ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the Hellenistic legacy of migration as presented in Strabo’s geographical description of Mesopotamia and examines the tools and methods that he used to present Mesopotamia as a space of mobility, migration and contact. In Mesopotamia, as elsewhere in Asia, Alexander’s campaigns had triggered migration and population movement that embedded a powerful and lasting cultural legacy in the lands formerly ruled by the Achaemenid Persians. The representation of Mesopotamia that Strabo created was defined according to the tools of Hellenistic geographic science and populated with geographic and ethnographic features derived from Hellenistic movement and migration. Strabo uses Hellenistic movement to populate the space he constructs. The chapter examines some aspects of Strabo’s representation in turn and then consider the importance of movement and migration in his conception of Near Eastern geography. Strabo’s description of the region populated mostly by Aramaic speakers abounds with links to Greek culture.
