Geography (Geographicae Enarrationis Libri Octo)

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...are not near the sea, but are much further inland, and the order from the coast of the Aromata and from the Sinae to the Rapta promontory is different than what Marinus has reported. From the navigation there of one day and night, not many stadia are gathered because of the rapid change of winds under the equinoctial, but at most four hundred or five hundred stadia. However, the first gulf is adjacent to the Aromata, in which, after a journey of one day from the Aromata, there is a village called Pano, and the Opone emporium is distant from the village by a journey of six days. After this emporium, another gulf is joined, the beginning of Azania, in the beginning of which is the Zingina promontory and the three-headed mountain Phalangida; and this gulf alone is called Apocota, which can be crossed in two days and nights. Afterward, a small coast follows, in the transit of three distances, and another also, which is called the Great Coast, of five distances, which both distances together can be navigated in four days and nights. To these is also joined another gulf, in which is an emporium which is called Essina, after a navigation of two days and nights. Thence [is] the port of Serapion, a navigation of one day, after which a gulf begins which leads to Rapta, having a crossing of three days and nights; near its beginnings is an emporium which is called Nici, but near the Rapta promontory is the Rapta river and the metropolis of the same name, a little distant from the sea. That which is from Rapta as far as the Prassum promontory is a very great gulf, though not deep, around which Anthropophagi cannibals inhabit.

HOW USELESS THE COMPOSITIONS OF MARINUS are for the designation of the world

CAPVT XVIII.

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Therefore, those things which ought to follow some knowledge from history itself have been noted up to this point. However, so that we may not seem to have undertaken contention rather than amendment in some matters, individual things will be manifest to us through a particular exposition; but now it remains that we consider those things which pertain to the undertaking of the description. Therefore, since its method is twofold: the first

which designates the arrangement of the world on a part of a spherical surface, and the second, which is on a plane, is common to both. The ease of the proposed work is that it may be shown how, even if no model is proposed, we may make a description as conveniently as possible from only that doctrine which is handed down through commentaries. For constant translation from earlier models to later ones, because of the small variation, is accustomed to introduce very dissimilar changes into this excellent work. But that method which is handed down through commentaries, if it happens not to be sufficient for the demonstration of an exposition, it will be impossible for those who lack a model to properly follow the proposal. Which we see has now happened to many in the map which Marinus composed; for since they could not obtain the models of his last edition, but attacked the matter crudely and as if by conjecture from the commentaries, they erred in many things which they confessed to be a collection, because of the ineptitude and confusion of the instruction, as any expert may consider. For when it is necessary to designate individual places, and to have the position of both longitude and latitude for him who wishes to arrange them in due order, one will not find it immediately in the compositions, but separately. For here one will discover only latitudes, such as in the position of parallels, but elsewhere only longitudes, such as in the designation of meridians, so that for the most part both of these are not found in the same commentaries; rather, parallels are described in some, and meridians in others. Thus, such people always need help from one another in [determining] positions, and the work of turning through all the commentaries is needed for the consideration of in what place individual things are to be established, because it is said otherwise of the same things in all of them. And if we do not inquire what is stated about the same place according to each species, those things will escape us, and we will wander in many things where a true observation ought to occur. Therefore, in the disposition of cities, one could describe those on the coast more easily if he observed a certain order in them, but not so with those inland, since no relationship, either among themselves or to those coastal ones, is yet signed, except in a few cases where it happens that sometimes the limit of longitude and at other times the place of latitude is defined.