For whom the Mediterranean Sea is "Our Sea"?

In the book II of his Geography, Strabo made clear the purpose of this discipline: "to describe the inhabited world in its known parts" (Strabo, II, 5, 5). The geographer had first to learn from astronomy, physics (Strabo, II, 5, 1) and geometry (Strabo, II, 5. 4) in order to achieve such a result. He might then tackle with his specific task: "to define the inhabited world" (Strabo, II, 5, 4). In order to do it, he represented it through a map (Strabo, II, 5, 13). This one showed how the inhabited space was built: "It is first the sea that describes the land" (Strabo, II, 5, 17). Several gulfs indented the inhabited space - more particularly: "The one we call the Inner Sea or "our sea" (Strabo, II, 5, 18)."From all these points of view [...] our sea owns a great superiority and thus it is from there that we have to start our World tour" (Strabo, II, 5, 18). Strabo presented the approach of the geographer in a perfectly objective way: he was a man of science. His tone changed abruptly when dealing with the inner sea: he appropriated it when saying: "our" sea. We would reflect here over the use of this possessive, which supposes a global knowledge of the Mediterranean World by people who consider it their home – a situation that seldom predominated.