Books

Fourth edition; 4to, (20 x 15.3 cm); headings printed in red, white-on-black woodcut initials, text printed on 26 lines, printed marginalia, occasional light dampstaining, some foxing; later full vellum over boards, light wear and soiling to boards, otherwise a good firm copy of a scarce work; collation: a-f8 (a1r author's preface, text, f8v colophon), 48 leaves total. Rare fourth edition. Mela's Cosmographia is the earliest surviving Latin work on geography and the only treatise devoted exclusively to that subject in Classical Latin. This work exerted a considerable influence on later authors, partly through the extensive citations in Pliny's Historia naturalis where Mela is cited as an important authority. The publications of Mela and Claudius Ptolemy were incentives for further exploration, and in particular Mela's descriptions of Africa were used by the Portuguese navigators who were venturing far out into the Atlantic for the first time. 'Despite his general inferiority as a geographer, Pomponius knew more than Strabo about the positions of Britain, Ireland, and the coasts of Gaul and north Germany; he was also the first to mention the Orkney Islands' (DSB). ISTC im00450000; Goff M450; HC 11017*; Klebs 675.4; Pell Ms 7814 (7755); CIBN M-282; Neveu 424.

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.