Pomponius Mela (d. 45 CE)
De Orbis Situ Libri Tres.
Paris: [Chretien Wechel], 1530
Folio: 8 1/2 by 13 1/4"
title page printed within ornate woodcut compartment, separate divisional title for commentary printed within the same compartment;
bound in half parchment with blue paper-covered boards; manuscript title on the spine
ex libris Earl of Macclesfield North Library with bookplate pasted inside the front board and embossed stamps to first three leaves;
Text in Latin
With commentary of Joachim Vadian
a very large copy, some contemporary marginalia

Pomponius Mela, who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest Roman geographer.
He was born in Tingentera (now Algeciras) and died c. AD 45.
His short work (De situ orbis libri III) remained in use nearly to the year 1500.
It occupies less than one hundred pages of ordinary print, and is described by the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) as "dry in style and deficient in method, but of pure Latinity, and occasionally relieved by pleasing word-pictures."
Except for the geographical parts of Pliny's 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.



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