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Pomponius Mela, who wrote around 43, is the oldest known Roman geographer. He gave a description that covers the known world of the Greco-Romans. Nothing is known about him, except his name and his birthplace, which he himself indicates, the small town of Tingentera or Cigentera in the province of Bética, in the Bay of Algeciras. His life is dated to the period of the Emperor Claudius by deduction from the geographical indications he gives in his works: the designation of the city of Roman Africa under the name of Caesaré, a name given by Juba II under Augustus, as well as the reference he makes to Cornelius Nepos, a writer who died under the reign of Augustus. The triumph that follows the conquest of Britain in 424 can only be that of Claudius in view of the previous remark. Pomponius Mela is the author who presents the most complete picture of the state of geography around the middle of the 1st century of the Christian era. His present work is written in a typically Latin style and adorned here and there with metaphors. In addition to the geographical chapters of the Natural History by Pliny the Elder (where Mela is cited as an important reference), the De situ orbis is the only treatise on the subject in classical Latin. The world map bound as frontispiece, woodcut, inspired by Ptolemy, was the second map to be printed in Italy (Campbell p.119). It shows Europe, Asia, and the northern part of Africa, with the Nile represented with sources in two lakes, one directly on the equator, and the other just south of it. These lakes intersect with what are now called Lake Albert and Lake Victoria, showing that their location was supposed, if not known by geographers, at least four centuries before their late discovery. To the south, rivers running from the mountains and flowing into these lakes, the Niger in West Africa are also represented. This map is also the first to represent Portuguese knowledge of the west coast of Africa at the time that would lead six years later to the crossing of the Cape of Good Hope. Campbell suggests that the printer of the edition, Erhard Ratdolt, may have been the cartographer, since this and his 1480 T-O map are the first two woodcut maps printed in Italy. This map will be copied for an edition in Salamanca as well as for Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle. First edition of the verse translation by Priscianus of Dionysius' De situ orbis; Ratdolt's edition is the only incunable edition to contain the two geographic treatises. The copy has numerous contemporary handwritten annotations in its wide margins. Fine copy of this extremely rare work.

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.