In this paper, I investigate the ways in which Strabo's personal experience in Cappadocia – his travels there, his interests and his family history – shape his account of the region. The result is a description which exceeds what we have from other sources concerning Cappadocian history in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman periods, but one which has to be understood in the context of Strabo's own perspective.

Strabo describes Cappadocia, the vast area between the Taurus mountains and the Pontus sea, after first having described Armenia. Ancient history connected Cappadocia with Armenia. In Strabo's work, this link emerges from the time of the Achaemenid domination. Horse breeding, important for the economy and the military needs of the Persians, was an occupation common to both regions; and, at the time of Strabo, both Cappadocia and Armenia still observed Persian rites. The names of the dynasts, above all in Cappadocia, prove that, at least in the aristocratic class, a real process of Iranianisation had taken place.

Cappadocia, unlike Armenia, was divided into two Persian satrapies, out of which two Hellenistic kingdoms, Pontus and Cappadocia, were created in the third century bce. Therefore, within the Cappadocia stretching between the Taurus and the coast of the Pontus, characterised by a substantial Persian cultural background still evident in Strabo's time, another Cappadocia existed. This was the kingdom founded around 250 bce by Ariarathes III, the first to proclaim himself king of the Cappadocians (12.1.2).