The past few years have seen a small burst of publications aimed at expanding scholarly knowledge of Classical geography beyond specialists and into the broader consciousness of scholars of the Classical world. Works like D. Dueck's Geography in Classical Antiquity (2012) and D. Roller's Ancient Geography (2015) provide an excellent foundation of knowledge to those new to the subject, while the publication of critical editions, translations and commentaries increases the accessibility of important ancient texts beyond the specialist scholar: to name just a few, S. Radt's ten-volume critical edition and German translation of Strabo (2002–11), Roller's recent, and much needed, English translation of Strabo (2014) and forthcoming historical and topographical commentary, and G. Shipley's edition of Pseudo-Skylax' Periplous (2011).

Brill's new Companion participates in this burst by introducing a collection of European scholarship on ancient geography to a broader Anglophone audience. The hand of a copy-editor is unevenly felt in this volume. Some chapters contain oddities of English orthography, abbreviation and editing; but while these occasionally obfuscate the meaning of particular passages, they never place it beyond comprehension. The editors aim to assemble ‘a volume that seeks to privilege some aspects not frequently dealt with in usual treatments, at the expense of a systematic and complete exposition, and which together grant the warranted visibility to the methodological profiles of the approach used towards the discipline’ (p. ix). Thus, their approach is not to produce a ‘European version’ of a broad introductory handbook, but rather to explore more obscure topics or to approach traditional topics from new angles.

The 21 chapters are ordered chronologically and are divided into three parts following standard periodisations. Part 1, ‘Geography before Geography’, comprises six chapters on geographical thought up to and including Alexander's campaigns. Part 2, ‘Geography between Science and Politics’, covers Hellenistic and Roman geography until the second century c.e. in twelve chapters, further subdivided into four parts (Hellenistic, thought on the Indian Ocean, Roman, and Claudius Ptolemy). Part 3, ‘Geography Rebounds’, contains three chapters addressing disparate aspects of geographical thought: two anchored in Late Antiquity, one in the late Classical/early-Hellenistic period. While these divisions have a degree of thematic unity, the desire to maintain a chronological structure is clear, especially from the separation of one chapter on Ptolemy into its own separate section (Part 2D) rather than including it with the other three chapters on Hellenistic science (Part 2A) or the six on Roman geography (Part 2C). Nevertheless, the separation serves to underline the special position of Ptolemy's work between the Hellenistic and Roman traditions. Similarly, devoting a separate section to geographical thought on the Indian Ocean puts a useful focus on the abundance of current research on this previously under-studied region.

Despite their stated objective not to offer a ‘systematic and complete exposition’, the 21 chapters manage to touch on most of the topics relevant to a comprehensive treatment of ancient geography, often from an intriguing perspective. For example, a reader might expect that one of the two chapters on Alexander and geography would address the impact of his campaigns on geographical knowledge generally. Rather, G., ‘The “Revolution” of Alexander the Great: Old and New in the World's View’, examines the relationship between Alexander III of Macedon and late fourth-century b.c.e. geographical knowledge from the reverse perspective of how Alexander's geographical education and knowledge influenced his campaigns, while V. Bucciantini, ‘Geographical Description and Historical Narrative in the Tradition on Alexander's Expedition’, uses extant fragments of geographical works written by contemporary participants in Alexander's campaigns to discuss those writers’ interest in hydrography. Similarly, G. Maddoli, ‘The Concept of “Magna Graecia” and the Pythagoreans’, considers the origin of a particular regional toponym in a Pythagorean political environment rather than the geographical knowledge of the Presocratics. Through chapters of this kind, the Companion both provides extensive coverage of the field of ancient geography and produces and develops several themes in contemporary scholarship.

Four themes emerge in Part 1 and are further developed by later chapters. The first theme is the importance of the maritime perspective to understanding ancient geographical knowledge. Several chapters reinforce the importance of the maritime context of Greek culture and its continued influence on geographical conceptions into the Roman period. P. Janni, ‘The Sea of the Greeks and Romans’, addresses this explicitly in his consideration of the historical development of Greek seafaring, nautical knowledge and how those factors shaped the Greek geographical conception of the continents they imagined and marine regions that they encountered in their colonisation and expansion. Chapters by D. Marcotte, ‘The Indian Ocean from Agatharchides of Cnidus to the Periplus Maris Erythraei’, and P. Schneider, ‘The So-called Confusion between India and Ethiopia: the Eastern and Southern Edges of the Inhabited World from the Greco-Roman Perspective’, address this maritime conception of space in the context of the Hellenistic and Roman exploration and exploitation of the Indian Ocean. These chapters offer interesting perspectives on the periplus genre and its relationship to spatial thought more broadly.

The maritime perspective is just one part of the broader theme of how people in the ancient world perceived space. This bears on the ongoing discussion on the degree to which ancient people conceived of space in linear or two-dimensional terms began by P. Janni's 1984 La mappa e il periplo: cartografia antica e spazio odologico. K. Brodersen, ‘The Geographies of Pliny and his “Ape” Solinus’, shows how Solinus adapted geographical material presented in a linear fashion in Pliny the Elder and Pomponius Mela to an area perspective in his own work. Brodersen places this in the context of the interest in visual representations of space among Solinus’ late third-century contemporaries. G.’s aforementioned chapter on Alexander's geographic perspective makes an important distinction between the complex, geometrical conception of the world available to Greek intellectuals and the hodological view which was probably common among most people, although his use of Strepsiades’ geographical illiteracy in Aristophanes’ Clouds to show the ‘deep gap’ between the two perspectives can be read to show the opposite. Was Strepsiades’ map ignorance an innocent indication of the non-elite view, or was it comically exaggerated stupidity to elicit audience laughter? In other words, was Strepsiades an everyman or a fool? G. assumes the former; I would assume the latter. A. Kolb's excellent chapter, ‘The Romans and the World's Measure’, shows the degree to which the Roman approach to bounding, measuring, dividing and organising the landscape conditioned their conception of space. Kolb brings together the too often separated spheres of Roman thought on surveying, borders, geography, epigraphy and spatial practices around roads. However, her conclusion that, ‘based on the evidence discussed it becomes clear that the Roman conception of space was genuinely represented through their measurement and survey of the world from a linear perspective’ (p. 238) is somewhat circular, given that the evidence for this linear perspective is primarily associated with linear movement along road networks. Relationships between textual and spatial order appear in papers by E. Galvagno and J.R. Stenger. Galvagno, ‘Geography and Religion: the Lists of the Thearodokoi’, examines third- and fourth-century b.c.e. epigraphic records describing the location of hosts of sacred messengers (thearodokoi) in search of evidence for routes taken by those messengers (theoroi), while Stenger's ‘Eusebius and the Representation of the Holy Land’ examines a perception of space that was self-consciously distant, geographical information rearranged alphabetically to help a reader rather than a (potential) traveller.

Kolb's chapter also contributes to the theme of measuring and dividing space. G. Daverio Rocchi's chapter, ‘Systems of Borders in Ancient Greece’, builds on the anthropological work of F. Barth to show that borders served as both an inward sign of collective identity and an outward sign of engagement with neighbouring groups. This chapter underlines the important role played by borders and the foundational and iterative acts of defining them in constructing the identity of the polis and its constituent citizens. Traditionally, one might expect to find a chapter on Agrippa participating in this dialogue of spatial division and measurement. Instead, P. Arnaud, ‘Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and his Geographical Work’, argues that Agrippa's geographical work participates in the Hellenistic and the Republican geographical traditions rather than being a revolutionary intervention in ancient geography deriving from the Roman tradition of surveying or an Augustan expansion of that tradition.

The last theme concerns the practice and practitioners of geographical science. Under this rubric I include not just the three chapters in Part 2A focused on important Late Classical and Hellenistic scientific geographers and their methods (C., ‘Some Scientific Approaches: Eudoxus of Cnidus and Dicaearchus of Messene’; B., ‘The “Invention” of Geography: Eratosthenes of Cyrene’; K. Geus, ‘Progress in the Sciences: Astronomy and Hipparchus’), but those that address the process of collection and transmission of geographical information (V. Bucciantini, ‘Geographical Description and the Historical Narrative in the Tradition on Alexander's Expedition’) and biographical chapters on Ptolemy and Strabo (G. Aujac, ‘The “Revolution” of Ptolemy’; F. Prontera, ‘Strabo's Geography’). These chapters are erudite and comprehensive and serve as brief introductions to the ancient scholars in question. To this cluster, I would also add M. Rathmann's provocative chapter, ‘The Tabula Peutingeriana and Antique Cartography’. Rathmann argues that the Artemidorus Papyrus is a missing link in a Hellenistic tradition of chorographical mapping connecting the work of Eratosthenes to the 425 c.e. version of the Tabula Peutingeriana.

This volume achieves its goal of exploring obscure topics and approaching traditional topics from new angles. In reviewing this work, I have two perspectives: that of a scholar of ancient geography assessing research in the field and that of a teacher assessing the usefulness of the volume in a graduate or upper-division undergraduate seminar. For the classroom, the editors’ stated approach positions the Companion as a potential supplement to a more general handbook, although the price of the volume limits its use in the classroom. Nevertheless, several of the chapters already mentioned would be appropriate introductions to particular authors or themes, either because of their thorough erudition or their provocative arguments. In addition, I would highlight chapters by E. Olshausen, ‘News from the East? Roman-Age Geographers and the Pontus Euxinus’, and G. Cruz Andreotti, ‘Rome and Iberia: the Making of a Cultural Geography’, as comprehensive regional studies. For the scholar of ancient geography, many of the chapters offer interesting perspectives on their particular topics or the field as a whole, and even those of a more explanatory nature might offer insights into the topography of the field in Europe.