Books

A WONDERFUL COPY OF THE VERY SCARCE FIRST ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF POMPONIUS MELA'S COSMOGRAPHIA AND OF DIONYSIUS PERIEGETES'S DE SITU ORBIS (2ND C.) IN PRISCIANUS'S TRANSLATION INTO LATIN VERSES. The woodcut map, often missing and here in very fine, untrimmed and unrestored condition, illustrates the Eastern hemisphere as known to the Romans. It is considered to be one of the earliest geographic maps ever printed in Italy and the first to appear in a book. This map represents a valuable witness to the increasing European interest in the explorations in the wake of the Age of Discovery. In comparison with the traditional Ptolemaic map, it shows some significant changes in the outline of the Western coasts of Africa, explored by the Portuguese, of the Nile's mouth, and, most notably, of Northern Europe. The map was copied for a Salamanca edition, and in Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle, through which it became more widely known. The map which occupies the first leaf of the book is generally wanting. [It gives a] more correct form to Scandinavia (Nordenskiold). In this edition, the woodcut world map, which is often missing, is a reduced Ptolemaic version with the modernized addition of Scandinavia. The printer was Erhard Ratdolt. There are wind heads within the border, and the map is displayed in a fine classical portico (Shirley). No earlier printed map recognized this important step towards the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, and no map in the incunable editions of Ptolemy reflected this knowledge (Campbell). Provenance: John Bellingham Inglis (1780-1870), with his elaborate engraved bookplate incorporating the motto recte faciendo securus to the upper outer corner of the front paste-down.

De situ orbis is an early geographical work by Pomponius Mela, providing detailed descriptions of the world as known to the Romans in the 1st century AD.