ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the complicated nature of Strabo's ethnography and representation of identity(ies): how he constructs his ethnographic categories, their relationships to one another, and how he deconstructs the very classificatory scheme that informs his ethnographic project. It examines Strabo's engagement with Homer the ethnographer. The chapter discusses the meaning of civilized and uncivilized within the context of the Geography. It also examines Strabo's understanding of what it means to be Greek and barbarian. The chapter also explains the forces behind ethno-cultural change and ethnography as commemoration. Strabo describes Homer's knowledge as paradosis, which makes the poet an essential recorder and transmitter of the knowledge, traditions and practices of pre-literate Greece and non-Greek peoples. For Strabo, Hellenic ideas and traditions are not a veneer that gives a Roman text a Greek flavor, but are essential to his efforts to make sense of and to represent the world.
