This full introduction compares geography today and in antiquity, and characterizes its place in modern Classical scholarship. It asks whether Greek geographical writings have been classified correctly, and offers new perspectives on the social context in which they were composed, emphasizing their grounding in lived experience. Concepts such as periplous are explained, but the use of ‘genre’ to account for the forms of prose writing that we possess is questioned. This leads to a discussion of the helpful notion of ‘common sense geography’. The characteristic topics covered by Greek geographers are surveyed, with a particular focus on change and instability. Discussion of techniques of distance measurement on land and at sea, the role of maps in antiquity, and ‘mental mapping’ is followed by a detailed survey of extant geographical writings and of geographical material within ancient philosophy, historiography, and poetry. I complete the chapter with a discussion of the texts selected for the volume, the fragile transmission process by which these mainly short or fragmentary texts have survived, the organization of the volume, and how the translation process has been managed.