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Pomponius Mela, who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest known Roman geographer. He was born at the end of the 1st century BC 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.[1] 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."[2] 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.
- ^ Kish, George (1978). A Source Book in Geography. Harvard University Press. p. 128. ISBN 9780674822702. Retrieved 6 May 2018.
- ^ This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bunbury, Edward Herbert; Beazley, Charles Raymond (1911). "Mela, Pomponius". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). p. 87.
