Geography

​And this is clear also in small matters, as for instance in hunting; for a man would hunt better if he knew what kind of forest it is and how large, and to encamp well in a place, to lay an ambush, and to march, belong to him who knows. But in great matters it is more conspicuous, insofar as the rewards of experience are greater and the errors resulting from inexperience are also greater. At any rate, Agamemnon’s expeditionary force, plundering Mysia as though it were the Troad, retreated disgracefully. And the Persians and the Libyans, having suspected that the straits were blind passages, came close to great dangers, and left behind trophies of their ignorance; the former leaving the tomb of Salganeus near the Chalcidic Euripus, who was slain by the Persians on the ground that he had guided the fleet badly from the Malians to the Euripus; and the latter the monument of Pelorus, who was also put to death for a similar reason. And Greece was full of shipwrecks during the expedition of Xerxes. And the colonization of both the Aeolians and the Ionians has handed down many such mishaps. Likewise, there are also successes, where some success happened to be achieved owing to the experience of places; just as in the pass about Thermopylae, Ephialtes is said, by having shown the path through the mountains to the Persians, to have made Leonidas and his men subject to them, and to have admitted the barbarians inside the Gates. But leaving aside ancient history, I think that the current expedition of the Romans against the Parthians is a sufficient proof of these; and likewise the expedition against the Germans and the Celts, where the barbarians carried on local warfare in swamps, pathless forests, and wildernesses, making near things seem far to those who were ignorant of them, and concealing the roads and the abundance of food and other supplies.

​The greater part, then, as has been said, is directed toward the lives of rulers and their practical needs. And the greater part of moral and political philosophy is also concerned with the lives of rulers. And this is a sign: for we distinguish the differences of constitutions by their forms of rule, setting down one rule as monarchy, which we also call kingship, another as aristocracy, and a third as democracy. And we consider the constitutions to be just so many, calling them by homonymous names as having the origin of their specific character from those rules; for the command of the king is one law, and that of the nobles and that of the people is another. And the law is the type and form of a constitution. On this account, some have also said that justice is the advantage of the stronger. If, therefore, political philosophy is for the most part about rulers, and geography is also about the needs of rulers, then geography also would have some advantage on this account.