In the year 59 bc Cicero found the shape of Roman politics both distasteful and alarming, and he therefore retired to his villa at Antium and resolved to follow Atticus' advice and write a Geography. For this purpose Atticus furnished him with copies of the best works of the most outstanding Greek authors. But Cicero soon wearied of the task. Гεωγραϕικὰ quae constitueram magnum opus est’ he writes. There is no unanimity among the experts. Eratosthenes, who was to have been his model, is criticised, he finds, by Hipparchus and Serapio; the subject is difficult, monotonous, not adapted to literary embellishment. Presumably Cicero abandoned his project, for we hear no more of it; and four years later, when he was writing the De oratore, geography was still an obscurior scientia.

The phrase has its justification. Alexandrian geography was in fact an obscure science, and a highly specialised one, both abstruse and uncongenial to anyone with Cicero's lively preference for popularisation rather than original thought. But Greek geography had not begun as a science. Between Herodotus and Eratosthenes lies a deep gulf, of method as well as time, and any consideration of Polybius' contribution to geography must take these two traditions into account. It will therefore be appropriate to consider how Greek geographical writing began, and what factors led to its modification. ||