ABSTRACT
Strabo's Libya is a purely scholarly work, drawn from literary sources and, to a small extent, from information to be had in Rome and the Roman Empire, such as the death of Juba II, king of Mauretania, in CE 23 or 24. Strabo's Libya, covering a number of different periods, is nevertheless a work with a scientific approach that excludes fiction. And yet, twenty centuries later, there is a certain charm to reading this conjuring up of places, however contrived and artificial, giving the impression of somehow entering the world of the Maurusians and the Numidians, or visiting Cyrene. Strabo highlights the action of Micipsa, who succeeded Masinissa in 148 BCE. Strabo squeezes, so to speak, the period between the end of the Second Punic War and the destruction of Carthage, apparently treating as contemporary the granting of Masaesylia to Masinissa and his descendants, and the establishment of the Roman province of Africa.
