For the Greeks and Romans the earth's farthest perimeter was a realm
radically different from what they perceived as central and human. The
alien qualities of these "edges of the earth" became the basis of a
literary tradition that endured throughout antiquity and into the
Renaissance, despite the growing challenges of emerging scientific
perspectives. Here James Romm surveys this tradition, revealing that the
Greeks, and to a somewhat lesser extent the Romans, saw geography not as
a branch of physical science but as an important literary genre.