Books

Eton: J. Pote, 1761. Hardcover. Very Good. 4to (224 x 175mm). [2], 64pp., [26, of index]. 26 engraved folding maps. Later half calf over marbled boards; (some light edgewear; old repair to one map on verso, some pencil notations in margins of several maps; a very good copy). Armorial bookplate of Eton collector F. Manley Sims and with the stamp of his Eton Collection on title page. Pomponius Mela was among the earliest of Roman geographers. This present work, written circa AD 43, was first published at Milan in 1471. The short work (De situ orbis libri III.) occupies less than one hundred pages of ordinary print. It is laconic in style and deficient in method, but of pure Latinity, and occasionally relieved by pleasing word-pictures. Excepting the geographical parts of Plinyís Historia naturalis (where Mela is cited as an important authority) the De situ orbis is the only formal treatise on the subject in Classical Latin. The general views of the De situ orbis mainly agree with…

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.