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His little work (De situ orbis libri III.) is a mere compendium, occupying less than one hundred pages of ordinary print, dry in style and deficient in method, but of pure Latinity, and occasionally relieved by pleasing word-pictures. Excepting 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.

Nothing is known of the author except his name and birthplace--the small town of Tingentera or Cingentera in southern Spain, on Algeciras Bay (Mela ii. 6, § 96; but the text is here corrupt). The date of his writing may be approximately fixed by his allusion (iii. 6 § 49) to a proposed British expedition of the reigning emperor, almost certainly that of Claudius in AD 43. That this passage cannot refer to Julius Caesar is proved by several references to events of Augustus's reign, especially to certain new names given to Spanish towns. Mela has been without probability identified by some with L. Annaeus Mela of Corduba, son of Seneca the rhetorician, and brother of the great Seneca.

The general views of the De situ orbis mainly agree with those current among Greek writers from Eratosthenes to Strabo; the latter was probably unknown to Mela. But Pomponius is unique among ancient geographers in that, after dividing the earth into five zones, of which two only were habitable, he asserts the existence of antichthones, inhabiting the southern temperate zone inaccessible to the folk of the northern temperate regions from the unbearable heat of the intervening torrid belt. On the divisions and boundaries of Europe, AsiaThe continent of Asia is defined by subtracting Europe and Africa from the great land mass of Africa-Eurasia. The boundaries are vague, especially between Asia and Europe: Asia and Africa meet somewhere near the Suez Canal. The boundary between Asia and E and AfricaAfrica is the world's second-largest continent in both area and population, after Asia. 30,244,050 km2 (11,677,240 mi2) including the islands, it covers 20. 3% of the total land area on Earth, and with over 800 million human inhabitants it accounts for ar, he repeats Eratosthenes; like all classical geographers from Alexander the Greatbust of Alexander the Great Alexander III (late July, 356 BC June 10, 323 BC), King of Macedon ( 336 BC-323 BC), known as Alexander the Great was one of the most successful military commanders of the ancient world. Following the unification of the multipl (except PtolemyThis article is about the geographer and astronomer Ptolemy. For Alexander the Great's general, see Ptolemy I of Egypt. For others, see Ptolemy (disambiguation). Claudius Ptolemaeus (Greek: Klaudios Ptolemaios; A. circa 85 circa 165), known in English as) he regards the Caspian SeaThe Caspian Sea is a landlocked sea in Asia. It is bordered by Russia ( Dagestan, Kalmykia, Astrakhan Oblast), Republic of Azerbaijan, Iran ( Guilan, Mazandaran and Golestan provinces), Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, with the central Asian steppes to the n as an inlet of the Northern Ocean, corresponding to the Persian and Arabian ( Red SeaSudan The Red Sea ( Arabic Bar al-Amar al-Baru l-’Amar Hebrew Yam Suf Latin Mare Erythraeum is a gulf or basin of the Indian Ocean between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb sound and the Gulf of Aden.) gulfs on the south.

His IndiaThe Republic of India is a large multicultural country in South Asia, with a population of over one billion. The Indian economy is the fourth largest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity, and is the world's second-fastest growing economy.n conceptions are inferior to those of some earlier Greek writers; he follows Eratosthenes in supposing that country to occupy the south-eastern angle of Asia, whence the coast trended northwards to Scythia, and then swept round westward to the Caspian Sea. As usual, he places the Rhipaean Mountains and the Hyperboreans near the ScythiaScythia was an area in Eurasia inhabited in ancient times by a people known as the Scythians . The location and extent of Scythia varied over time from the Altai region where Mongolia, China, Russia, and Kazakhstan come together to the lower Danube rivern Ocean. In western Europe his knowledge (as was natural in a Spanish subject of Imperial Rome) was somewhat in advance of the Greek geographers. He defines the western coast-line of Spain and Gaul and its indentation by the Bay of Biscay more accurately than Eratosthenes or Strabo, his ideas of the British Isles and their position are also clearer than his predecessors. He is the first to name the Orcades or Orkneys, which he defines and locates pretty correctly. Of northern Europe his knowledge was imperfect, but he speaks vaguely of a great bay ("Codanus sinus") to the north of Germany, among whose many islands was one, "Codanovia," of pre-eminent size; this name reappears in Pliny as "Scandinavia."

Mela's descriptive method is peculiar and inconvenient. Instead of treating each continent separately he begins at the Straits of Gibraltar, and describes the countries adjoining the south coast of the Mediterranean; then he moves round by Syria and Asia Minor to the Black Sea, and so returns to Spain along the north shore of the Euxine, Propontis, etc. After treating the Mediterranean islands, he next takes the ocean littoral--to west, north, east and south successively--from Spain and Gaul round to India, from India to Persia, Arabia and Ethiopia; and so again works back to Spain round South Africa. Like most classical geographers he conceives the Dark Continent as surrounded by sea and not extending very far south.

The first edition of Mela was published at Milan in 1471; the first good edition was by Vadianus (Basel, 1522), superseded by those of Voss (1658), J Gronovius (1685 and 1696), A Gronovius (1722 and 1728), and Tzschucke (1806-1807), in seven parts (Leipzig; the most elaborate of all); G Paithey's (Berlin, 1867), gives the best text. The English trans. by Arthur Golding (1585), is famous; see also EH Bunbury, Ancient Geography, ii. 352?368, and D Detlefsen, Quellen und Forschungen zur alten Gesch. und Geog. (1908).