Books

Basel: Andreas Cratander, 1522.. Folio (29.5 x 20 cm). 20ll+pp.220+44ll. Period style mottled calf by Aquarius, spine with raised bands and richly gilt in compartments, red morocco label lettered in gilt, sides ruled with double gilt fillet, edges stained dark red. Two woodcut titles with historiated borders, woodcut initials throughout, and woodcut printer's device on verso of final leaf. Without the world map as usual.* Residue of indecipherable library blind stamp to front (modern) blank, also with small repairs. Early neat marginal annotation at p.68. Repairs to worming in lower blank margin of first 5 leaves, inner margin of title-page restored, generally an excellent copy. Pomponius Mela, a native of southern Spain, composed his description of the world De Situ Orbis, the earliest surviving Latin work on geography and one of Pliny's most important sources, around the year 43 AD. The present edition by celebrated Swiss poet laureate and medical scholar Joachim von Watt (also…

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.