This article is the third in a series, parts 1 and 2 set some context, but you do not need to have read them first to follow this one.
Hecataeus the Milesian speaks thus: I write these things as they seem true to me; for the stories told by the Greeks are various and, in my opinion, absurd[1]
The above quote is one of the few fragments we have of the work of Hecataeus[2] of Miletus, a Greek historian and geographer of the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, known as “The Father of Geography”. A native of Miletus, Hecataeus would produce the next significant step in the development of knowledge of the world in antiquity[3] building, on the work of Anaximander[4] another native of the city.