ABSTRACT
There is no way to overestimate the role myth plays in Strabo's learned geographical treatise. First, myth is pervasive across the opus. Second, it routinely proves to be a vital tool in the pursuit of Strabo's geographical goals. Strabo acknowledges the historicity of the Trojan War, the Return of the Heracleidae, the voyage of the Argonauts, and other events. Strabo will also note festivals, tombs and shrines, and other indigenous phenomena not only to provide some of the local flavor of the location but as evidence for certain claims of the community, again usually involving origins. At the level of individual localities and of the greater panhellenic world, myth accounts for much of the political composition of Strabo's oikoumene. In discussing the size of Armenia, But overall Strabo seems to accept local explanations for the phenomena on display because of their value in situating the site in the cultural mosaic under study in the Geography.
