Word: strabo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Though Columbus was already a first-rate practical sailor, his idea of the unexplored Atlantic was formed as much by books as by navigation: writings of the ancients (Pliny, Strabo and especially Ptolemy), medieval cosmographers, collections of "marvels." These gave him a framework in which to sell his plans to patrons: his letters to Ferdinand and Isabella, King and Queen of Spain, begging their patronage for the "Enterprise of the Indies," are full of appeals to the authority of older writers...