is the even larger work of an author known today as Pliny the Elder, who
lived a generation after Strabo. His great work, theNatural History, remains
a virtual encyclopedia of human knowledge for its time, ranging in topics
from cosmology, astronomy, and meteorology to famous wine drinkers and
the bad breath of animals. Parts of it are extremely useful as, for example, a
large section dedicated to the olive and its oil, one of the engines of com-
merce in the ancient Mediterranean.
The generation after Pliny saw the last ancient source to provide a sub-
stantial body of information for use today. Claudius Ptolemy (85– 165 CE)
was from the scientific school of geography (Strabo represents the descriptive
or human school), a scholar more interested in mathematics and map coor-
dinates than economics and culture. He worked out of the library in
Alexandria, and much of his information was obtained third hand.
Unfortunately, Ptolemy’s opus as it passed down through the centuries has
been worked and reworked by later scholars incorporating new data in an
attempt to update and keep him current, which is why there are multiple
versions today, none of which can be determined definitively as being the
most authoritative.
The people who lived in the Mediterranean basin were not the only ones
to write accounts and keep records that can be useful today. On the other
side of Eurasia, the Chinese were developing their own genre of narrative in
the form of official dynastic histories. In the Han dynasty (202BCE– 220 CE)
the state began employing historians to compile official histories from
archival sources that continued under later dynasties. Chinese historiography
had several practical goals, the most important of which was to serve as
reference material for use by government ministers in making decisions.
Histories often incorporated texts or summaries of documents, official
reports, statistics provided by various offices in the bureaucracy, and records
from embassies and accounts of travelers, which now serve as a major source
of information on areas such as Southeast Asia.
Authors of dynastic histories were essentially compilers, although some-
times they showed a distinct critical element as well. The best of them was
also the earliest. Sima Qian (145– 86 BCE) came from a family that had served
for generations as Grand Astrologers. His father, Sima Tan, had started
writing a general history of China but apparently did not get very far, so on
his deathbed he charged his son with the task offinishing it. This took Sima
Qian most of the rest of his life. The result was theShiji(Historical Records), a
sweeping tour de force from the mythical beginnings of the Chinese people
down to his own day, which if completely translated into English would
likely amount to several thousand pages. TheShiji set the pattern for all
future government-sponsored dynastic histories. Of these, one is particularly
useful in examining the opening of Chinese trade with the west. TheHan
Shu(History of the Former Han) by Ban Gu (32– 92 CE) covers the events of the
first half of the Han dynasty (202BCE– 9 CE). It is instructive to note that
Some introductory musings 11