical exploration with their military expeditions. The logistics of moving armies around the Near East and beyond required extensive research of extant geographies, as well as new surveys and intelligence gathering in the field, combining the technical know-how of professional surveyors and consultation of local guides (Engels 1980: 328–329). The sources emerging out of these activities are practical itineraries and surveys, generally now in fragmentary form, which provided the source material for the Alexander historians, Eratosthenes, Polybius, Strabo, and Pliny. The actual geographical information contained in these texts tends to be the locations of major settlements, distances between them, the cultural distinctions of the native inhabitants, and any important stories associated with them. Writers like Strabo fitted this material into a more philosophical structure, but the raw data, as collected by the surveyors under royal patronage, retains its original flavor. Later, the desire to obtain knowledge of Parthian domains and access to the lucrative Arabian and Indian Ocean trade network prompted Augustus and emperors after him to send expeditions. After the Hellenistic settlement of Greeks throughout the Near East, civilian-led enterprise also produced written geographies focusing on regional commodities and trade in addition to the logistic and political information of state commissioned sources (cf. Casson 1989: 8).