In which place of the Iberian Peninsula did they do business with "excellent hams" 2,000 years ago?

Barcelona"Iberia resembles a bull's hide stretched from West to East in length, with the front parts facing East, and from North to South in width. It is approximately six thousand stadia in length; in width, at its widest part, it is about five thousand, although there are places below three thousand, especially in the Pyrenees, which are on the eastern side." These words serve as an introduction to the third book of the seventeen that make up the ambitious Geography by Strabo (c.63 BC–24 AD), focused on exploring the current Iberian Peninsula over 2,000 years ago. The author delves into its main cities, temples, and rivers, but also into the peoples who inhabited it, including the Astures, Lusitanians, Celtiberians, Cerretani, and Laietani. What did the ancient Greeks know about us? To what extent have we changed?

Until now unpublished in Catalan, Iberia has become a small phenomenon since Adesiara released it shortly before Sant Jordi. "At four in the afternoon, we had run out of copies at the publisher's stand – comments Jordi Raventós, its founder. About thirty flew away in a few hours, and we would have sold more, because there were passers-by who expressly asked for it." It is not the first time that Adesiara has managed to attract readers with books written millennia ago: they have done so with the anthologies Archaic Greek Wisdom, edited by Jaume Pòrtulas and Sergi Grau, a new translation of Ovid's The Art of Love, by Jaume Juan Castelló, and also with the first novel in history, Callirrhoe, by Chariton of Aphrodisias, translated by Jaume Almirall Sardà.

Rediscover the land where we live

It was the philologist and professor Xavier Biosca (Manresa, 1960), who is making his debut as a translator with Iberia, who has brought to light the volume, which serves to rediscover the land we live in through the erudite gaze of a geographer and writer about whom we have little news. "Strabo was born in Amasia, on the coast of the Black Sea –Biosca recalls–. He was Greek by birth, but also by training and culture." Nevertheless, the era he lived in was that of the expansion and consolidation of Rome, which during the author's lifetime became an empire, with Caesar Augustus assuming absolute power from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.

"A treatise like this Geography was intended as a guide for the politicians of the time, in order to know what the people they wanted to send would find –continues the translator–. Strabo's ambition was to describe all the lands of the ecumene, the inhabited and known world by the Greeks, especially around the Mediterranean." In addition to Iberia, he dealt with places such as Italy, the regions of the Alps, Asia Minor, India, Egypt, Libya, and Mauritania. "He wrote about the places and the people who live there, meticulously following authors such as Poseidonius, Eratosthenes, and Artemidorus. Alongside them, he also had Homer as a source of wisdom –he adds–. He even applied some of the names that appear in the Odyssey and the Iliad" as toponyms for Iberia." Strabo worked from erudition, without leaving home. "In this sense, he was a kind of Jules Verne, who lived more than 2,000 years ago," Biosca acknowledges.

From Malaga to the secret of Cerdanya

In the fourth section of Ibèria, Strabo deals with the Mediterranean and the interior of the peninsula. The route starts from Malaca (current Malaga) and goes up through Carthago Nova (Cartagena) and Sagunt until it reaches "the very mouth of the Iber [Ebro], where the colony of Dertosa [Tortosa] is located", writes Strabo. Immediately afterwards, he proceeds to describe present-day Catalonia: "Between the delta of the Iber and the peaks of the Pyrenees (...), Tarraco [Tarragona] is the first city, without a port, but built on a gulf and provided with many other things in a rather suitable way". Strabo jumps from Tarraco to Emporion [Empúries]. "The Emporitans are quite skilled at working flax – he states. They occupy the interior of the country; one part is fertile, but another is an area that produces esparto from poor-quality rush that grows in a marshy area. They call it the Juncària plain [name from which La Jonquera derives]".

Xavier Biosca finds it striking that the geographer overlooks any mention of Barcino [Barcelona]. "It had been founded at least three centuries ago, and Caesar Augustus, about whom Strabo always speaks well, had been there", he explains. Ilerda [Lleida] does appear, and he focuses on a curious story linked to the Cerretans, an Iberian tribe located in present-day Cerdanya. "They produce excellent hams – we read in Ibèria–, which provide these peoples with no small profits". Two millennia ago, the Cerretans were already doing business trading cured ham. In addition to Strabo, the Cerretan hams are praised by the historian Polybius and the poet Martial.

The translator of Ibèria first heard of Strabo at the classics faculty, but it wasn't until a few years later that the translators Joaquim Gestí and Montserrat Franquesa encouraged him to present the project to the Bernat Metge Foundation. It didn't progress because he was too busy at the institute where he taught Greek. It was after his retirement, four years ago, that he took it up again. "Translating is demanding and passionate work – Biosca admits. Even though it's difficult, I've realized I can't stop doing it". The second book he will publish with Adesiara this autumn is Records of Socrates, by Xenophon, with which he won the second-to-last Vila de Martorell-Memorial Montserrat Franquesa prize. This one, unlike Strabo's Ibèria, could be read in Catalan thanks to the translation made by Carles Riba in 1929 for Bernat Metge.