Books

XXIIII ll.Rare 1502 edition, the third in the best and most important early recension of Pomponius Mela's description of the world, written ca. AD 43, the earliest surviving geographical work in Latin and one of Pliny's most important sources, perhaps the most important for geography. Pomponius describes Europe, Africa and Asia, the three together surrounded by the ocean. He was at born in southern Spain (we don't know where he wrote) and shows a more detailed and more accurate knowledge of Spain, France and the British Isles than earlier writers (giving us our first known reference to the Orkney Islands) and even knows of the existence of Scandinavia. But he also devotes book I, chapter VI to "Arabia", which includes not only the Arabian peninsula but also "Syria" (which includes what is now Iraq) and other parts of the Middle East, and his description of India in book III, chapter IV, gives further information about what seem to be the Arabian and Iranian coasts of the Gulf,…

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.