Posidonius

Posidonius was a Greek Stoic philosopher, historian, geographer, and astronomer who lived from about 135 to 51 BCE. His wide-ranging works shaped Roman knowledge of the Greek world.

Stoicism: A Hellenistic philosophy that teaches virtue as the highest good and living according to nature. Posidonius developed Stoic ethics and natural philosophy beyond their earlier formulations.
Universal history: A form of historical writing that connects events across regions into a single account. His history linked developments in the Greek world with Rome’s expansion across the Mediterranean.
Cicero: A Roman statesman, orator, and philosophical writer who lived from 106 to 43 BCE. Cicero studied with Posidonius and later drew on his philosophy and historical accounts.
Diodorus Siculus: A Greek historian of the first century BCE who composed a universal history called the Bibliotheca historica. Diodorus has often been proposed as a transmitter of Posidonius’s historical material.
Hellenistic period: The era from Alexander the Great’s death in 323 BCE to the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BCE. Posidonius worked in a Greek-speaking world transformed by Alexander’s successors and expanding Roman power.
Geography: The study and description of Earth’s places, features, and spatial relationships. Posidonius treated geography as a way to explain how climate, terrain, and peoples relate.
Pompey: A Roman general and statesman who lived from 106 to 48 BCE. Pompey visited Posidonius on Rhodes during his eastern campaigns.
Athenion of Maroneia: A Greek historian whose lost account of the Roman Republic is known through later references. Some scholars have considered his work among possible sources for Posidonius’s history.
Rhodes: A Greek island and ancient maritime power in the southeastern Aegean Sea. Posidonius taught and conducted research on Rhodes, a major center of learning and navigation.
Earth circumference: The distance around Earth measured along a great circle. He attempted to estimate this distance using observations of the star Canopus from different latitudes.

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