Slide #116
TITLE: Pomponius Mela's World Map
DATE: A.D. 37
AUTHOR: Pomponius Mela
DESCRIPTION: This slide shows a reconstruction of the world view of
the earliest Roman geographer Pomponius Mela, who, although of Spanish birth,
wrote a brief work which agrees in most of its views with the great Greek
writers from Eratosthenes to Strabo. However, Mela departs from the traditional
ancient concept by asserting that in the southern temperate zone dwelt inhabitants
who were inaccessible to Europeans because of the torrid zone which intervened.
His knowledge of the characters of western Europe and the British Isles
was clearer than that of the Greek writers, and he was the first to name
the Orcades [Orkney Islands]. Pliny quoted Mela as an authority.
Mela's very simple and popular writings were entitled Chorographia,
which means "regional geography" and covers the whole world region
by region. It was written in Latin in three books under Gaius or Claudius;
there is, however, no evidence that it contained any maps. According to
Mela the world can be divided east and west into what he calls two hemispheres.
This is not a scientific definition, but a rough division of the known world
approximating to Asia on the east and Europe and Africa on the west. From
north to south he divided it into five zones, two cold, two temperate and
one hot. This is a different approach from that offered by Strabo who chose
to ignore, as virtually uninhabitable, everything south of the latitude
of southern India. It does correspond, however, to the division in Eratosthenes'
lost poem Hermes, paraphrased by Virgil, which regards the equatorial
zone as 'altogether burnt up' but says that Antipodes live in the southern
temperate zone.
Mela was writing before the Roman invasion of Britain, and has only a very
rudimentary idea of its geography. Thule in his work does not sound like
the Orkney or Shetland islands. He says it is opposite the Belcæ,
the name which he uses elsewhere as a synonym for Scythia. One may
therefore wonder whether he is thinking of an island north of Russia, or
whether it is really some part of Scandinavia. This latter, however, is
treated not as part of the continent but as a very large island. The Baltic
is to him the Codanus Gulf, enormous and dotted with large and small
islands . Later he adds: 'In the gulf which we have called Codanus the most
important island is Codanovia, still settled by Teutoni; this surpasses
the others not only infertility but also in size.' Mela's concept of Africa
is less developed than those of later authors such as the elder Pliny, but
he does summarize Hanno's Periplus. He came from Gibraltar, yet he
believed there were no inhabitants of the central part of western Mauritania.
His contribution to the disputed topography of Tartessus (Tarshish
in the Old Testament) is to tell us that some thought that it was on the
site of Carteia, near Algeciras. This is the kind of information that could
have been entered in notes accompanying a map rather than on a map itself.
The first edition of Mela's treatise, Cosmographi Geographia: Prisciani
quoque exdionysio Thessalonisensi de situ orbis interpretation, was
printed in Milan in 1471; this slide shows the reconstructed map from the
1482 edition(Venice, Erhard Ratdolt, July 18,1482, 8.1 x 5.75 in., 48 leaves,
Fol. A iverso: full-page woodcut map, with names and inscriptions in moveable
type; the first edition to contain a map and possibly the earliest woodcut
map to appear in Italy). The map is drawn on a conical projection and its
configurations are based upon Ptolemy.
Slide 116B shows a reconstruction by Petrus Bertius
in 1628 of the world view of Pomponius Mela, in his Orbis Terrarum Pomponius
Melæ Delinætus P. Bertius.
LOCATION: Walters Art Gallery (Slide 116)
REFERENCES:
*Brown, L., The Story of Maps, p. 126.
Dilke, O.A.W., Greek and Roman Maps, pp. 65-66.
*Hapgood, C., Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings,
*Nordenskiöld, A.E., Facsimile Atlas, p. 36, Plate XXXI.
*illustrated