articulate work of scholarship to present Greek culture in its setting
during the Imperial period, did not travel farther north than the district
of Phocis. His survey of monuments and sanctuaries, both those surviv-
ing in his day and those long gone, occasionally refers to people and
places outside the purview of his itinerary.^24 Thessaly, Macedonia,
Thrace, and Epirus are nevertheless rare entries. Thefirst part of Book
7 of Strabo’sGeography, which, according to the opening chapter (7.1.1,
C289) covered the landmass of the European interior from the River
Rhine to the Don and the Sea of Azov, provides a sketch of some
prominent peoples within this enormous area, including Germans, Thra-
cians, the inhabitants of the lower Danube, the western approaches of the
Black Sea, and Epirus. After 7.7.12, in the midst of a section that explored
southern Epirus, culminating in an account of the oracle at Dodona
(7.7.9–10), the narrative comes to a halt. The later sections, which
explored Macedonia and the southern parts of Thrace, are missing, and
the reader must bear in mind that the disconnected fragments that are
appended to the surviving sections are little more than citations of the
Geographer in other, later authors, and lack the coherence of a sustained
exposition. We do not have the guiding hand of a witness, who can offer
a distinct narrative, providing a window onto these northern localities,
whose formal defeat freed Italians from the burden of any form of tribute
at a stroke (Cicero,de Offic. 2.76; PlinyNH33.56).
New research directionsGiven the fragmentary nature of the written evidence, it has been
tempting for historians to limit their investigations to coastal settlements
where a representative sample of epigraphic documents can be demon-
strated. The difficulty with this approach is that it elides the deep
hinterlands that provided the fundamental resource base for such har-
bour towns.^25
During the last thirty years the enigmatic pall has begun to lift from
our limited modern impressions of this region. Material discoveries,
particularly the recovery of intact and extremely wealthy tombs in
lower Macedonia and in inland Thrace, have generated popular interest
and stimulated much-needed research grants. The new information base
is not confined to the socially better-off. Environmental and spatial data
(^24) e.g. the pillar and urn commemorating the supposed tomb of Orpheus outside Dion
(9.30.7); cf. 6.20.18, 9.17.7, 30.4–12.
(^25) See Reger (2013b) for reflections on this very topic.
Introduction 15