PROLEGOMENA.

"I am compelled to learn the worlds painted on a tablet." Above all, however, Vitruvius, who composed his work around the year 740/14, not only makes mention of maps but accurately describes them in VIII 2, 6 sq.; whose words it seems relevant to bring here. For he wrote: evidence for how these things are done can be the sources of rivers, which are found in the chorographiis maps/topographical descriptions of the world, painted and likewise written, and are very many and very large, emerging from the north. First, in India, the Ganges and the Indus originate from the Caucasus mountains; in Syria, the Tigris and the Euphrates; likewise in Asia from the Pontus, the Borysthenes, Hypanis, and Tanais; from Colchis, the Phasis; in Gaul, the Rhone; in Celtic territory, the Rhine; this side of the Alps, the Timavus and the Po; in Italy, the Tiber; in Maurusia, which our people call Mauretania, from Mount Atlas the Dyris, which arises from the northern region and proceeds through the west to the Heptagonus lake, and with a changed name is called † agger, then from the Heptabolus lake, flowing under desert mountains, it moves through southern places and flows into the marsh which is called . . . . . .; it encircles Meroe, which is the kingdom of the southern Ethiopians; and from these marshes, turning itself through the rivers Astasoba and Astaboa and many others, it arrives through the mountains to the cataract, and from there precipitating itself through the north, it arrives between Elephantis and Syene and the Theban fields into Egypt, and there it is called the Nile. Moreover, that the source of the Nile flows from Mauretania is recognized most from the fact that, etc. Therefore, since all rivers in the descriptions of the world appear to flow from the north . . . . — Here, too, even before Agrippa's painted world, you see a map of the world described. But all these works have perished. Muellenhoff, both earlier 2 and in Hermes IX 192, and others, think that Agrippa followed Eratosthenes above others. However, the measurements preserved from both, if you except the 29th part of one fragment, by no means sufficiently agree. 3 Others, such as Fr. Philippi p. 38, have said that Agrippa followed a later geographer "from the number of the Greeks." But not even that is proven by suitable examples.

1) cf. p. 38, 4 B of this edition.

2) On the World Map and Chorography of the Emperor Augustus. Kiel 1856. p. 46 sq.

3) Even the dimensioning of the whole world, which Muellenhoff in Hermes IX 193 attempts to demonstrate as common to Eratosthenes and Agrippa, is more artificial than what might be pleasing. Nor is it free from errors. To bring an example: he should have stated the measurements of Syria and Mesopotamia from east to west not as 175 and 800, but as 470 and 360 miles; which is clear about Syria from Dimensuration ch. 4, and about Mesopotamia from the comparison of Media, Agr. fr. 33. From Byzantium to the mouth of the Ister he says 612 miles, which are 560 (Agr. 14).